Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered: The East-West

Aspect Division from a Diachronic Perspective

Stephen M. Dickey

Abstract: This paper reconsiders the Slavic east-west aspect division established by Dickey
(2000), and slightly revises the characterization of the division, particulary with regard to
the position of the South Slavic languages. It then considers developments in Slavic aspec-
tual morphology with regard to the east-west aspect division, with the goal of outlining a
hypothesis of some important points of its development.

In my graduate work at Indiana University, Professor Feldstein’s extensive knowl-

edge of all branches of Slavic made a big impression. In his courses, he detailed with
ease the commonalities and differences between East, West, and South Slavic in
their phonological systems, both synchronically and diachronically. As I have re-
searched Slavic verbal aspect, I have always remembered his encyclopedic knowl-
edge of Slavic and attempted to acquire the same kind of cross-Slavic knowledge
of Slavic verbal categories, first in synchronic analyses and then in diachronic in-
vestigations. Hopefully this paper, which reconsiders ideas that ultimately date
back to my study at Indiana University, is thus fitting as a humble recognition of
his influence.
The origins and development of the current system(s) of Slavic verbal aspect
have resisted easy analysis, and have been the subject of greatly differing anal-
yses even in recent literature (cf. Bermel 1997, Nørgård-Sørensen 1997, Andersen
2009). This paper considers these problems with reference to the Slavic east-west
aspect division established in Dickey 2000, because it is my contention that the
development of Slavic verbal aspect, at the very least in historical times, cannot be
studied without reference to the differences between the aspectual systems of the
individual Slavic languages.
According to Dickey (2000), the Slavic languages break down into two dis-
tinct aspectual types: an eastern type (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgar-

Miriam Shrager, Edna Andrews, George Fowler, and Steven Franks, eds. Studies in Accentology and
Slavic Linguistics in Honor of Ronald F. Feldstein. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 29–45.
30 Stephen M. Dickey

ian1) and a western type (Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Slovene). Polish and Bosnian/
Croatian/Serbian (B/C/S) are transitional zones between these two groups; for
the parameters of usage examined by Dickey (2000), Polish tends to pattern more
like the eastern type and B/C/S more like the western type. On the basis of the ob-
served differences, a theory of the meanings of the perfective (pf) and imperfective
(impf) aspects in each group is constructed, according to which the meaning of
the pf aspect in the western group is totality, whereas the meaning of the pf in the
eastern group is a concept labeled temporal definiteness (which is closely related
to the feature of sequential connection advanced by Barentsen 1998; for details, see
Dickey 2000).
The Slavic east-west aspect division appears to have arisen largely in the his-
torical era, as the aggregate result of numerous individual differences that devel-
oped between the eastern and western groups. These differences themselves are in
turn the result of various changes in the aspectual systems of the eastern and west-
ern groups, including some key changes in aspect usage that have occurred in East
Slavic and Bulgarian (as well as Polish to varying degrees) in the period since the
seventeenth century (cf. Dickey 2000: 282–87). The latter mainly involve increased
restrictions on the functional scope of the pf aspect (e.g., increased restrictions on
the use of the pf aspect to express habitual events) as well as a reduction of the
occurrence of impf verbs in sequences of events. With this in mind, the history of
Slavic verbal aspect should be divided into three major phases: (i) developments
occurring in the Proto-Slavic and Common Slavic periods, (ii) developments occur-
ring from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, (iii) developments occurring from
the time of the seventeenth century. Again, in phases (ii) and especially (iii) we
must speak of developments in subsets of Slavic or individual Slavic languages, as
opposed to cross-Slavic developments. In what follows I outline some important
developments in the evolution of Slavic aspectual systems, focusing on develop-
ments in verbal derivation in phases (ii) and (iii). First, I present the main east-west
parameters established by Dickey 2000, introducing some minor revisions to that
characterization, and supplement them with parameters that have been established
in subsequent work.

