Page 148 - Dalle origini ai giorni nostri: convergenze e divergenze tra lingue slave

Tatsiana Maiko e Valentina Noseda

The imperfective factive in Russian and Belarusian:
A comparison of six pairs of telic verbs
The article is devoted to the Slavic factual imperfective, in particu-
lar to a comparison between Russian and Belarusian in terms of
aspectual choice in competing situations, i.e. in contexts in which
a completed event can be conveyed by both a perfective verb and
its imperfective counterpart. The study, aimed at discerning con-
vergences and divergences between the two languages, was divid-
ed into two phases: the analysis in a parallel Russian-Belarusian
corpus of six pairs of telic verbs, with the purpose of identifying
possible discordances in the choice of aspect in Russian and Bela-
rusian texts and their respective translations, and a test adminis-
tered to native speakers of Russian and Belarusian, the results of
which were subsequently subjected to statistical analysis. The cor-
pus-based study made it possible to record a few aspectual discord-
ances limited only to the verb to ask (sprašivat’-sprosit’ in Russian
and pytac’/cca-spytac’/cca in Belarusian), on which our further anal-
ysis then focused. The study showed that the factual imperfective
is used in a similar way in the two languages, although there seem
to be a slight preference towards perfective in contemporary Rus-
sian. Furthermore, the results of the statistical model revealed that
in both languages the imperfective is preferred in dialogic contexts,
confirming that the phenomenon is typical of spoken language and
therefore needs to be studied on the basis of suitable examples. Fi-
nally, as far as the verb to ask is concerned, data show that, with a
linking verb function, the two aspectual marks appear to be com-
pletely synonymous and the preference for one of them could be
diachronically-motivated.
Key words: verbal aspect, general-factual imperfective, Russian,
Belarusian, corpus-based analysis

Nedovršni faktor v ruščini in beloruščini: primerjava
šestih parov teličnih glagolov
Članek se posveča faktičnem nedovršniku v slovanskih jezikih s po-
udarkom na primerjavi med ruščino in beloruščino, in sicer z vidi-
ka izbire glagolskega vida v kontekstih, kjer lahko zaključeno deja-
nje izražata tako dovršni kot nedovršni glagol. Raziskava, katere
namen je bil ugotoviti konvergence in divergence med obema jezi-

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