Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.7.0.4 $; site uiucdcsb Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcsb!authorplaceholder From: grass@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Slavic languages Message-ID: <10500061@uiucdcsb> Date: Wed, 3-Jul-85 10:05:00 EDT Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.10500061 Posted: Wed Jul 3 10:05:00 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jul-85 09:21:42 EDT References: <349@spar.UUCP> Lines: 65 Nf-ID: #R:spar.UUCP:-34900:uiucdcsb:10500061:000:3803 Nf-From: uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA!grass Jul 3 09:05:00 1985 >/* Written 10:41 am Jun 26, 1985 by mark@dssovax.UUCP in uiucdcsb:net.nlang */ >> 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. In East Slavic languages like Russian and West Slavic languages like Czech there are two forms of conjugation (ignoring participles..): the past and the present/future. (The past endings are derived from a Common Slavic past participle, and in some Slavic languages, like Serbo-Croatian, are still accompanied by an auxiliary verb). In these languages, the two stems with the past tense endings give two aspects of the past tense. The imperfective verb gives something that is similar (but not the same...) to the Spanish imperfect past (Rus. on dumal. "He was thinking, he used to think"). The perfective stem gives a past tense similar to the preterit (Rus. on podumal. "He thought a bit, He thought"). The imperfective verb with the present/future endings gives the present tense (Rus. On dumaet. "He thinks, he is thinking, he does think'). The perfective with these endings gives a future tense (Rus. On podumaet. "He will think, he will think a bit"). Russian has a second imperfective future tense as well which is formed with an auxiliary verb and the imperfective infinitive (on budet dumat' "He will be thinking"). This has the same sort of continuing action, focus on ongoing action as the imperfective past, vs. the perfective future that focuses on completion. The perfective/ imperfective system in Slavic languages permeates the entire verb conjugation system. It is not a matter of two isolated tenses (as in Spanish or French), but more basic than that. The situation is more complicated in South Slavic languages such as Bulgarian, Macedonian, and to some extent Serbo-croatian. These languages have perfective/ imperfective verb pairs, but they also have more active verb conjugations in the past tense. There is a past tense similar in form to the one of Russian and Czech, but there is also a simple past form, similar to a preterit, and an imperfect past. These can be formed of both the perfective and imperfective verbs. This is much closer to what the Slavic verb system was in Common Slavic. (I guess since Bulgarian and Macedonian lost most of the noun case system, they had to do something to keep an even level of language difficulty :-) ). In Serbo-croatian, these verb forms are a bit old-fashioned sounding (folk speech, literary usage). In Bulgarian and Macedonian they are used to contrast between events recounted that were witnessed (first hand knowledge) vs. events that are recounted second hand. In short, the verb system in Slavic languages is quite a bit different than that of Romance languages, and the words "imperfective" and "perfective" used in connection with Slavic languages doesn't mean quite the same thing it does in the context of Romance languages. - Judy Grass, University of Illinois - Urbana {ihnp4,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!grass grass%uiuc.arpa