I am ready to serve the Tsar!

[Benjamin Sher]

EXAMPLES! Give us EXAMPLES of aspectual usage!

That's what everyone wants! And you are right!

I tried to show in my previous letter how a simple switch from the
empirical "on postupil" ("he acted" -- Perfective single OR
frequentative) to the transcendental "on postupal" ("he acted" --
Imperfective single OR frequentative) presupposes a binary logic, how
the circumstantially moral "postupil" is opposed to the pure moral
sensibility of "postupal" and how these two moral modes of action
(that of an object-verb vs. that of pure non-perception ("nothing")
flow logically from two incompatible world-views related morpholo-
gically BUT not in aspectual usage.

For how could a PURE moral, psychological, social or emotional expe-
rience (grounded in the pure spatio-temporal state or action of the
Imperfective -- "delal", "chuvstvoval", "dumal") be compatible with
or lie somewhere on a continuum that includes a CIRCUMSTANTIAL mo-
ral, psychological, social or emotional experience (grounded in the
"object-verb" of temporal change and sense perception of the Perfec-
tive? -- "Sdelal," "POchuvstvoval," "POdumal")?

What is true of these basic imperfectives and their empty perfective
counterparts is, of course, also true of compound pairs, including
the verbs of motion which, while presenting us with a new set of "as-
pectual" options (determinate, indeterminate) still obey the basic
logic inherent in the general aspectual model.

A FEW CHOICE EXAMPLES:

1) OSTAT'SIA VS. OSTAVAT'SIA, ETC.
I believe that intuitive aspectual decision-making is possible only
because of this binary incompatibility. Otherwise, we would all go
mad from sheer uncertainty, doubt and psychological agony. The fo-
reign student of Russian may need to continue learning the nuances
of aspectual usage (as everything else) all through his life. In this
respect there is a continual accumulation of new impressions, new
situations, new discoveries. But I firmly believe that being able to
make the aspectual decision between "postupil" and "postupal", etc.
is NOT fundamentally a matter of experience but of an intuitive bi-
nary yes/no, 0/1 logical decision-making. One has to take the philo-
sophical bull by the horn. One has to feel, that is, TO INTUIT, the
distinction between "ya ostalsya v Parizhe" ("I remained in Paris"
-- a single empirical event or set of such sporadic events) and "ya
ostavalsya ego drugom" ("I remained his friend" -- a pure, timeless
state of permanence). Similarly, "vyidite" ("leave!" -- an empirical
command presupposing situational obstacles of some sort) and "vykho-
dite" ("leave!" -- a command issuing from the subject's pure desires
or wishes, irrespective of any empirical obstacles whatsoever.)

2) MNE NADO UITI/UKHODIT'
Or again: "Mne nado uiti" ("I have to leave," that is, certain empi-
rical moral social, psychological or objective considerations force
me to leave -- my daughter is ill, circumstances demand that I go be-
cause I have an appointment with my wife to discuss our plans for
buying a new car, I have a headache) vs. "Mne nado ukhodit'" ("I have
to leave," that is, certain purely psychological or moral or emo-
tional reasons force me to leave: I have an appointment with my wife
to discuss our plans for buying a new car and moral duty commands me
to keep it).

3) SLUZHIT'/POSLUZHIT' TSARYU
 "ya gotov posluzhit' tsaryu" (I am ready, empirically speaking, in
any given number of sporadic, real situations to serve the Tsar) and
"ya gotov sluzhit' tsaryu" (I am ready, in a timeless moral and so-
cial sense, to serve the tsar on any and all hypothetical occasions).

