Grammatical Aspect, Lexical Aspect and Aktionsart in Hindi-Urdu: An analysis taking Russian correspondences into consideration

The aim of this paper is to fine-tune the analysis of the Hindi-Urdu forms encoding different types of aspectual meanings. It suggests criteria for their grouping under the three categories listed in the title. `Aspectual' is understood here in the broadest sense of the term as related to the situation-internal time (B. Comrie). In the first part of the paper, relations between the forms expressing grammatical aspect as well as the Aktionsarten-forms will be discussed in terms of oppositions. Semantic and formal overlaps between them will also be taken into account. In the second part, the emphasis will be on the lexical aspect. This term implies dependence of the meaning of analytic verbal structures on the inner temporal structures of their constituents and on the degree of telicity. The main data for the discussion will be the Hindi- Urdu compound verbs which provide a number of semantic similarities with the aspectual meanings of Russian verbs.