1
 At the time of research and writing I had no access to Macedonian informants; however,
Kamphuis (2014) demonstrates that Macedonian patterns with the eastern type for many of
the usage parameters.
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 31

Table 1. Parameters from Dickey 2000 and Additional

Parameters for Negation and Prefixation

Parameter West B/C/S Pol East

1. Pf common for present-tense habitual events: + + (+) –

2. Pf common for past-tense habitual events: + (+) (+) –

3a. No impf general-factual of single
+ + + –
achievements:
3b. Pf felicitous in contexts of reversed action: + (+) (+) –
4. Pf common in the narrative present: + + – –
5. Pf common in running instructions,
+ + – –
demonstrations:
6a. Coincidence—pf common in performative
+ (+) (+) (–)
predicates:
6b. Coincidence: pf acceptable with ordinary
(+) – – –
predicates:
7a. Impf common in sequences of events: + + (+) –
7b. No phasal stat′: + – + (–)
7c. No productive ingressive za-: + (+) (+) –
8. Verbal aspect opposition retained in verbal
+ (+) + –
nouns:
9. Pf common with negation in durative
+ + (+) –
contexts:
10a. No productive delimitative po-: + + – –
10b. Po- retains its original spatial meaning: + + + –
11. S-/Z- is the most productive préverbe vide: + – + –
+ = present as a major feature; (+) = limited presence; (–) = absence with exceptions;
– = complete absence

Table 1 summarizes the basic parameters analyzed in Dickey 2000 along with
a parameter for negation (Dickey and Kresin 2009) and two parameters for the se-
mantic nature of the prefix po- and the hybrid prefix s-/z- (cf. Dickey and Hutcheson
2003, Dickey 2005).2 Apart from the additional parameters 9–11, the values in Table
1 differ little from the values given by Dickey (2000). One noteworthy revision con-
cerns performatives in Polish: Poles have pointed out that in the contemporary lan-

2
Note that some of the parameters are formulated negatively, in order to produce like values
within the western and eastern groups.
32 Stephen M. Dickey

guage the pf present is ordinarily unaccepable in performative utterances (contra

the treatment of Polish given by Dickey 2000: 178–83, which was based largely on
Koschmieder 1930; Koschmieder’s examples presumably reflect archaic language,
of which relics can still be found, e.g., Poproszę [o] rachunek ‘The bill, please’). Re-
garding prefixation, Bacz (2007) has argued that one should consider s-/z- and not
po- to be the primary perfectivizing suffix in Polish (cf. Dickey 2005, where no firm
conclusion is reached on this issue).
Though the east-west division established by Dickey 2000 has basically with-
stood scrutiny, I have arrived at the view that the extremes of the east-west opposi-
tion are to be found in North Slavic: the western extreme includes primarily West
Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Sorbian) and only one peripheral South Slavic
language (Slovene, which shares other features with the West Slavic languages),
whereas the eastern extreme consists of East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belaru-
sian). The bulk of the South Slavic languages share, according to their respective
geographic positions, affinities with the western and eastern extremes, but none
share all the features of the western or eastern extremes. B/C/S occupies a clear-
ly transitional position between the eastern and western types (even in terms of
geography: Serbian is closer to the eastern type, whereas Croatian is closer to the
western type); Macedonian is still closer to the eastern type than Serbian (cf. Kam-
phuis 2014); Bulgarian matches the eastern type for the basic parameters dicussed
by Dickey (2000), but nevertheless differs from the eastern extreme in some import-
ant ways.
Let us consider Bulgarian first. Its aspectual usage corresponds very closely to
Russian where the non-actual present is concerned, i.e., it strongly prefers the impf
aspect for habitual events, the narrative present, running instructions (e.g., stage
directions), and performative utterances. It does deviate from East Slavic in that it
regularly employs the pf imperfect for sequenced habitual events in the past, thus
allowing the pf aspect for habitual events in the past unlike East Slavic (cf. Barent-
sen 2009); I do not consider this to be a significant difference, as the use of the pf
imperfect nevertheless obeys the overall eastern principle of limiting the use of the
pf aspect to contexts of sequentiality. More important in my view are restrictions
on the impf in its general-factual function: as pointed out by Sell (1994: 99–100), Bul-
garian does not allow the impf in what Rassudova (1984) terms the “dissociated-ac-
tion” variant of the impf general-factual in Russian, which we may define briefly as
the use of impf verbs in non-experiential statements of fact. Thus, whereas Russian
easily allows the impf to signal that an action was completed on some occasion
prior to the present context, Bulgarian informants insist that in some cases the pf
is the only possibility, as shown in the examples in (1):

(1) a. Ja uže zapolnjal ètu anketu. Začem ešče raz?

 (Rus; Rassudova 1984: 62)
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 33

(1) b. Az veče popâlnix/*popâlvax anketata. Zašto ošte vednâž?