4) YA KHOCHU VYKHODIT'/VYITI (e.g. IZ AVTOBUSA)
Finally, you are on a bus and you want to get off: "ya khochu vyiti"
(perfective) is an empirical statement implying some sort of obs-
tacle: Perhaps somebody is standing in front of you and is in your
way, so you ask him/her to move aside so you can get out. Or perhaps
you are feeling nausea or some other difficulty and the bus is still
in motion. So you ask the driver to stop . "ya khochu vykhodit'"
(imperfective) means that the bus has arrived at a stop, the door is
open, there is no obstacle in your way, your desire to leave the bus
is in no way conditioned by any empirical need or situation, neither
external or internal. The door is open, you can stay or leave. You
decide to get off the bus because of a pure, timeless desire or wish
on your part. Or else you know that you are about to get out at the
next stop, that the door will open, etc. The IMP verb "vykhodit'"
(here, of course, an object of an auxiliary verb, which itself also
demands an aspectual choice in the past or future: "khotel" vs. "za-
khotel") expresses a pure state of being. The specific choice between
the two is thus not a function of some inherent social or psycholo-
gical distinction between the aspects as such ("one is temporal,
the other is one of result," and such other nonsense) but of the
underlying aspectual logic which guides the user and demands one
aspect or the other. The user's decision is intuitive, binary. He
obeys the underlying "law" of the aspects as surely as he obeys the
law of gravity. This business of "physical law" is, of course, only
a metaphor, but I believe it helps us understand, that is, to imagine,
to intuit, the "naturalness" of aspectual decision-making. After all,
we all obey the law of gravity every moment of our lives without
agonizing over it.

By the way, I discussed the bus example at length with my wife, a
native of Moscow. She said that this was the first time she had ever
"UNDERSTOOD" why she was making this aspectual choice. And, believe
me, she is as brilliant as they come. She, like other educated Rus-
sians, is my authority for the "WHAT" OR "HOW" of Russian (I never
quarrel with reality), but it does not necessarily mean that the Rus-
sian will understand the "WHY". Any more than we Anglo-Americans
would ever really understand or need to understand the "why" of En-
glish.

If we forget the basic binary principle at work, we'll get lost in a
myriad of derivative situations -- temporal, moral, psychological,
social, etc. -- each of which can normally assume either aspect. It
is NOT morality, psychology or time or social setting or adverbial
syntax or particles in themselves that determine aspectual choice but
rather the basic binary principle itself that "tilts" the particular
aspectual situation or context towards the perfective or imperfec-
tive. The solution to the problem of the aspects is right under our
noses, in the aspects themselves, and NOT in some other variable such
as tense, mode (infinite, gerund, etc.) or mood or whatever that is
usually confused with it. Naturally, a choice between aspects is
conditioned by the context. That's elementary. But aspect is aspect
and can be understood, I believe, only by, to paraphrase William
Blake, seeing not WITH the aspects but THROUGH them.

Without this proper orientation, no solid foundation for aspectual
understanding (and actual usage) is, in my opinion, possible. With-
out this dialectic of incompatibilities, with its resulting semantic
and syntactic and stylistic distinctions, the student will find him-
self hopelessly dangling on the high wire of an endless continuum,
unable to act, to make decisions. And, what is worse, he will assume
that a Russian native is equally wracked by such deep psychological
conflict, when, of course, the Russian is blithely unaware of the
"aspectual crisis" or, indeed, of the aspects themselves (in any but
 the most obvious morphological sense). With a binary model, the stu-
dent of Russian can concentrate on the infinite variety of situations
while automatically (at first gradually and with difficulty, of
course) making intuitive decisions, so to speak, from behind the
scenes, by seeing and acting through the binary model which lies be-
hind the rich and complex and elusive diversity of specific aspectual
situations.

To sum up, it is not that the binary theory of the aspects has given
us all the answers. It is rather that this binary model offers us a
solid, unshakeable, fundamental philosophical and practical point of
departure. It makes possible the meaningful exploration and under-
standing of aspectual subtleties that otherwise would remain a mere
chaos of arbitrary situations and decisions.

That's the way I see it. How do you see it?

Benjamin



Benjamin Sher
Russian Literary Translator
(SOVIET POLITICS AND REPRESSION IN THE 1930'S
Yale University Press, forthcoming 1997)
sher07 at bellsouth.net