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From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Slavic languages
Message-ID: <726@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7-Jul-85 23:08:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.726
Posted: Sun Jul  7 23:08:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 04:59:02 EDT
References: <349@spar.UUCP> <10500061@uiucdcsb>
Reply-To: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
Lines: 63
Summary: 

>>>                                               A major slavic innovation
>>>     is the perfective/imperfective aspect in most verbs, which denotes
>>>     whether an action is viewed as a single event or continuing over
>>>     time.
>>
>>Doesn't French have an imperfect tense ?  Are you saying that they
>>got it from the slavic languages ?
>>/* End of text from uiucdcsb:net.nlang */
>
>The perfective and imperfective in slavic languages carry some of the same
>meanings as the imperfect and preterit in, say, Spanish (I know it better
>than French).  E.g., habitual or continuing action vs. a one time completed
>event.  But, in Spanish this show up in two past conjugations of one
>verb stem.  And that is essentially that.
>
>In Slavic languages, every verb has a perfective and imperfective STEM
>(example: to think:  (Rus.) dumat'/ podumat').  It's like getting two
>verbs for the price of one.

There is a slightly different distinction made by Russian
imperfective/perfective and by Romance imperfect/perfect.

The Romance distinction depends upon how the action is viewed.
The perfect past is used for an event that is viewed as a single
punctual act, and the imperfective past is used for an event
that is habitual or on-going.

The Slavic distinction depends on whether the action went to completion.
The imperfective verb stem is used for incomplete actions, and the
perfective verb stem for complete actions.

The chart below shows roughly how the two distinctions are slightly skewed.
DISCLAIMER: Although I know the Romance languages quite well, I only know
Russian as a (former) linguist who has read Russian grammars (and
has one in front of him right now).

	habitual act	on-going act	incomplete 	completed
					punctual act	punctual act

English	I ate everyday	I was eating	I ate some	I ate the bread up.
			when the phone  of the bread.
			rang.

Russian	|-------imperfective verb-------------------|	|-perfective verb---|

Romance	|-----imperfect tense--------|	|------perfect tense----------------|
					Verbal aspect cannot distinguish
					between the two. Other means must be
					used. For example, Spanish uses 
					'comer' for 'eat' but makes it
					grammatically (but not semantically)
					reflexive, 'comerse' for 'eat up'.
-- 


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