Mood, tense, and aspect 419

expected to have occurred on some delimited occasion ([143]):30

[143]-- Ds dpzkb<if> rk/xb?

--Ytn, yt dpzk<pf> .

--Did you take the keys?

--No, I didn’t [though I acknowledge that I could have].

The imperfective would be possible (-- Ytn, yt ,hfk<if>) in order to deny the implicit obligation or to suggest that the matter is still open.

By an extension of the concern with existence and polarity, an imperfective is appropriate when descriptive aspects of a situation are reported or questioned.

[144]Evbhfk<if> <jhbc Ktjybljdbx d cjpyfybb. Boris Leonidovich was conscious as he died.

[145]Rnj gbcfk<if> ≤Djqye b vbh≥? Who wrote War and Peace?

Here the existence and the nature of the event are taken for granted, and the attention falls on particulars, on attendant circumstances rather than on the final result.

Thus the imperfective can be used with little context to assert the existence of an activity, to comment on its polarity, or to provide descriptive detail about the flow of an activity. A perfective verb used in similar contexts would insist on change and result.

6.5.5 Progressive context: imperfective

Events can occur in sequence, or they can overlap on the same contextual occasion.31 An event that overlaps others is typically expressed by the imperfective:

[146]Z e;t dcnfdfk<if> c rhtckf, rfr pfpdjybk<pf> ntktajy.

I was already getting up from the chair, when the phone rang.

In [146], an imperfective (dcnfdƒk) is used to report an activity that is not definitively ended because it is in progress around the contextual occasion.

The Russian imperfective used in this sense is analogous to the compound progressive tense-aspect of English. As is well known, almost all instances of English progressives will be translated into Russian as imperfective.32 The converse does not hold: not every instance of a Russian imperfective will be translated into

30Chaput 1985, 1990.

31See the contrastive studies of Akimova 1984 and Kozintseva 1985.

32As an exceptional instance, Kozintseva 1985:68 cites Those three -- those three were coming in!, which is translated as the perfective in Nt nhjt -- nt nhjt nj;t djikb d rjylbnthcre/. The original context is quite specific -- it is interior monologue predicting an imminent result.

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an English imperfective. Iteratives (§6.5.7) and duratives (§6.5.6) are the obvious cases. In addition, essential (descriptive or existential) imperfectives do not translate to progressives in English (§6.5.4: [132], [144]). The English progressive is narrower in its range than the Russian imperfective.

6.5.6 Durative context: imperfective

If an activity is expressed by the imperfective in a past-tense narrative, it cannot reach its completion (otherwise it would be perfective); the imperfective establishes the existence of some activity with the implicature that the result was not reached and would not be reached in the immediate vicinity of the contextual occasion.33 This implicature can be made explicit by adding to the sentence an accusative specification of the duration of the activity: the activity went on for this period of time, but then ceased, without reaching its conclusion.

[147]Gjckt ub,tkb Gkjnybrjdf ujhcnrf ,jqwjd lj enhf jn,bdfkf<if> yfnbcr ubnkthjdwtd. D gjcktlytq herjgfiyjq c[dfnrt dct jyb gjub,kb<pf> .

After Plotnikov died a handful of soldiers repelled the pressure of the Hitlerites until morning. In the final hand-to-hand combat they all perished.

[148]Tuj edtkb<pf> , z jcnfkcz<pf> d njq rfvjhrt jlby, ghbitk<pf> djtyysq, pfcnfdbk<pf> vtyz hfpltnmcz, nofntkmyj j,scrfk<pf> , gjnjv eitk<pf> . Z ;lfk<if> , yfdthyjt, xfcf ldf, dsdtkb<pf> yfhe;e, gjcflbkb<pf> jlyjuj d rhsnsq uhepjdbr, ghjdtpkb<pf> dctuj pf gjkdthcns yf ghjckfdktyye/ e;fcfvb Ke,zyre.

They took him away, and I remained in the place alone. A soldier came in, made me undress, searched me carefully, then left. I waited about two hours, they led me out, put me in a covered truck, and took me the half verst to the Lubianka Prison, famous for its horrors.

