ROLE OF QUANTIFIERS IN THE FORMATION OF ASPECTUAL SITUATION (IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE)

Abstract

The key to the correct perceiving of a statement as a whole is an adequate interpretation of the predicate which directly depends on a correct understanding of its aspectual meaning. For the languages with formalized category of aspect, it is possible to focus on the semantics of the verb itself. But in languages which lack this specific category, as English, it is necessary to expand the coverage of elements of the sentence that define aspectual meaning. These elements are often defined as quantifiers. Applying recent theoretical achievements of aspectology, the author extends the research field to the limits of the aspectual situation and analyzes the role of quantifiers in its formation. The study is based on the material of the modern prose text, by the method of direct observation of the phenomenon in textual space followed by analysis and generalization. As the result of the analysis, several types of aspectual situations in which quantifiers play a special role have been distinguished. Proceeding from the lexical and grammatical features of these elements, the author proposes to expand the existing classification by adding numbering and measuring quantifiers.