Title: Aspectual Variations in Russian and Serbo-Croatian
Abstract: 1. The most distinctive feature of the verbal system of a Slavic language is undoubtedly its verbal aspect. Stated simply, a particular Slavic verb has either perfective (P) aspect, which mean that a commitment as to completion has been added to the verb's basic meaning, or it has imperfective (I) aspect, in which is no such implication.' To express the meaning 'to write' in Russian, a choice has to be made between the two aspectual partners pisat' I 'to write, to be in the process of writing' and napisat' P to write, to get written, to complete the writing (of)'. There are also morphological implications to aspect, in that in certain constructs the selection of a verb form of a particular aspect is obligatory; for example, the periphrastic future of Russian permits only the use of an I verb, as in ja budu pisat' 'I will write, I will be writing' (*ja budu napisat' does not occur). Exceptions to this typical aspectual pairing, such as Russian obescat' 'to promise', which functions as either an I or a P verb, testify by their very oddity to the pervasiveness of the aspectual dichotomy.2 In the last hundred years, the Slavic languages have generated many verbs which have, for the most part, loan elements for their base, e.g. Russian patentovat' 'to patent'. A striking characteristic of these new verbs is that very many of them operate outside or only partially inside the traditional aspect system. Patentovat' is both I and P: it has two aspects-or, stated in another way, it has no aspect. I propose to examine this blurring or elimination of aspectual distinctions in the Slavic languages by considering the status of new verbs in two languages, Russian of the East Slavic group and Serbo-Croatian of the South Slavic group.
Publication Year: 1963
Publication Date: 1963-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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