FUNCTIONAL-SEMANTIC FEATURES OF VERBAL CATEGORIES IN AZERBAIJANI AND POLISH

Abstract

The fact that Azerbaijani and Polish belong to different language families and represent distinct morphological types gives rise to significant typological differences in the organisation of verbal categories. The primary aim of the study is to identify, from a comparative perspective, the functional-semantic characteristics of such verbal categories as tense, aspect and Aktionsart, mood and modality, voice, transitivity - intransitivity, person and number in the two languages. In Azerbaijani, most verbal categories are formed in accordance with the agglutinative model through the sequential attachment of morphological markers to the verbal stem. In Polish, by contrast, inflectional alternations, conjugation, prefixation, aspectual pairs and the expression of grammatical gender in certain forms occupy a more prominent position. Particular attention is paid to the opposition dokonany-niedokonany, one of the fundamental features of the Polish verbal system. The perfective - imperfective distinction affects the grammatical behaviour of the Polish verb lexeme, including the semantics of tense forms. In Azerbaijani, the corresponding semantic domain is expressed not through a unified grammatical aspectual paradigm, but through tense, Aktionsart, auxiliary verbs, analytical constructions and contextual means. Mood and modality also reveal important structural differences: Azerbaijani possesses broader morphological possibilities, whereas in Polish some modal meanings are realised by means of specific verbs and syntactic constructions. Voice and transitivity function in both languages as mechanisms capable of modifying the participant structure of an event.