Department

of Translation Studies Faculty of Arts University of Ljubljana

Academic BA Thesis

Aspect and Narrative Perspective

Author: Gaja Lunik Mentor: doc. dr. Silvana Orel Kos Ljubljana, September 2011

Abstract
Aspect is a sub-system of language that conveys ways of seeing. Whether one defines written language as a conceptual representation of discourse world or as a self-generated literary form, it is impossible for it not to communicate, explicitly or implicitly, some degree of detachment or involvement with the encompassing subjectmatter. In literature, perspective is primarily conveyed through the point of view and the voices of both, the narrator and the narrating personae. With an overwhelming production of postmodern literary styles, rationalizing perspective in a novel is proving to be one of the great challenges of literary translation analysis. The thesis combines a basic theoretical overview of aspect in terms of perspective with an English-Slovene contrastive analysis of selected literary examples. It aims to establish connections between linguistic and narratological approaches to aspect, to expand the general treatment of aspect with describing its macro-textual functions, and to present the crucial distinctions between the English aspect and the Slovene vid. The main hypothesis is based on the incompatibility of the English and Slovene aspectual systems, presuming that the aspectual information of the English excerpts does not coincide with the aspectual forms in the Slovene translations. The thesis further explores the basic reasons for this discrepancy and problematizes the universality of the terminological uses for the perfective and imperfective aspectual categories. It shows the misleading nature of the widespread conceptual simplification of interchanging the English simple and progressive forms with the Slovenian perfective and imperfective aspects respectively, which leads to inaccurate renditions of perspective in translation, both in terms of meaning as in stylistic value. The thesis therefore aims to present a functional diversity of the English viewpoint aspect to break this over simplified pattern. Keywords: aspect, simple form, progressive form, viewpoint aspect, perfective, imperfective, perspective, narratology, point of view, focalization, grounding.

Summary
The thesis explores the role of the viewpoint aspect in narrative fiction and combines the basic aspectual premises with a contrastive analysis of English and Slovene aspectual systems. It is based on the assumption that the formal and functional discrepancies between the English and Slovene aspectual systems require a detailed contextual knowledge of English aspectual functions when translating into Slovene. The thesis therefore provides both a theoretical background for explaining these discrepancies as well as a functional overview of the English viewpoint aspect and its role in the formation of narrative perspective. In the introduction of the thesis we observe an eclecticism of theoretical approaches towards the studies of aspect in the western grammar. The basic translation strategies are influenced by tendencies towards conceptual and terminological universality that caused a series of generalizations. In the case of English and Slovene aspectual systems, one of those generalizations is shown through the formal interchanging of simple aspect in English and the perfective in Slovene on one hand and of the English progressive and the Slovene imperfective form on the other. The main part of the thesis exposes some of the key factors in the conceptual discordances between the English and Slovene aspectual systems: the universal application of the terms perfective and imperfective; where we argue that their true meaning can only be applied to Slavic terminology, the morphological distinction; where the Slovene aspectual distinction is indicated formally with pre-fixation and root modification, whereas the English aspectual information is conceptually more dependent on tense rather than the formal morphology, the misleading equation between the English simple and progressive and the Slovene perfective and imperfective respectively; where the progressive and the imperfective partly coincide, but the simple form does not correspond with the actual completeness of the event, whereas the Slovene perfective requires such interpretation,

the mutual (in)dependence of the viewpoint aspect and the situation types; the universal tendencies of the two-components theory by C. Smith (1991) are proven not applicable to the Slovene aspectual system where their relationship is highly dependent (as seen from the corpus-based analysis in the annex),

the markedness factor; where the Slovene imperfectives are stylistically unmarked and the English progressives are generally marked as having a subjective and emotional connotation. The main conclusions regarding the English-Slovene contrastive analysis are

the following: the English simple form does not necessarily translate with the Slovene perfective and the English progressive is not necessarily interchangeable with the Slovene imperfective. The Slovene aspectual system is based solely on the concepts of duration and completeness of the event, whereas the English aspectual system regards an event as a whole or as a part of the whole, regardless of its duration or actual completeness. The English aspectual system disposes of a variety of functions and meanings and cannot be reduced to its formal manifestations. The form itself therefore does not convey function; meaning has to be sought in contextualization. The assumptions are made that the translation difficulties in translating English aspect arise in two basic cases: (1) when despite the consistent use of one aspectual form in English (e.g. simple or progressive) the Slovene syntactic patterns require aspectual alternations (therefore causing a shift in perspective), and (2) when the aspectual alternations in English need to be retained to keep the functions of shifting perspective but cannot be formally represented in Slovene. To further explore the perspectival use of English aspect in order to provide a useful translators insight, the thesis focuses on the functions of the English viewpoint aspect with emphasis on narrative perspective. Three crucial functions are listed: formation of grounding and linearization; where English simple and progressive forms can function both as foreground or background and the functions of the Slovene aspectual forms are, again, subject to greater limitations, propelling the tempo of narration (simple / perfective form) or slowing down the camera (progressive / imperfective form),

indicating narrative personae; where a change in focalization, formally shown through the aspectual shifting, indicates a change of narrative voice. It is a specific function of the consciousness progressive that cannot be formally replicated with the use of Slovene aspect. By focusing on the narrative as a discourse genre and a cognitive style, the

thesis applies a few basic principles of narratology to the discussion: conceptual distinction between the narrator and the narrating personae, conceptual and terminological distinction between point-of-view and focalization, distinction between internal and external focalization. The main part of the thesis is concluded with a few general references to the stylistic functions of the aspect in narrative. The main goal of the theoretical overview is to widen the approach of dealing with the basic grammatical role of the aspect and to stress its contribution to the stylistic values of the temporal and causal structures in fictional narratives. By quoting examples that were analyzed at this level of discourse, we aim to show how a translator must not base his or her understanding of an aspectual function on a formal comparison between the source and the target language, but rather interpret the source language with an in-depth view of its true contextual meaning.

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