A Contrastive Study of Resultative Constructions in Albanian and Other Languages

Abstract

In the last two or three decades, linguists have paid great attention to certain ways and means of expressing result, especially in English and other Germanic languages, but also in Neo-Latin and Slavic languages, as well as in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and the like. As Zhang (2009) notes, resultative constructions have a prominent place in contemporary linguistic studies, because they shed light on the nature of relationship between semantics and syntax. They have been examined not only based on the syntactic composition, but also on the structure of argument and lexical semantics. Formal analysis instruments, as well as functional and cognitive ones have been already used. However, the last word has not yet been said, since there are many other languages where the concept of result and the elements used to express it have not been examined deeply enough. This is especially true for languages spoken outside the Eurasian continent, but also for languages within this area, including Albanian. The following study is focused on different syntactic patterns by which the concept of result is codified in several languages belonging to different families, with the belief that this analysis will help to determine the position of Albanian language amidst these languages concerning resultative constructions in general.

Received: 21 March 2024 / Accepted: 28 May 2024 / Published: 5 May 2024