The term ‘aspect’ is used in both a narrower sense, in which it refers to grammatical categories which have to do with the structure of a situation or the speaker’s perspective on it, and a wider sense, in which it also covers lexical and notional (semantic) categories relating to the classification of situations (states of affairs). The term Aktionsart is often used to denote the latter [Dahl 1994a, p.240].
The “narrower sense” of the technical term ‘aspect’ is still broader than its sense in Slavonic studies, where it normally refers to the morphologically marked dichotomy perfective vs. imperfective only.
On the other hand, there are also cases of making a perfective verb imperfective by adding an infix, e.g.
1. Czech d´atperfective ‘to give’ + -va- → d´avatimperfective
2. Czech poslatperfective ‘to send’ + -´ı- → pos´ılatimperfective
Therefore, the presence of an affix as such, i.e. being morphologically more com-plex, is neither necessary nor sufficient for a verb to be perfective or imperfective.
The same applies to Russian: “In certain cases, the Perfective has more morpho-logical material than the Imperfective [. . . ], while in others it is the Imperfective that has more morphological material” [Comrie 1976, p.118].
Considering the perfective aspect as the marked one can be based on the perfectivisation-via-prefixation paradigm. Still, on the other hand, because of the imperfectivisation-via-infixation paradigm it might also be permissible to consider the imperfective aspect as the marked one. Semantically, neither of the two as-pects encompasses the other. They are simply two different ways of looking at a process. Figuratively speaking, the process is filmed by the imperfective as-pect and it is photographed by the perfective asas-pect. Attributes associated with imperfective aspect are: progression, unboundedness, unfinishedness. Attributes associated with perfective aspect are: wholeness, completion, boundedness, fin-ishedness. According to Hana Filip, Aleksandr Isaˇcenko7 came up with a ‘parade metaphor’ to illustrate the difference between the two perspectives:
“Perfective is like seeing the parade as a whole entity from the grandstand (e.g.
standing on Lenin’s Mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square), and Imperfective is like being a participant in the middle of the parade” [Filip 2007, p.25].
The imperfective aspect refers only to the course of an action or to the continuance of a state. For instance8, an utterance such as truhl´aˇr dˇelal st˚ul
‘the carpenter made a table’, which contains an imperfective verb, means that the production of a table occupied the carpenter. Apart from that, nothing else is implied. The utterance is non-committal about the completion of the table.
7Filip provides the following bibliographical details: “Isaˇcenko (1960, p.132–133)”
[Filip2007, p.25], which probably refers to his Grammaticˇceskij stroj russkogo jazyka v so-postavlenii s slovackim: morfologija.
8The four Czech examples in this and the following paragraph are taken from [Frei1997, p.180].
Another example is the imperfective utteranceˇcekala u dveˇr´ı‘she was waiting at the door’. It just means that her waiting continued.
The perfective aspect refers to an activity or state as a whole, from its be-ginning to its end. ‘Opening’, duration and completion of an activity or state are expressed. For instance, the perfective utterance truhl´aˇr udˇelal st˚ul ‘the car-penter made a table’ means that the carcar-penter began making a table, continued making a table and completed making a table. There was (or is) a finished table.
The same applies to the perfective utterance poˇckala u dveˇr´ı‘she was waiting at the door’: her waiting began, continued for a certain period of time and then it ended.
4.1.2 An alternative definition
It is possible to define Slavic verbal aspect by arraying verb forms and identifying those forms which share the same lexical meaning. Such a general definition of Slavic – here Czech – verbal aspect is the following:
Verbal aspect is the distinguishing element of the linguistic reality that it is possible to use our verbs in two to three rows of parallel forms which do not differ from one another by the basic word meaning (and which therefore can be translated into a foreign, non-Slavic language by a single form).9
Kopeˇcn´y’s definition, whose point of departure – contrary to the approximative description above – is neither the temporal meaning of aspect nor the morpho-logical details of perfectivisation or imperfectivisation, is interesting for several reasons.
Firstly, the reference to translations into “foreign, non-Slavic” languages makes this approach inherently comparative: a linguistic phenomenon is exam-ined by looking at its counterpart – or the lack thereof – in a different language.
