Publication
The Structure of Bulgarian Verb Complex
Tania Avgustinova; Karel Oliva
CLAUS-Report, Universität des Saarlandes, Vol. 4, 2/1991.
Abstract
In this article we wish to concentrate on a non-transformational description of the structure of complex verb forms in Modern Bulgarian, Slavonic language performing some Balkanic features in its morphology and syntax, which makes it differ considerably from other languages of the Slavonic group. Almost no such attempts have been made before, although some of the syntactic problems that arise have been mentioned and treated from different viewpoints in studies concerned with complex tenses, with voice and mood, with the status of pronouns, of negative and interrogative particles etc. The partially free word order of Bulgarian has been mentioned in very few works based on the transformational approach. For the sake of description of the Bulgarian verb complex, we felt we had to refrain from some of the standards of the linguistic background of many current non-transformational (as well as other) approaches. The changes we introduced concern the constituent structures used and they consist inriching the established approach with ideas stemming from the works of the Prague Linguistic School, namely with the notion of communicative dynamism. The shape of the structures is briefly sketched in the first part of the work, while the linguistic facts and their description are the main content of its second part; in the closing paragraphs, some phenomena are mentioned which were not examined in detail in the central sections of the work and their incorporation into the description as presented before is considered.