Transgressive (linguistics)


In linguistic morphology, a transgressive is a special form of verb. It expresses a coincidentally proceeding or following action. It is considered to be a kind of infinitive, or participle. It is often used in Balto-Slavic languages. Syntactically it functions as an adverbial.

Slavic languages

Czech

The transgressive is a form of the verb in the Czech and Slovak languages. Nowadays it is used only occasionally for artistic purposes and in set phrases and idioms. Transgressives were still used quite widely in the literary language at the beginning of the 20th century. For example, Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk contains many of them.
The Czech language recognizes present and past transgressives. The present transgressive can express present or future action depending on the aspect of the verb from which it is derived.

Examples

In Slovak, only the present transgressive form exists, and it does not inflect for gender or number.

Polish

In Polish, transgressives are usually called "adverbial participles" and inflect neither for gender nor for number. There are two kinds of such participles: anterior and contemporary. The anterior participle expresses an event earlier than the event described by the main clause, while the contemporary adverbial participle expresses an event simultaneous with the event described by the main clause. Nowadays, especially the anterior participle is unused in the spoken language and rare in the written language.
The contemporary adverbial participle can be derived by adding the ending -c to the third-person plural present form of an imperfective verb :
The verb być "to be" is the only exception – its contemporary adverbial participle is będąc and corresponds to its future form będą " will be" rather than to its present form są " are".
The anterior adverbial participle can be derived by replacing of the ending -ł in the third-person singular masculine past form of a perfective verb with the suffix -wszy or -łszy :
In all varieties of Serbo-Croatian, the transgressive forms are called "verbal adverbs". They are common in literature and other written works, while in spoken language simple present or past tense constructions are usually used instead. They are formed similarly to the Czech and Polish transgressives. Examples are given in Gaj's Latin alphabet and Ijekavian pronunciation.

Examples

The present verbal adverb is formed by adding the ending -ći to the third-person plural present form of an imperfective verb:
The past verbal adverb is formed by adding the ending -vši to the infinitive stem of a perfective verb:
Some perfective verbs have irregular past verbal adverbs, for example doći "to come > došavši "having come".
The auxiliary verbs can be both perfective and imperfective. The verb biti "to be" has the present verbal adverb budući and the past verbal adverb bivši, and the verb htjeti "to want" has the present verbal adverb htijući or hoteći and the past verbal adverb htjevši or hotjevši.
The past verbal adverb can also be used to describe a way how something was done, for example for the verb baciti "to throw", the past verbal form bacivši can mean "by throwing", for example počinio je samoubojstvo bacivši se sa zgrade "he committed suicide by throwing himself off the building".

Russian

In Russian, the transgressive is considered a participial form,
which functions adverbially. It is common in written and spoken language. It
indicates a secondary action, performed concurrently with the primary action.
Syntactically the transgressive is felt as relating to the manner of the primary
action, as adverbs of manner do.
Formation of the transgressives bears similarities to the transgressives of other Slavic languages.
The transgressive can be formed from a perfective or an imperfective infinitive verb
lemma. The imperfective transgressive can be in the present or past tense. The
perfective transgressive is in the past. The transgressive has no other inflection
.

Examples

For some of the most frequent verb lemmata, formation of the transgressive exhibits some morphological variation and irregularity, with no simple rules:
The above transgressive forms of to be can be combined with the passive participle to form
periphrastic passive transgressives, though such usage is more rare.

Baltic languages

and Latvian have multiple transgressive forms most of which are used very actively in all types of modern speech.

Lithuanian

has the following transgressive forms:

The gerund

The gerund, used with verbs in all tenses to render an action done by the sentence subject simultaneously with the action of the main verb:

Examples

The gerund is formed by removing the infinitive ending "-ti" and adding the suffix "-dam-", as well as endings marking gender and number:
Two adverbial participles out of four, used with verbs in all tenses to render an action of which the sentence subject is not the agent and which takes place simultaneously with the action of the main verb or before it :

Examples

The adverbial participles are not conjugated and are formed by removing the ending of the respective tense and adding the suffix "-ant" or "-us" :
has the following transgressive forms:

The "-dams" participle

The "-dams" participle, used with verbs in all tenses to render an action done by the sentence subject simultaneously with the action of the main verb:

Examples

The "-dams" participle is formed by removing the infinitive ending "-t" and adding the suffix "-dam-", as well as endings marking gender and number:
The "-ot" participle, used with verbs in all tenses to render an action which takes place simultaneously with the action of the main verb. Contrary to the similar form in Lithuanian, "-ot" participle can be used for secondary actions performed by the sentence subject as well :

Examples

The adverbial participles are not conjugated and are formed by taking the stem of the present tense and adding the suffix "-ot" or "-oties".