Abstract
Capacitives harbor a paradox: on the one hand they exhibit morphological features of perfective verbs and on the other hand they exhibit semantic properties that are linked with imperfectives and states. States are stative, they are durative (e.g. extended in time), and are unbounded (Croft 2012).
Imperfectives, similarly as states, are also durative and unbounded. Verbs in stative sentences can't answer the question What is the agent doing right now? and consequently predicates expressing states are not compatible with adverbial signals of actual ""ongoingness"" (právě teď ""right now"", v této chvíli ""in this moment"").
Stative use of capacitive verbs is further indicated by the following facts. Capacitives if used to refer to states cannot be used to express ongoingness.
Capacitives if used as states do not enter aspect opposition. Capacitives if used as states are compatible with adverbs of duration ((ještě) pořád, stále, furt... (už) dlouho... dokud) The study of capacitives brings forward some more general observations on aspect in Czech and on aspect in general:.
The common description of aspect focuses on the verb, i.e. it deals with aspect as with an exclusively verbal category. However aspectual meaning of a linguistic expression - and it may be considerably larger than the verbal expression itself - is not given (only) by the verb.
Verb is only one among multiple aspectual exponents in a linguistic expression under consideration.. Aspect of the verb is not an inherent quality of the verb.
Its aspect is rather given by the way the verb is used in the discourse. In terms of the opposition state vs. process: a verb rather than BEING stative or process-like, it is USED in a stative or process-like manner..
Or the other way around: the verb is not perfective or imperfective, stative or process-like by itself, the aspectual distinction is imposed on the verb by the discourse, aspectual categoriality of the verb emerges from the discourse.