Scando-Slavica (2014), 384–405. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00806765.2014.984473 © 2014 he Association of Scandinavian Slavists and Baltologists Towards an Areal Typology of Preixal Perfectivization Peter Arkadiev Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskiy prospekt 32A, 119334, Moscow, Russia. peterarkadiev@yandex.ru Abstract his paper presents the results of an areal-typological study of preixal perfec- tivization in Slavic, Baltic, Yiddish, Hungarian, Ossetic and Kartvelian languages based on a uniform set of morphological and functional-semantic parameters. It is shown that there are two clusters of preixal perfectivization, i.e., Slavic and Kart- velian, while other languages display signiicant degrees of diference both from each other and from the two clusters. It is further argued on the basis of exist- ing evidence that the development and distribution of the current “landscape” of preverb-based aspectual systems in the languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have been shaped by a complex interplay of genetic, typological and contact factors. Keywords: aspect, perfectivization, preixation, areal linguistics, contact linguistics, linguistic typology. 1. Introduction Recent studies in the typology of verbal aspect (Dahl 1985; Breu 1992, 2000a; Bybee et al. 1994; Dahl 2000; Plungian 2011) have argued that Slavic aspect constitutes a cross-linguistically rather special type of aspectual system and have emphasized the role of preixation (preverbation) in both its dia- chronic rise and synchronic makeup. Parallels to Slavic aspectual systems in the neighboring languages have been pointed out in general works on aspect at least since Comrie (1976): cf. Dahl (1985); Breu (1992); Maisak (2005); Kiefer (2010) and especially Tomelleri (2008, 2009, 2010). However, to date a comprehensive comparative study of all the aforementioned aspectual sys- tems, approaching them with a common typological methodology and scru- tinizing the areality of the phenomenon, has been lacking. he goal of this paper is to investigate the systems of aspectual prever- bation of the languages of Eastern Europe, including not only Slavic, but Downloaded by [Peter Arkadiev] at 06:34 24 December 2014