A diachronic view of the actional/aspectual properties of Russian verbs

Abstract

This paper addresses the evolution of the Russian verb system, with special regard to the actional and aspectual values. Proto-Slavic developed derivational devices to mark the notion of ‘temporal boundedness’. Besides, the Proto-Slavic opposition between ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’ verbs was exploited to recreate the Aorist / Imperfect distinction. Church Slavonic further developed the system, orthogonally combining the aspectual opposition [±perfective] with the actional opposition [±bounded]. The latter opposition (common to all Slavic languages) later underwent the pressure of the correlated (but semantically tighter) opposition [±telic], so that in most Northern Slavic languages (obviously including Modern Russian) the Aorist / Imperfect distinction became progressively opaque. This fostered a thorough system restructuring, giving rise to a syncretic category whereby the actional and aspectual values appear to be tightly intertwined. The Church Slavonic system, still present in Old Russian, is substantially preserved in Bulgarian and, to some extent, in other South Slavic languages. As for the ‘definite / indefinite’ opposition, it residually survives in the small subset of the Russian motion verbs.