Imperfective marking in present tense

[Ljuba Veselinova]

Hi All,

I sent the message below yesterday but apparently it didn't get
through. So here it comes again.

---
Dear Kazuha Watanabe,

I am not sure you what say about Slavic is entirely correct. Marking
of aspect is, of course, a complicated affair. But with the inherently
perfective verbs, such as for instance dam 'give', the marking of
present and imperfective is distinct

da-m give-PRESENT.1.SG
da-va-m give-IMPERFECTIVE-PRESENT.1.SG

This is data from Bulgarian and I am aware of the fact hat Bulgarian
and Macedonian are quite different from the rest of the Slavic
languages in this respect, and a proper discussion on all of this will be much
lengthier than this short message. But generally, such data go to show
that sweeping generalizations ought to be used with care. Please let
me know if you need more details or data on this.

All good wishes,
Ljuba

On Jan 21, 2008 6:15 PM, Johanna Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Bulgarian does this, forming the present tense from both perfective and
> imperfective verbs.  The perfective present is mostly used in non-main
> clauses.  I'm not a Bulgarianist, but reference grammars of Bulgarian
> should give you some basic information, or check with your friendly local
> Slavic department.
>
> Johanna Nichols
>
>
> Kazuha Watanabe wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I am looking for a language which has both plain present tense form and
> distinctively marked imperfective aspect form (not progressive).  All the
> > languages I know seem to either use imperfective only in the past
> tense(Romance, for example) or mark imperfective in the present tense but
> > do not have a separate plain present tense form (Slavic, for example).
> >
> > Thank you very much!
> >
> >
> > Kazuha Watanabe
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Johanna Nichols
> Professor, Slavic Languages and Affiliate Professor, Linguistics
> Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, mailcode 2979
> University of California, Berkeley
> Berkeley, CA 94720
> ph  510-642-1097          fax  510-642-6220
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Johanna Nichols
> Professor, Slavic Languages and Affiliate Professor, Linguistics
> Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, mailcode 2979
> University of California, Berkeley
> Berkeley, CA 94720
> ph  510-642-1097          fax  510-642-6220
>



-- 
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Ljuba Veselinova
Dept of Linguistics          Email: ljuba at ling.su.se
Stockholm University      Phone: +46-8-16 2332
106 91 Stockholm          Fax  : +46-8-15 5389
Sweden                         URL  : http://www.ling.su.se/staff/ljuba/

"We learn by going where we want to go."
                                          Julia Cameron
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