Russian/Verbal Aspect

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Contents 1 Introduction to Aspect 2 Verbal "Pairs" (Aspectual pairs) 3 Why must I endure this? 4 In conclusion

[edit] Introduction to Aspect

For most native speakers of English (and indeed of many other languages) one of the most inherently difficult tasks in learning Russian is learning to cope with the complexity of Russian verbs. Unlike Spanish and German, for instance, where the great difficulty lies in memorizing forms of verbs (both German and Spanish have many more verbal forms than does the Russian system), the difficulty in Russian is in coming to understand a property inherent to each verb: aspect.

Every Russian verb is either perfective or imperfective in aspect. In imprecise terms, the division is as follows: perfective aspect verbs describe a complete action, while imperfective verbs describe a process or a state. Rather than expound more theory here, we shall procede by considering an example.

Let us take the ideas "to speak", and "to do". First, we shall consider an example with imperfective verbs.

Мишa, что ты делал после обеда? Misha, what were you doing after lunch?

Я говорил с Катей. I was talking to Katya.

Note that the verbs here describe a process. It is also possible to consider this as a complete action, but as written the concern is not with whether the action is complete, but simply what was happening. The first speaker wondered what Misha was doing after lunch. The first speaker could be Misha's boss, wondering why he was not at his desk.

Миша, что ты сделал после обеда? Misha, what did you do after lunch?

Я сказал маме об отметках. I told mom about my grades.

In this example, the outcome of the complete action is of importance. The first speaker could be Misha's father, wondering why his mother was so upset when he arrived home from work.

[edit] Verbal "Pairs" (Aspectual pairs)

So, each Russian verb is either imperfective or perfective in aspect, and you should now have some idea about what this means. So for each idea (as with "to do" and "to speak", above) is there a choice between an imperfective and a perfective verb? This is not an easy question to answer outright. It is often taught to beginning students of Russian that the answer is a definitive "yes". Делать/сделать means "to do" or "to make", and говорить/сказать means "to speak", "to say", or "to tell". This is an especially convenient answer to the question at hand because many verbs appear to come in such pairs, with the perfective variant appearing with a prefix. Examples are делать/сделать (to do, to have done), смотреть/посмотреть (to watch, to watch completely), читать/прочитать (to read, to read completely). Sometimes the prefix will even be indicated in parentheses to indicate the pair of verbs together, as: (с)делать, (по)смотреть, (про)читать. The problem with this model is that many ideas correspond to many different verbs, some perfective and some imperfective, with different shades of meaning. For example, читать, прочитать, and почитать all mean "to read". The former is imperfective, and means quite simply "to read". The second verb shown, прочитать, which is often given as the perfective "partner" of читать, means to read an entire work. The last verb here, почитать, is also perfective. Being perfective, it also describes a complete action. It means "to read for some period of time" or "to read for a while".

Some verbs are not governed by a simple affixal relationship, for example:
говорить (impf.), сказать (pf.) - to say, speak, tell брать (impf.), взять (pf.) - to take, get, obtain

To further complicate matters, these prefixes, which frequently turn an imperfective (process) verb into a perfective (complete action) verb very often add some shade of meaning beyond the difference in aspect. For example, adding the prefix раз to the verb говорить changes the meaning from "to speak" to "to converse". Разговорить is the perfective verb meaning "to converse" or "to chat". It would be nice, though, it seems, to have a verb meaning "to converse" without talking about a complete action. In fact there is such a verb, derived from разговорить: разговаривать. Another example derived from the same root is the "pair" договориться (perfective) and договариваться (imperfective) meaning "to agree". Infixes also affect the aspect of a verb, e.g., вставать (imperfective) and встать (perfective), meaning to rise (from bed).

Furthermore there are some verbs which exist only in one aspect or the other without any semblance of a so-called "aspectual partner", although these are rather rare. Жить and быть are two examples.

In short, Russian verbs do not come in tidy imperfective/perfective pairs, but for any verb you encounter, there is probably a counterpart with related meaning of opposite aspect. A dictionary should help you find an opposite-aspect verb if you don't know one. However, when first learning Russian, it is best to commit the more unusual aspectual pairs to memory first, as they will be the most useful.

[edit] Why must I endure this?

In short, all of this is to say that there are two types of verbs in Russian, perfective verbs, and imperfective verbs. Perfective verbs carry the meaning of complete action, while imperfective verbs carry the meaning of a process or state. When choosing a verb to utter, it is important to choose a verb of the proper aspect.

Beyond the semantic difference, there is a formal difference that you will see when studying verb conjugation and tense formation. Namely, while perfective and imperfective verbs can appear in the past or in the future, only imperfective verbs can appear in the present tense. What happens if you try to make a present-tense form of a perfective verb? You get a perfective verb with future meaning. Imperfective verbs are put into the future tense by another mechanism (in fact, by a mechanism much more like that used in English -- namely, the use of a helping verb). This may seem like a rather odd way to handle things, and perhaps it is. In any case, Russians don't seem to mind. The reason, for those of us who like to believe there are reasons for these things, is that a complete action cannot occur "now". At the instant we call "now", a complete action must either have already been completed, or remain to be completed. "Now" can only point to the process of an action.

[edit] In conclusion

Verbal aspect is a very important feature of Russian, and should be considered (consciously or otherwise) whenever a Russian verb is encountered or is to be rendered. If you consider aspect each time you encounter a verb, it won't take long to get a good feel for aspect. As for producing Russian in writing or in speech, this is one more thing to think about before you open the gates.

See also: the Wikipedia article about grammatical aspect