‘I have already filled out the form. Why again?’
 (Blg; Sell 1994: 100)

(Note that Bulgarian does allow the perfect of the impf in experiential contexts,
e.g., Az vednâž sâm popâlval tozi formuljar. Znam kak da go napravja ‘I filled out
that form once. I know how to do it’.) As the use of impf past-tense forms to express
single, completed events in a myriad of contexts is one of the defining features of
East Slavic, the fact that Bulgarian does not employ the impf to such an extent indi-
cates that its aspectual system deviates from the eastern type to a certain degree.3
In addition to these differences in usage, Bulgarian differs from East Slavic in
some important ways regarding classes of procedural verbs. As Sell (1994: 41–42)
observes, Bulgarian does not productively derive perdurative verbs in pro-, often
using po- delimitatives to express activities that last for specific, long periods of
time (e.g., daže si pospax ot 23.30 do 5.30 ‘I even slept from 23:30 to 5:30’; note that
po- delimitatives in modern Russian are not ordinarily used in this way). Another
important difference between Bulgarian and East Slavic in terms of procedural
verbs is the lack of intensive-resultative verbs in Bulgarian. According to the data
provided by Ivanova (1974), Bulgarian simply does not derive the classes of highly
subjective middle procedural verbs in East Slavic discussed by Rutkowska (1981),
e.g., Russian dopisat′sja ‘write to the point of a negative consequence’, izvorovat′sja
‘steal to the point of becoming an incorrigible thief’, prostroit′sja ‘squander all one’s
money building a house’. The high productivity of such subjective procedural verbs
indicates a correspondingly high level of grammaticalization of the aspect catego-
ry in East Slavic; conversely, the almost total lack of such intensive-resultatives in
West and South Slavic indicates a lower level of grammaticalization of the category
in those languages.4

3
 The situation is not entirely clear, as Stankov (1976: 48) cites colloquial impf aorist exam-
ples of the singular-factual that are not accepted by all speakers. An example of this type
taken from the Internet is given in (i):

(i) Az veče vednâž padax i po stâlbi v kraja na 3 mesec i siga mnogo se pazja.
(http://club.biberonbg.com/read.php?5,862496,page=3)

‘I’ve already fallen once on the stairs at the end of the third month and now I pay a
lot of attention.’
This issue cannot be taken up here, except to say that speakers who reject Stankov’s original
examples accept examples such as (i). There are other minor differences in aspectual usage
between Bulgarian and Russian, which are not immediately relevant for this discussion. For
details, see Sell 1994.
4
A cross-Slavic analysis of intensive-resultative verbs has been presented by Dickey (2009).
34 Stephen M. Dickey

In view of these differences, it is clear that the East Slavic languages form
the core of the eastern group; East Slavic has likely been the epicenter of some of
the innovations that have resulted in the eastern aspectual type. Bulgarian, while
sharing many of these innovations (including the restrictions on the functional
scope of the pf aspect, and the loss of the spatial meaning of surface-contact once
expressed by the prefix po-, a crucial development for the eastern aspectual type),
has not participated in all of them. This fact is certainly connected with the mi-
grations of the Bulgarians to the Balkans, whereby the relatively compact nature
of the Common Slavic dialect continuum was broken and the Bulgarians were ex-
posed to other influences and underwent their own distinct developments.
Let us now turn to B/C/S. The position of B/C/S vis-à-vis the western extreme
mirrors in some ways the position of Bulgarian described above, though there are
important differences. While B/C/S is characterized by a relatively broad function-
al scope of the pf aspect and thus resembles the western aspectual type, overall it
differs from the western type more than Bulgarian differs from the eastern type.
The reasons for this are varied and ultimately quite complex. One likely cause is
that B/C/S, unlike the western group, did not partially grammaticalize s-/z- (which
it never even developed, apart from Kajkavian dialects) as a préverbe vide; indeed,
unlike all the other Slavic languages, B/C/S has not partially grammaticalized any
prefix as a préverbe vide. Instead, in B/C/S all prefixes have retained their original
spatial meanings and create pf verbs solely on the basis of subsumption, the se-
mantic overlap between a given prefix and the meaning of the verb root. In this
respect, the derivational aspectual system of B/C/S is very archaic relative to all
other Slavic languages, which have partially grammaticalized either s-/z- or po- as
a préverbe vide.5
The lack of a partially grammaticalized préverbe vide in B/C/S would seem to
indicate a lower level of grammaticalization of the aspect category in B/C/S than in
the western extreme. Accordingly, one might expect to encounter a wider function-
al scope of the pf aspect in B/C/S than in the western languages (e.g., Czech), inas-
much as the elimination of the pf from contexts of habituality, etc., in favor of the
impf aspect is taken to be an indication of the grammaticalization of the aspect cat-
egory (in this regard cf., e.g., Bermel 1997 and Lehmann 1999). However, the reverse
is the case: the western languages generally attest a wider functional scope of the
pf aspect than does B/C/S; for example, the pf aspect is employed for habitual events
to a greater extent in Czech, Slovak, and Slovene than in B/C/S. Why should this
be the case? An important factor in this regard has in been the prolongued, intense
contact shared by the languages of the western extreme with German throughout
the prehistoric and historic eras. Following Ivančev (1961: 65–70), I have argued (cf.