Here the non-Slavic translations provide words for the “basic word meaning”, i.e.
9Czech original: “Slovesn´y vid je rozliˇsuj´ıc´ım prvkem t´e jazykov´e skuteˇcnosti, ˇze je moˇzno uˇz´ıt naˇseho slovesa ve dvoj´ıch aˇz troj´ıch ˇrad´ach paraleln´ıch tvar˚u, kter´e se od sebe neliˇs´ı z´akladn´ım slovn´ım v´yznamem (a kter´e je tedy moˇzno pˇreloˇzit do ciz´ıho, neslovansk´eho jazyka tvarem jedin´ym)” [Kopeˇcn´y1962, p.6].
the ‘semantic common denominator’, of the Slavic aspectual doublets/triplets.
Meta-languages help grasp a phenomenon they lack.10 One of Kopeˇcn´y’s ex-amples is the Czech triade of infinitives chv´alit – chv´al´ıvat – pochv´alit, whose non-Slavic translations lack this triadic structure: French louer, German loben and English to praise.11 On the other hand, in light of the fact that there of-ten is just one French or German translation for both progressive and simple forms, the definition at hand does ascribe an aspectual status to the English progressive forms. Still, if English prog is an aspect, it still works differently from Slavic aspect, cf. p.80 for details. Of course, it is possible to use adverbs or other periphrastic structures to differentiate between the different Czech in-finitives: chv´alit ‘to be praising’, chv´al´ıvat ‘to praise habitually’, pochv´alit ‘to praise completely’.12 The crucial difference between Slavic verb forms and these non-Slavic verb phrases is that these adverbs or periphrastic structures are added, i.e. optional, whereas no Slavic verb form can be non-committal concerning its aspect.13
Secondly, the reference to a ‘basic meaning’, which can be checked by trans-lation into other languages, includes the differentiation between purely aspectual affixes and those affixes that change the aspect and the lexical meaning of the verb. E.g. the prefixvy-makes the imperfectivedˇelat‘to do/make’ (Frenchfaire, German machen) perfective but it also changes the lexical meaning because the perfectivevydˇelat means ‘to make (money)’ (Frenchgagner, Germanverdienen).
To recap,dˇelat andvydˇelat do not represent an aspectual pair in the strict sense.
10This is special because normally it works the other way around: a meta-language that helps tackling polysemy does this by providing different words for different meanings of a word in the language that is examined. E.g. a non-Slavic language is a good meta-language for a dictionary of Slavic place names: “DieBedeutungen werden nur deutsch angef¨uhrt; eine nichtslawische Sprache erm¨oglicht n¨amlich besser die einzelnen Bedeutungen auseinanderzuhalten (z.B. zima
— a Winter, b K¨alte)” [ˇSmilauer1970, p.7, his italics].
11Actually,Kopeˇcn´yis content with the French and the German translations and does not mention the English one. It might be permissible to use an infinitive marked for prog – to be praising – for the imperfectivechv´alit andchv´al´ıvat, as a translation aid so to speak. For a comparison of English progressives and Czech imperfectives see p.80.
12A fairly cumbersome adverb which does not really put across the idea of the praising being seen as a whole.
13There are exceptions, the so-called bi-aspectual verbs. “Such verbs typically have an imperfective present tense and a past tense which is either perfective or imperfective according to the context [. . . ]. Many are loanwords” [Naughton2005, p.150].
The correct arrangement of aspectual partners is dˇelat and udˇelat ‘to do/make’
and vydˇelat and vydˇel´avat ‘to make (money)’.
Thirdly, a third aspectual form is introduced (“three rows of parallel forms”).
