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A Few 'Language Miniatures'
No. 121
Are You Reading This?
Imperfective and Perfective aspect
Imagine you say
She reads the newspaper.
You just said something about the way in which the action was carried out. She reads the newspaper means that she habitually does it, and you haven't given the impression that you're referring to any particular instance. If you communicate that she's actually reading as you speak, you'll probably say She is reading... If you assure someone that she's finished reading it, you'll say She has read the newspaper. So we can say that something is generally true without being specific about any particular occasion.
All of these different ways we can say something about an event are called aspects. Whereas a tense distinction serves to locate an action in time (Miniature No. 17), an aspect distinction specifies the concrete nature of an action, the manner in which it's carried out, within a temporal frame and with relation to our talking about it.
The grammatical structure of some languages places great importance on describing aspectual distinctions. Probably few do this with more expressive complexity than the Slavic family of languages, so let's look at how aspect works in Russian. Here the distinction between a general 'timeless' idea - often incomplete - and a description tied to physical reality - often beginning or completed - runs all through the verb system. In principle every verb in the language (though there are exceptions) has two basic forms, called Imperfective and Perfective.
First let's see how Russian goes about distinguishing the pair of aspectual forms in most of the thousands of verbs in the language.
Most Russian infinitives end in -t'. The term for this consonant is palatal t, but if you don't know what that is, don't worry about it since we're not concerned with pronunciation here.
| * The perfective form of a verb may be labeled by means of a prefix. The most common by far is po- |
| IMPERFECTIVE | PERFECTIVE |
| rvat' 'tear' in general | porvat' 'tear up'
|
| smotret' 'be looking' | posmotret' 'have a look'
|
| yest' idea of 'eating' | poyest' 'have a meal'
|
| but there are other prefixes that signal a perfective meaning - though verbs will have very different perfective senses depending on the nature of the event or state they happen to be describing - |
| videt' 'see' in general | uvidet' 'catch a glimpse' |
| pisat' 'write' | napisat' 'write some things' |
| pit' 'be drinking' | vypit' 'drink up' |
| zhech' 'be burning' | szhech' 'burn up' |
| * The verb may be modified in one of various ways, often according to set patterns (which we're not trying to describe here) |
| prodavat' 'be selling' | prodat' 'sell it' |
| pogovarivat' 'go on talking' | pogovorit' 'have a talk' |
| poyedat' 'be devouring' | poyest' 'have a meal' |
| This last example shows that a perfective verb may have more than one imperfective counterpart, and vice versa. |
| * Occasionally the two aspects of the 'same' verb are from two different roots |
| govorit' 'speak' | skazat' 'tell, say something' |
| klast' idea of 'putting' | polozhit' 'put' |
| bit' 'beat' | udarit' 'strike' |
Look at the above examples again. The imperfective form of any verb (on the left) is not directly tied to a concrete situation but expresses either a general idea or something that happens or is true but not on any particular occasion. The perfective on the other hand (on the right) always describes something at a concrete time. Some illustrations.
TIME IS
(in some sense)
UNBOUNDED |
TIME IS
(in some sense)
BOUNDED |
"Has he read the newspaper?"
"He has read it." |
on chital gazetu?
on chital yeyo. |
on prochital gazetu?
on prochital yeyo. |
| He has been reading it, but not implying that he finished |
He has completed reading it |
| "I'm ready to serve" |
| ya gotov sluzhat' | ya gotov posluzhat' |
| I stand ready to serve in a timeless moral sense |
I'm ready now, responding to a real, concrete soluition, such as a request
|
| (You're on the bus) "I want to get off" |
| ya khochu vykhodit' | ya khochu vyiti |
| there is no obstacle to getting off, no immediate or objective need, merely my desire |
there is some concrete reason, for instance somone in the way or an unforeseen emergency |
These last two show that the Russian aspectual distinction can be anything but easy to pin down. Now we can try defining the aspects something like this:
| IMPERFECTIVE | PERFECTIVE |
| an action or state that is not completed or that is independent of any particular occasion; a general idea where concrete experience does not play a role; a general idea where completion or beginning is not uppermost
| an action or state that is completed, or the moment of beginning; tied to a concrete occasion, description of a specific point or points in time |
In the Imperfective there is no direct relation between an occasion and an assertion about it, the event is perceived as 'unbounded'. In the Perfective a concrete occasion is often part of the assertion, the event is perceived as 'bounded'.
When you realize that we are talking about only two things to choose from, this has all gotten pretty subtle. But the real world has a way of being subtle and complex, and Slavic speakers are merely emphasizing one of these every time they speak.
All essays Copyright © 1998-2004 by William Z. Shetter
Go to Language Miniatures at http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/index.html
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Send it to me --
kmdavis@erols.com and I'll answer it.