5
 I define a partially grammaticalized prefix as a prefix that has lost its spatial meaning either
completely (as in the case of po- in East Slavic and Bulgarian) or partially, in its specifically
resultative meaning (as in the case of s-/z-); for details, see Dickey 2005.
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 35

Dickey 2011) that German language interference was important in preserving the
older Slavic pattern of employing impf past-tense forms in sequences of events. I
consider it very probable that German usage of prefixed verbs (e.g., ankommen ‘ar-
rive’), which resemble Slavic prefixed pf verbs, without any restriction whatsoever
in habitual contexts (as well as in all other non-actual present-tense contexts) had
a similar effect, whereby the languages of the western group preserved the older
Slavic pattern of employing the pf aspect in contexts of habituality, the narrative
present, stage directions, etc. In this regard it should be pointed out that Breu (2005)
attributes the unusual (for Slavic languages) usage of morphologically “pf” verbs in
colloquial Upper Sorbian to express telic situations in process to German language
interference. If intense German language contact contributed to the use of origi-
nally pf prefixed verbs in contexts of processuality in Upper Sorbian, it is entirely
possible that the continued, unrestricted use of pf verbs in the non-actual present
and their use in contexts of repetition in the past in Czech, Slovak, and Slovene is
also due partially or primarily to German language contact.6
Thus, in each case the South Slavic languages are to be viewed as relatively
archaic with regard to the North Slavic aspectual types with which they share
affinities: B/C/S represents the most archaic Slavic aspectual system, and has not
undergone the developments that have occurred in the western type (both in terms
of the partial grammicalization of a prefix and developments stemming from lan-
guage contact); Bulgarian has undergone more aspectual innovations than B/C/S,
but has not developed its aspect category to the degree of East Slavic, both in terms
of impf general-factual usage and the derivation of procedural verbs. The situation
presented thus far is summed up in Table 2 (on page 36). The remainder of this pa-
per discusses issues involved with the development of Slavic aspect with reference
to the facts of the Slavic east-west aspect division presented above.
Let us begin with some brief comments on the prehistoric developments. As
suggested by Maslov (1961), Proto-Slavic proto-perfective verbs, e.g., pasti ‘fall’ and
prefixed sъbьrati ‘collect’, probably comprised a kind of “general aspect” that was
employed in contexts not only of repetition but also of processuality. I would sug-
gest, however, that this view of the original system is somewhat idealized. In most
languages there are highly telic verbs that resist use in processual contexts: in a
language as “aspectless” as New High German, highly telic verbs such as erschlagen
‘beat to death’, ersterben ‘die’ or aufblitzen ‘start flashing’ cannot be ordinarily used
in contexts of the actual present. I think it is plausible to assume the same kind of

6
 Dickey (2011) presents evidence in the form of calques for the view that German language
contact has played a role in the preservation of the spatial meaning of po- in the western
languages and Polish. Note that whereas language interference is typically analyzed as
causing change in one language on the basis of model material in another (replica change in
terms of Heine and Kuteva 2005), here we have a case of material in one language serving
as a model for the preservation of elements of another (which I term replica preservation).
36 Stephen M. Dickey

Table 2: Differential North-South Breakdown of the

East-West Aspect Division

WEST TRANSITIONAL, TEND- EAST

Czech, Slovak, Sorbian,
Slovene
• Maximal functional
scope of the pf aspect;
• Minimal usage of the
impf general-factual;
• No productive delimi-
NORTH SLAVIC
ING EAST IN USAGE East Slavic:
Polish (standard) Russian, Ukrainian,
• Relatively greater Belarusian
functional scope of the • Minimal functional
pf aspect; scope of the pf aspect;
• Productive delimita- • Maximal usage of the
tive po-; impf general-factual;

tative po-; • Po- retains sur- • Productive delimita-

• Po- retains sur- face-contact meaning; tive po-;
face-contact meaning; • Productive distributive • No productive distrib-
• Productive distributive po-; utive po-;
po-; • S-/Z- partially gram- • Po- partially gram-
• S-/Z- partially mat-icalized as a maticalized as a
grammaticalized as a préverbe vide; préverbe vide;
préverbe vide; • Language contact with • Productive middle
• Maximal German both German and East intensive-resultative
language contact. Slavic. verbs.
• Varying levels of
Finno-Ugric language
contact.

