ASPECT AND PERFORMATIVITY IN SORBIAN

In all Upper and Lower Sorbian grammars, aspect is a grammatical category, regarded a typical “Slavic” traitin spite of the fact that since Bermel 1994, aspect can be safely said to have evolved separately in the individual Slavic languages. The character of aspect in Sorbian, especially in Upper Sorbian, is highly disputable (and has been disputed since the beginning of the 20th century (cf. Werner 2003). An exception to one of the rules of Slavic aspect (namely that something happening at the time of talking must be expressed by means of an imperfective verb) are the so-called perfomative verbs. This acceptance and the termAktverben go back to Koschmieder 1929 but have never been thoroughly verified for individual verbs in the Sorbian languages. In this paper, the author makes an attempt at shedding some light on the aspect usage of performative verbs in Upper Sorbian.