Some peculiarities of the Macedonian verbal system in a Slavonic and Balkan context

Abstract

The subject of the article are some peculiarities in the verbal system which give Macedonian a special place within the Slavonic language family and within the Balkan Sprachbund. In concrete terms, Macedonian is characterized by some features which approximate it towards Modern Greek: a tendency towards unification of the means of aspectual shift, exclusively dependent use of the present forms of perfective verbs and the de facto existence of only one past tense with allomorphs for both aspects. The so-called as a Balkanism shows differences in comparison with Bulgarian and proximity with Albanian and Modern Greek, whereas the parallelism of the two perfect forms and leads to a redistribution of their functions.