TRANSITIONAL, EAST, WITH DEVIATIONS

TENDING WEST Southeast Slavic:
Southwest Slavic minus Slovene: Croa- Bulgarian, Macedonian
tian/Bosnian/Serbian • Narrow functional scope of the pf
• Greater functional scope of the pf aspect;
aspect; • Greater usage of the impf gener-
SOUTH SLAVIC

• Lower usage of the impf general-fac- al-factual;

tual; • Productive delimitative po-;
• No productive delimitative po-; • No productive distributive po-;
• Po- retains surface-contact meaning; • Po- partially grammaticalized as a
• Productive distributive po-; préverbe vide;
• No partially grammaticalized préverbe • Turkish language contact.
vide;
• Varying levels of German and Ro-
mance language contact (higher in
Croatian); Turkish language contact
in Bosnian and Serbian.
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 37

situation for Common Slavic. Inasmuch as this is true, it is likely that the ability
of a Common Slavic proto-perfective verb to express an ongoing process depended
on the nature of the prefix: verbs without a prefix (e.g., Old Church Slavic [OCS]
pasti ‘fall’) or those containing prefixes with a recognizably spatial nature (e.g.,
OCS vъtešti ‘flow into’) could express ongoing processes (cf. Czech dialectal sníh
pade ‘snow is falling’ cited by Němec [1958: 23], and Old Russian Dneprъ vtečet[ъ]
v[ъ] Ponteskoe more ‘The Dnepr flows into the Black Sea’), whereas verbs in which
the prefix was abstractly resultative (e.g., OCS ukrěpiti ‘strengthen’) were less able
to do so, if at all.
Among the Common Slavic prefixes, u- stands out as a particularly productive
resultative prefix. As observed by Klenin (1983) for OCS and Old Russian, u- was not
in fact a clearly ablative prefix in older stages of Slavic. Rather, it served to derive
a wide variety of resultative verbs, including transitives (e.g., OCS ubiti ‘beat to
death’), intransitives (e.g., OCS ustati ‘cease’), factitives (e.g., OCS ukrěpiti ‘strength-
en’), and inchoatives (e.g., OCS ukrotěti ‘calm down’). According to the data provid-
ed by Słoński (1937) it was the most productive purely resultative prefix in OCS.7
Moreover, u- derived resultative verbs for core/high-frequency verbal notions such
as OCS ubiti ‘beat to death’, umrěti ‘die’, uloviti ‘catch’, ujasti ‘eat up’, usъxno˛ti ‘dry
up’, etc., a great many of which survive in any individual Slavic language. These
two facts suggest that it was the first “perfectivizing prefix” (préverbe vide) in Slavic.
The Common Slavic system in which u- functioned basically as a resultative
préverbe vide probably represents the initial stage of the grammaticalization of Slav-
ic aspect, inasmuch as there was a core group of pairs of verbs for which there was
some semblance of a complementarity of function. But the grammaticalization of
the category at this time should not be considered complete in any way: the aspect
opposition was limited to what Bermel (1997) terms non-punctual telic predicates,
i.e., accomplishments, such as biti//ubiti ‘beat to death’, mrěti//umrěti ‘die’, staviti//
postaviti ‘build’, etc. It was only later, long after the breakup of Common Slavic,
that the aspect opposition would spread to other predicate types (achievements,
activities) to varying degrees in the individual languages (for details on Russian,
see Bermel 1997).
Let us return briefly to the parameters in Table 1. Late Common Slavic verbal
aspect basically had western values for these parameters. This is shown in Table 3
(on page 39), which presents the Late Common Slavic values as I have established
them in historical texts for many of the parameters given in Table 1 (some of the
parameters in Table 1, such as the existence of stat′ as a phase verb or the existence
of the prefix s-/z- are irrelevant for Late Common Slavic and are not included). The

