A comparison of progressive forms in English and Albanian

Abstract

Nazev teto prace Srovnanf prubehovych tvaru v angliCtine a albanstine napovida, ze jde 0 studii srovnavaci. Byla rozdelena do dvou vetsich celku, do casti teoreticke a vYzkumne. Cilem teoretickeho useku bylo provest pfehled poznatku zminovanych v lingvisticke literatufe 0 prubehovych formach, jejich funkci, vYvoji, semantice a uziti, a to jak pro albanstinu, tak i pro anglictinu. Cast prakticka pak na zaklade tohoto popisneho aparatu sleduje podrobne dye dvojice pfekladovych textu (Alb > Eng a Eng > Alb). K realizaci teto casti bylo potfeba excerpovat celkem 200 polozek, vzdy 100 z kazdeho vychoziho jazyka. Nicmene v Alb-Eng textu bylo dohromady nalezeno pouze 74 prubehovych tvaru, z cehoz vyplyva, ze z Eng-Alb verze jsme vybrali 126 pfikladu, aby potfebny pocet byl dorovnan. Z teoreticke casti jiz bylo zrejme, ze prubehove tvary se objevuji jak v anglickem jazyce tak i v jazyce albanskem. V anglictine, jak znamo, se tvofi pomoci slovesa bYt - to be + -ing tvaru lexikalniho slovesa. Pro albanstinujsme dokonce objevi1r formy dYe, a to po + finitni slovesny tvar nebo konstrukcijam + duke + pfitomne pficesti lexikalniho slovesa. Postup, ktery byl zvolen pro sestaveni jejich popisneho aparatu, je nasledujici. Jako prvni pfisly na fadu anglicke prubehove formy, ktere byly popsany z vetSi miry z hlediska vYvoje,...

On a very general level we can say that the results of the Project Research support the claims made by the authors of the surveyed literature in the Theoretical Overview, i.e., that the progressive forms in Albanian really exist. However, our research has qualified the observations on Albanian progressive constructions in the literature in one important respect: it has, perhaps surprisingly, shown that the po-constructions (in spite of their restriction to the present and imperfect) rather than the jam + duke forms are by far the more common of these two formal means of expressing progressiveness in Albanian. The prevalence of the po-constructions over the duke ones is surprising because the present/imperfect tense restrictions of the po-constructions are not the only ones. Other tenses are not allowed to combine with the po-constructions for diverse reasons (the preterite because of its terminative nature, the future tense because of the particles do te and the impossibility of po to combine with other particles before the verb). Another limitation that appeared in both parts ofthis study is the impossibility of the progressive po particle to accompany verbs denoting repetition or habit. If we were to speculate on the reasons for the prevalence of the po-constructions over the duke ones, we suppose that it...