Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T04:22:26.982Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Time-Relational Analysis of Russian Aspect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Wolfgang Klein
Wolfgang Klein*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
*
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Wundtlaan 1, NL-6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The meaning of the Russian perfective-imperfective opposition is usually characterized in terms such as ‘the situation is seen in its totality vs. not in its totality, with a boundary vs. without a boundary’, and similar ones. These characterizations, while expressing important intuitions, fail on a number of grounds. Aspects are purely temporal relations between the time at which some situation obtains and the time for which an assertion is made by the utterance which describes this situation. This leads to simple and precise definitions of the two Russian aspects. The intuitive characterizations familiar from the literature follow in a natural way from these definitions.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 669 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Agrell, S. 1909. Aspekt und Aktionsart beim polnischen Zeitworte. Lund: Ohlsson.Google Scholar
Binnick, R. J. 1991. Time and the verb. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bondarko Alexandr, V. 1971. Vid i vremja russkogo glagola. Moscow.Google Scholar
Bondarko Alexandr, V. 1987. Principy funcial'noj grammatiki i voprosy aspectologii. St. Petersburg: Nauka.Google Scholar
Bondarko Alexandr, V. 1991. Functional grammar. A field approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brecht, Richard D. 1985. The form and function of aspect in Russian. Issues in Russian morphosyntax, ed. by Flier, Matthew S. and Timberlake, Alan, 9–34. Columbus, OH: Slavica.Google Scholar
Breu, Walter. 1994. Interactions between lexical, temporal and aspectual meanings. Studies in Language 18. 23-44.Google Scholar
Černý, E. 1877. Ob otnošenii vidov russkogo glagola k grečeskim vremenam. St. Petersburg.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Durst-Anderson, Per. 1993. Mental grammar: Russian aspect and related issues. Columbus, OH: Slavica.Google Scholar
Fontaine, Jacqueline. 1993. Grammaire du texte et aspect du verbe en russe contemporain. Paris: Institut d’Etudes Slaves.Google Scholar
Forsyth, James. 1970. A grammar of aspect: Usage and meaning in the Russian verb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Galton, Herbert. 1976. The main functions of the Slavic verbal aspect. Skopje: Macedonian Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Gasparov, Boris. 1990. Notes on the ‘metaphysics’ of Russian aspect. Verbal aspect in discourse, ed. by Thelin, Nils, 191–212. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
encyclopedia, International linguistics, of. 1992. Ed. by William Bright. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Isačenko, Alexander V. 1968. Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. München: Huebner.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1932. Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums. Charistia Guglielmo Mathesio oblata. Prague. 74–84. (Also Selected writings, vol. 1, 1971. 3-15).Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leinonen, Marja. 1982. Russian aspect, ‘temporalnaja lokalizacija1, and definiteness and indefiniteness. Helsinki: University of Helsinki dissertation.Google Scholar
Miklosich, Franz. 1883. Vergleichende Grammatik der slavischen Sprachen, vol. 4. Wien.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara. 1973. Some structural analogies between tenses and pronouns. Journal of Philosophy 70.601–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regnell, Carl G. 1944. Über den Ursprung des slavischen Verbalaspektes. Lund: Harlan Ohlsons Boktryckeri.Google Scholar
Ružička, Rudolf. 1952. Der russische Verbalaspekt. Der Russischunterricht 5. 161-9.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1917. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota. 1991. The aspect parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Thelin, Nils B. 1978. Towards a theory of aspect, tense and actionality in Slavic. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Slavica 18. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Thelin, Nils B. 1990. On the concept of time: Prolegomena to a theory of aspect and tense in narrative discourse. Verbal aspect in discourse, ed. by Thelin, Nils, 91–129. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TiMBERLAKE, Alan. 1982. Invariance and the syntax of Russian aspect. Tense-Aspect: Between semantics and pragmatics, ed. by Hopper, P. J., 305–31. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
TiMBERLAKE, Alan. 1984. The temporal schemata of Russian predicates. Issues in Russian morphosyntax, ed. by Flier, Michael and Brecht, Richard D., 35–57. UCLA Slavic Studies 10. Columbus, OH: Slavica.Google Scholar
TiMBERLAKE, Alan. 1985. Reichenbach and Russian aspect. The scope of Russian aspect, ed. by Flier, Michael S. and Timberlake, Alan, 153–68. Columbus, OH: Slavica.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66:143-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinogradov, V. V. 1947. Russkij jazyk. Moscow: Izdvo Akademii Nauk.Google Scholar