7
 According to Słoński (1937), u- was second in overall productivity only to o-, for which
the spatial meaning of encirclement/surface-contact (e.g., okovati ‘chain/cover with iron’,
osěniti ‘cover in shadow’) and the transitivizing meaning (e.g., oskrъbiti ‘embitter’, osijati
‘illuminate’) were dominant and not even clearly separable from each other in many cases.
38 Stephen M. Dickey

parameters have been altered to reflect the available historical data, and the formu-
lations of the parameters have been switched to produce positive values in modern
Russian and Bulgarian to emphasize the changes that have taken place. Czech is
taken as representative of the modern western languages. As mentioned earlier,
it appears that the east-west aspect division arose largely as a result of various
innovations that have taken place at various times in the languages of the eastern
group since the breakup of Late Common Slavic. According to Table 3, parameter
3, the impf general-factual has existed in all Slavic languages to some degree since
the time of Late Common Slavic. Parameter 3 may give the impression that the
variation in this regard is insignificant. However, such usage, while not absent,
was very limited in Late Common Slavic, as it is in modern Czech (for discussion,
see Dickey 2015).
With regard to aspectual morphology, the first major development of the his-
torical era was the establishment of the nasal suffix -n- as an important marker
of perfectivity in the languages of the western group (and to a lesser extent in
B/C/S and Polish), e.g., Czech padnout vs. Russian upast′, both ‘fall’. The develop-
ment of perfectivizing -n- in Czech and the western languages appears to be a
consequence of the Slavic vocalic contraction.8 Before the contraction, verbs with
unsuffixed stems were morphologically opposed to their iterative a-stem correlates
in a very transparent fashion, e.g., pad-ešь and iterative pad-a-j-ešь. However, the
vocalic contraction disrupted this opposition: the iterative -a- suffix became more
and more obscured as a morpheme in pad-áš, especially once the first-person sin-
gular pad-a-j-o˛ became pad-ám in the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries (cf. Marvan
2000: 133). At this point, Czech and the other western languages employed -n- to
keep the opposition clear between the two types of verbs in the present tense,
yielding “semelfactive” pad-n-eš and iterative/atelic pad-áš. Subsequently the nasal
suffix was extended to the infinitive and other forms. In this way, the nasal suffix
became a positive morphological marker of proto-perfective verbs correlated with
the erstwhile a-stem proto-imperfective iteratives in the western group, and to a
lesser extent in Polish and B/C/S. Circumstantial evidence for this view is the fact
that the nasal suffix -núti did not spread as a pf marker in Old Czech until the
fourteenth century, i.e., after the contraction and the switch of first-person singu-
lar from *padajo˛ to padám. The establishment of the nasal suffix -n- as a marker of
proto-perfective verbs had several consequences that cannot be discussed here (for
details, see Dickey 2001), one of which was a relatively high number of unprefixed
perfective verbs in the western languages, e.g., Czech pf hnout vs. Russian pf sog-
nut′, both ‘bend’ and Czech pf střetnout vs. pf Russian vstretit′, both ‘meet’. The lan-
guages of the eastern group also derive perfective verbs with the nasal suffix, but

8
 This idea was suggested to me by Dušan Šlosar. For details on the rise and spread of per-
fectivizing -n- in Czech, see Šlosar 1981.
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 39

in these languages it has been primarily a marker of semelfactive verbs and has not
come to participate in regular aspect oppositions including those in prefixed stems
(cf. Czech pf vyškrtnout ‘cross out’, pf vyškrtat ‘cross out several’, impf vyškrtávat
‘cross out’; for details, see Dickey 2001 and Hilchey 2014).

Table 3. Aspectual Parameters for Late Common Slavic, Modern Czech,

Modern Russian, and Modern Bulgarian

Mod Mod Mod

Parameter LCS
Cz Blg Rus
1. Present-tense repeated events restricted
– – + +
to the impf:
2. Past-tense repeated events restricted to
– – + +
the impf:
3. Impf common in past-tense statements of
(+) (+) + +
fact:
4. Narrative present restricted to the impf: – – + +
5. Stage directions restricted to the impf: – – + +
6a. Coincidence: No pf verbs in
– – + (+)
performatives:
6b. Coincidence: No pf verbs in descriptive
– + + +
predicates:
7a. Impf verbs unacceptable in sequences of
– – + +
events:
7b. Za- productive as an ingressive prefix: – – + +
8. Verbal nouns restricted to the impf: – – + +
9. No pf verbs under negation in durative
– – + +
contexts:
10a. Productive delimitative po-: – – + +
10b. Po- has no spatial surface-contact
– – + +
meaning:

