perfect tense

[John Dunn]

There are presumably contexts where устал is unambiguously a verb; there would seem to be contexts where it is unambiguously an adjective.  But if there are contexts where the two forms are identical not only formally and etymologically, but also semantically, then it is not clear to me how one might attempt to differentiate them.  

Going back to the perfect tense, the distinction between perfect and preterite has been lost in most Slavonic languages (as well as in some West European languages), but it is interesting that there are attempts to recreate it.  Some Russian dialects do so using gerunds or (less often) participles, distinguishing, for example, between он ушотши (he has left) and он ушол (he left).  And according to some analyses Polish constructions of the type 'mam to zrobione' can be interpreted as a sort of perfect.
   
John Dunn.
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