Teaching

Since 2016 I have been teaching Czech language acquisition at the UvA. 

Russische en Slavische Studies

Research

Since 2017 I have been an active member of the ACLC research group Comparative Slavic Verbal Aspect & Related Issues and I have been involved in joint research projects. 

In november 2021 I have started my PhD project at the ACLC.

Czech Aktionsart in the light of new insights into (Slavic) lexical and grammatical verbal aspect

The term ‘Aktionsart’ was already in use in various ways in the work of several German linguists of the 19th century, but it was the definition by Agrell (1908) that gained a foothold in later Slavic (and indeed Germanic) linguistics and it has remained in use throughout the course of the 20th century and up to the present time. The concept refers to shades of lexical meaning appertaining to verbs and more especially to the manner in which a given situation, usually eventive, is brought to completion. Meaning types moreover have a bearing on the relationship to time and the course of time involved - a specific property of verbal meaning. As such it comes very close to the grammatical function of verbal aspect and especially so in Slavic languages, where the lexical feature of terminativity is a precondition for predicational meaning being subjected to the aspect opposition of perfectivity vs. imperfectivity. Since the work of Barentsen and Stunová it has become apparent that a proper description and understanding of the functioning of verbal aspect in Slavic languages requires clear insights into the category of terminativity. My preliminary research confirms, that some of the types of terminativity are (almost) lacking in Czech, indicating that the grammatical aspect system also must deviate from that of Russian in this respect – this may turn out to be fundamental.

In this project I examine the category of Aktionsart in Czech in the light of new insights and approaches into lexical and grammatical verbal aspect. I will make an inventory of Aktionsarts (action types) in order to investigate and establish the grammatical aspectual behaviour of the Czech Aktionsarts; for this purpose I will apply Barentsen’s comprehensive concept of terminativity. I also pay attention to the semantics of Aktionsarts in connection with the totality and internal structure of events as this has already been shown to be crucial in the Czech aspectual system and the way it “operates” on the microlevel of events. The main goal of the project is to contribute to the understanding of the particularities of the Czech system. 

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Ellen Rutten, Dr. René M. Genis, Dr. Adrie A. Barentsen