Another early development in the western dialects was the creation of a hybrid
prefix s-/z- as a result of the fall of the jers, yielding z- from the prefix jьz-, which
had a nascent abstract resultative meaning in addition to its older elative spatial
meaning. The prefix z- eventually coalesced with s-, which also had an abstract
resultative meaning in addition to its older centripetal and downward-ablative
spatial meanings. Thus, s- and z- became voiceless and voiced variants of a single
40 Stephen M. Dickey

prefix with a salient telic resultative meaning in addition to its distinct spatial
meanings (for details, see Dickey 2005). The prefixation of inchoative verbs (e.g., Old
Czech zstarati ‘grow old’), which show no semantic predisposition to a particular
spatial prefix, was crucial in the establishment of s-/z- as the main préverbe vide in
the western languages and Polish. The high telicity of western Slavic s-/z- has con-
tributed to the creation of an aspectual system in which perfectivizing perfectiv-
ization is largely restricted to prototypically telic predicates (e.g., Czech zbojkotovat
‘boycott’).
The major development in prefixation involved in the semantic evolution of
aspect in the eastern languages was the development of new delimitative po-. This
complex development cannot be discussed adequately here due to space limita-
tions; the following gives an overview of the relevant facts (for details, see Dickey
2003, 2005, 2007). Before the seventeenth century, po- was primarily a telic/resul-
tative prefix (e.g., povoevati ‘conquer all of’), but by the seventeenth century its
productivity began to shift toward the perfectivization of atelic activity verbs in the
derivation of delimitative verbs, e.g., seventeenth-century Russian pokopati ‘dig for
a while’. The productivity of delimitative po- has been so great that in the eastern
languages the vast majority of atelic activity verbs produce delimitatives in po-.
By way of contrast, the derivation of atelic pf verbs is much less common in other
Slavic languages (i.e., the languages of the western group and B/C/S).
The high productivity of the new po- delimitatives in the eastern languages
had an important effect on their aspectual systems. Namely, it extended the per-
fective : imperfective opposition to a whole new class of verbs, atelic activity pred-
icates. Thus, the aspect opposition spread from accomplishment and achievement
predicates to include activity predicates as well, which resulted in a much great-
er distribution of the aspect opposition over the inventory of verbal lexemes, and
in fact a maximal distribution of the aspect opposition (three of the four Vendler
predicate types; state predicates, e.g., znat′ ‘know’, cannot be construed as totalities
and therefore cannot be included in the aspect opposition). Note again that such
an extension of the aspect opposition did not take place in the western languages
or B/C/S, in which delimitative po- has retained a low degree of productivity (and
the existing delimitatives do not constitute a major component of the aspectual
system).
This extension of the aspect opposition to activity predicates was directly in-
volved in the establishment of the complementarity between the functions of the
aspects in the eastern languages. Old East Slavic and OCS regularly attest imper-
fective activity verbs in sequences of events, in a fashion resembling usage in the
modern western languages (cf. Ivančev 1961). The well-known restriction of the pf
aspect to sequences of events in modern East Slavic and Bulgarian relies on the
ability of atelic activity predicates to be coded as pf. Without a large class of po-
delimitatives, the correlation “perfective ⇔ sequencing” would be much weaker in
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 41

