Speaker: Dmitry Privoznov (MIT)
Title: Poka živoj, poka ešče ne umer (‘While alive, while yet not died’). Some puzzles and thoughts about poka
Time: Wednesday, 10/26, 1pm
Place: 32-D461
Abstract: This talk will present some puzzles concerning the distribution of the Russian complementizer poka ‘while’, and some preliminary thoughts about what these puzzles might tell us about the meaning of the perfective and the imperfective aspect. The meaning and restrictions on the distribution of the complementizer/particle poka ‘while’ have been discussed in the literature quite extensively (Khalizeva 1969, Brown and Franks 1995, Abels 2005, Iordanskaya and Melchuk 2007, Paducheva 2014, 2015). It has several uses and is usually assumed to correspond to several different particles/complementizers (Iordanskaya and Melchuk 2007). I will focus on the use of poka as a complementizer that embeds a temporal adjunct clause. The discussion will be centered around the follwing three puzzling facts.
First, it seems that in an “out of the blue” context the clause under poka must be imperfective and may not be perfective:
(1) a. Poka Marina šla domoj, Osja gotovil obed.
while Marina walk.IMP.PST.F.SG home, Osya cook.IMP.PST.M.SG dinner
‘While Marina was walking home, Osya was cooking dinner.’
b. #Poka Marina prišla domoj, Osja gotovil obed.
while Marina come.PFV.PST.F.SG home, Osya cook.IMP.PST.M.SG dinner
‘While Maria came home, Osya was cooking dinner.’
Second, if the clause under poka contains negation, both aspects are fine (2). Furthermore, at least the sentence in (2b) entails that the event of the negated poka-clause took place in the actual world (Marina came home).
(2) a. Poka Marina ne šla domoj, Osja gotovil obed.
while Marina NEG walk.IMP.PST.F.SG home, Osya cook.IMP.PST.M.SG dinner
‘While Marina was not walking home, Osya was cooking dinner.’
b. Poka Marina ne prišla domoj, Osja gotovil obed.
while Marina NEG come.PFV.PST.F.SG home, Osya cook.IMP.PST.M.SG dinner
‘Until Marina came home, Osya was cooking dinner.’
Lit.: ‘While Maria didn’t come home, Osya was cooking dinner.’
Third, the clause under poka could be perfective even without negation, but only if the verb in the poka-clause is an accomplishment and the main clause is also perfective:
(3) Poka Osja obegal vse magaziny v poiskax instrumentov, Marina otremontirovala plitu bez nix.
While Osya run.through.PFV.PST.M.SG all stores in search tools, Marina fix.PFV.PST.F.SG stove without them
‘While Osya ran through all the stores in search of the tools, Marina fixed the stove without them.’
In this talk I will follow an approach, according to which, poka only has one meaning throughout (1-3) and negation in its context is not “expletive”, but has its standard interpretation (Abels 2005, Tatevosov 2016, Tiskin 2017, 2018). I will discuss whether the facts in (1-3) could be derived from an assumption that poka forms a predicate over maximal time intervals (similar to a definite article with a maximality presupposition).