It refers to the va-infix in Czech, which characterises the so-called non-actual iteratives (neaktualn´ın´asoben´a), e.g.dˇelat→dˇel´avat.14 These forms are labelled imperfective in dictionaries – reflecting the view that the dichotomy perfective vs. imperfective is the basic one. It is also possible to locate these va-iteratives outside of this basic dichotomy, cf. table 4.1, taken from [Erhart 1984, p.96], who differentiates between aspect (vid) in the narrower sense (the opposition perfective vs. imperfective) and aspect in the broader sense (including a third, iterative form). Iterative aspect is morphological (va-infixation). It is not to be
Table 4.1: Czech iterative aspect according toErhart empty completion repetition
imperfektum − −
perfektum + −
iterativum 0 +
confused with iterative aktionsart, which is lexical and therefore independent of the infix va.
4.1.3 The incompatibility of perfectiveness and nowness
The present tense forms of perfective verbs do not refer to actual present time.
Such forms have almost always a future time reading.15 Imperfective verbs,
14Multiple infixation of -va- is possible. It leads to affective forms such as dˇel´av´avat and dˇel´av´av´avat, cf. [Kopeˇcn´y1962, p.5].
15There is a group of perfective verbs with ‘non-realised’ aktionsart, e.g. un´est ‘be able to carry’, which can refer to present time. “Der Satz Ten led unese psa, ale ne ˇclovˇeka [‘That ice will carry a dog but not a man’] bezieht sich auf die Gegenwart. Wir haben es also bei den nichtrealisierten Verben mit einer perfektiven Gegenwart zu tun [. . . ]. In allen anderen F¨allen gilt freilich die bekannte Regel, daß die Pr¨asensform eines perfektiven Verbs die Zukunft ausdr¨uckt” [Frei1998, p.434/435]. Thewill in the English translation here is to be understood as referring to a present capacity. Furthermore, perfective present tense forms can also refer to time in general, e.g. “zemˇeobˇehne slunce jednou za rok [‘the earth moves around the sun once a year’]”, or characterisations, e.g. “vykouˇr´ıaˇz 40 cigaret dennˇe [‘s/he
whose present tense forms do refer to actual present time, form a periphrastic future tense (future tense form of the auxiliary b´yt16 ‘to be’ + infinitive). The following example illustrates this state of affairs:
• dˇelat ‘to do’→ dˇel´am ‘I do, I am doing’ (imperfective) budu dˇelat ‘I will do, I will be doing’
• udˇelat ‘to do’→ udˇel´am ‘I will do, I am going to do’ (perfective)
*budu udˇelat is ungrammatical
This property can be seen as the main criterion for determining verbal aspect17: it provides an almost error-proof method for finding out whether a Czech verb is perfective or imperfective – unfortunately only for native speakers and advanced learners. For beginners and intermediate learners the instruction to state the form one expresses future time with in order to determine the aspect of the verb at hand (inflectional future ⇒ perfective, periphrastic future ⇒ imperfective) is not very helpful. A pre-intermediate learner might rather check the aspect by looking up the infinitive in a dictionary, which provides the aspect, and then form the future (perfective ⇒ inflectional future, imperfective ⇒ periphrastic future). The fact that a particular rule is useful for native speakers and totally useless for learners at beginners’ level confirms that the native speaker’s linguistic competence is largely subconscious. In fact, the instruction above helps the native speaker become aware of his competence concerning verbal aspect, whereas it appears to be tautological to the foreign student. A general definition of verbal aspect is considered to be difficult: “A definition of the concepts of perfectivity and imperfectivity is difficult because it involves a highly abstract phenomenon, yet native speakers do not have any difficulty in using verbal aspect.”18
smokes up to 40 cigarettes a day’]” [Kopeˇcn´y1962, p.31].
16E.g.budu‘I will be’. The stembud is a suppletive form, cf. p.20.
17Czech original: “Tato vlastnost je z´akladn´ım krit´eriem pro urˇcov´an´ı slovesn´eho vidu”
[Cechov´ˇ aet al. 1995, p.155].
18Czech original: “Vymezen´ı pojmu dokonavost a nedokonavost je obt´ıˇzn´e, protoˇze jde o jev vysoce abstraktn´ı, pˇritom vˇsak rodil´emu ˇCechu neˇcin´ıv´a praktick´e uˇz´ıv´an´ı vidu pot´ıˇze”
[Cechov´ˇ aet al. 1995, p.155].