To know that the activity has ceased without reaching a definitive result implies an external narrative perspective. (This is in contrast to the “progressive” use of the imperfective, when the contextual occasion is internal to the activity in progress.) Accordingly, durative imperfectives can easily be sequenced in narratives between perfective events. In [147] one phase of the battle lasted until morning, then another, fateful event occurred. In [148], the delimited interval of waiting is sandwiched between events in a highly sequential narrative. Because the contextual occasion must be closed to be measured, duratives

33The familiar fact that explicit statements of duration require the verb to be imperfective (except for prefixed quantizing verbs in ghj-) needs to be repeated, for it shows that perfective aspect in Russian is not merely the end of an interval of activity; a perfective requires that no further activity be conceivable, from the perspective of the specific history at that contextual occasion. In fact, in its use of the imperfective for terminated events, Slavic is typologically unusual (Dahl 1985).

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imperfective with conjunctions such as rjulƒ ‘when’ can impute an iterative reading to the context.

[153]Gj enhfv r j,ot;bnbzv {ghb[jlbkb<if pst> ghb[jlzn<if prs> } ;tyobys bp lthtdtym, jyb {ghbyjcbkb<if pst> ghbyjczn<if prs> } njgktyjt vjkjrj, z

{gjregfk<if pst> gjregf/<if prs> } xtndthnbyre rf;lsq ltym yf pfdnhfr.

In the mornings women from the villages {came come} to the dormitories, they

{carried carry} warm milk, every day I {bought buy} a quart for breakfast.

Iterative situations can be situated in the past or present ([153]) or the future ([154]):

[154]Vs vtxnfkb, rfr yfxbyfz c dtcys rf;lsq ltym ,eltv<fut> gjkexfnm gj zbxre. We dreamed how, beginning in spring, each day we would get an egg.

Iteratives -- particularly discrete iteratives, each of whose sub-events is completed -- are mixed in terms of narrative function. As imperfectives, iteratives present a scene, a habit. But in a block of iterative imperfectives, each subevent can be understood as sequentialized with respect to other sub-events. A rich example is [155], in which, further, a set of three perfectives (jnrfpƒkcz, gjnh†,jdfk, cnƒk) in the middle creates a shift in the habits.

[155]Lt;ehcndj yf ,jkmijq ljhjut ,skj jxtym bynthtcysv pfyznbtv. Vs hfcgjkfufkbcm<if> yf ghjnz;tybb gjkenjhf rbkjvtnhjd gj dctq ljhjut.

{kjgws vthpkb<if> b gjlghsubdfkb<if> yf cytue, gthtrkbrfkbcm<if> , xnj,s yt gjnthznm cdzpb lheu c lheujv, b d yfcnegbdib[ cevthrf[ ghjhjxbkb<if> dthye/ cvthnm djj,hf;tyb/ pfgjplfdituj genybrf. <. . .>

Ghb vyt rjkjybcns ybrjulf yt [ekbufybkb<if> b yt geufkb<if> gentitcndtyybrjd, yj ,tp vtyz ljgecrfkb<if> ifkjcnb, b Pfljhjd crjhj lf;t jnrfpfkcz<pf> jn htdjkmdthf b gjnht,jdfk<pf> , xnj,s z ,sdfk yf ljhjut j,zpfntkmyj. Z cnfk<pf> ds[jlbnm ghb rf;ljq rjvfylbhjdrt jnhzlf, yj htdjkmdth jnlfdfk<if> dct ;t Pfljhjde, xnj,s yt kbibnm tuj pfcke;tyyjuj yfckf;ltybz.

Rjulf gjrfpsdfkcz<if> yfi Vfksi, vs tuj dcnhtxfkb<if> rhbrjv: -- Cnjq!

Herb ddth[!

The watch on the highway was a very interesting occupation. We distributed ourselves over a kilometer and a half along the road. The lads were cold and they hopped around in the snow, shouted back and forth, in order not to lose contact, and in the approaching darkness they foretold certain death to the imagination of a belated traveler <. . .>

In my presence the colonists never acted up and intimidated the travelers, but when I wasn’t there they engaged in some shenanigans, and Zadorov soon refused