these languages. Thus, the rise of delimitative po- appears to have been of consider-
able importance for the high level of grammaticalization of aspect in the languages
of the eastern group, with regard both to the regularity of the opposition and the
increasing complementarity between the functions of the pf and impf aspects.
The East Slavic languages have undergone one more major innovation in pre-
fixation since the rise of delimitative po-: the creation of numerous kinds of in-
tensive-resultative verbs, as mentioned above. Examples are Russian dorabotat′sja
‘work to the point of a negative result’, zagovorit′sja ‘talk to the point of becoming
oblivious’, izolgat′sja ‘lie to the point of becoming an incorrigible liar’, prostroit′sja
‘squander all one’s money building a house’, etc. (for details, see Rutkowska 1981).
According to Avilova (1964), intensive-resultatives were generally few in number
before the late eighteenth century, and their productivity increased significantly
by the mid-nineteenth century. The late appearance of the intensive-resultatives
as productive classes of verbs makes sense if these verbs represent the most ad-
vanced stage of the subjectification of the Russian perfective aspect: these verbs
all profile unintended results of actions as opposed to their canonical results. In-
asmuch as these verbs link activity predicates (e.g., rabotat′ ‘work’, govorit′ ‘talk’)
with non-canonical results, they arguably represent the further development of the
aspect opposition in atelic activity predicates. As mentioned previously, such types
of pf verbs are nearly non-existent outside of East Slavic; this is an important case
in which East Slavic has undergone more innovations in its derivational aspect
system than Bulgarian, which is an indication that East Slavic has been the core
area of the eastern group.
Thus, since the Common Slavic system, in which u- was the main préverbe
vide, some important developments in Slavic aspectual affixation have manifest-
ed a clear east-west character (here I disregard impf suffixation, which has been
considered elsewhere, cf., e.g., Maslov 1961, Šlosar 1981, Bermel 1997, Nørgård-
Sørensen 1997). In terms of partially grammaticalized markers of perfectivity, the
western languages extended the nasal suffix -n- as a marker of momentary verbs
and subequently developed s-/z- as a partially grammaticalized préverbe vide by the
fifteenth century. In the eastern group, po- has been more significant as a perfec-
tivizing prefix, and extended its perfectivizing function in the seventeenth centu-
ry to the perfectivization of atelic activity verbs in the derivation of a new class
of delimitatives (the nasal suffix -n- also created momentary verbs in the eastern
languages, but its function in this capacity has not been as significant as in the
western languages). East Slavic has also developed numerous kinds of intensive-re-
sultative verbs, which represent a significant further extension of the possibilities
for prefectivizing atelic activity predicates.
The divergent morphological developments described above can be easily
brought into connection with the different meanings of the perfective hypothe-
sized by Dickey (2000). The morphological innovations in the western languages,
42 Stephen M. Dickey

the development of the nasal suffix -n- as a perfective morpheme and s-/z- as a
préverbe vide, correlate with the retention of totality as the meaning of the perfec-
tive, as they did not expand the distribution of the aspect opposition: the aspect
opposition remained largely restricted to accomplishment and achievement predi-
cates, i.e., a situation where only telic predicates are regularly eligible to be coded
pf, and atelic activities are free to be coded impf in sequences of events. In contrast,
the developments in the eastern group have led to a much different situation. The
rise of highly productive delimative po- and the East Slavic intensive-resultatives
has extended the aspect opposition considerably beyond telic predicates. This ex-
tension has enabled the coding not only of accomplishment and achievements but
also atelic activities as pf in sequences of events, which has been an important
part of the development of the Slavic east-west aspect division and central for the
characterization of the meaning of the eastern perfective as temporal definiteness,
i.e., the construal of a situation not only as a totality but also as unique in a given
discourse context. Again, it should be pointed out that the east-west opposition
is clearest in North Slavic, and that the South Slavic languages sharing affinities
with the respective extremes of North Slavic have not participated in all of the
developments originating in each North Slavic group (e.g., the lack of s-/z- in B/C/S
and the lack of intensive-resultatives in Bulgarian). The possibility of linking the
morphological developments in the eastern and western groups with the meanings
of the aspects in each group is no trivial matter: an adequate theory of Slavic verbal
aspect ought to be able to make meaningful connections between the meanings of
the aspectual categories and the markers of verbal aspect, something that no pre-
vious theories have even attempted.
In closing, I would like to point out an unexpected issue that arises in an at-
tempt to explain the development of the east-west aspect division. If the eastern
languages have innovated, whereas the western languages have on the whole con-
served something approximating the original situation in Late Common Slavic,
there are in fact two ways of “explaining” the development. One way, which is
probably the one that immediately suggests itself, is to undertake to explain why
the eastern languages innovated, and assume that the conservative system of the
western languages requires little explanation. However, given the well-document-
ed tendency for grammatical categories to develop from relatively objective cate-
gories to more subjective ones, it may well make more sense to focus on explaining
why the western languages failed to innovate, and assume that the developments in
the eastern languages represent (on the whole) a rather unremarkable case of drift.
I suspect that in this regard the centuries-long documented contact between the
languages of the western group (as well as B/C/S and Polish, to lesser extents) with
German (and in some cases Romance) is a crucial factor. But further consideration
of this issue is a topic for another day.
 Parameters of Slavic Aspect Reconsidered 43

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University of Kansas
smd@ku.edu