Similarities of Slavic languages

[queenwaffle]

I want to ask what characteristics do Slavic languages have that are different from the other Indo-European language families?

 

[jasio]

I would begin with a verbal aspect. In Slavic languages distinct verbs are used depending on whether the action is completed (perfective verbs) or uncompleted (imperfective verbs). Even though quite often the prefixes, infixes or perhaps suffixes are used to convert one to the other, in general it's a lexical - and mandatory - distinction, and each such verb has its own infinitive form (like "to write" in Polish: "pisać" is an imperfective infinitive and "napisać" is a perfective infinitive). Consequently, native Slavic speakers tend to overuse English continuous tenses, because we miss the perfective-imperfective distinction and attempt to fill the gap using continuous forms. In practice, there are more aspects than those two, but the distinction between perfective and imperfective verbs is quite fundamental to the grammars of Slavic languages. For example, future tense is is created differently for perfective and imperfective verbs, and perfective verbs do not have the present tense form at all.
In other languages the aspect, if needed, is expressed using other means: it can be included in a tense system (such as continuous and perfect tenses in English or imperfect tenses in Spanish and Italian), using special phrasing, etc.

Except for Bulgarian and Macedonian, Slavic languages have also retained quite extensive and complex inflection. Even though historically speaking it's not a unique feature of Slavic languages (Latin and ancient Greek are examples of languages of similar complexity), most modern non-Slavic Indoeuropean languages used in Europe (I can't discuss Iranian or Indian languages) experienced significant reductions with this respect. English and Romance languages lost their case systems almost entirely, in Germanic languages typically only an article is inflected, and the number of cases is reduced (in German - to four). Agreement of the forms (case, number, gender), between adjectives and the nouns they describe, also fall into this category, so do other forms of inflection.

Also - again, except for Bulgarian and Macedonian - Slavic languages lack articles, although at least in some of them demonstrative pronouns are occasionally used to do the job.

 

[SLOVISK]

... nuz to preto, lebo Slovanske jazyky su synteticke, kdezto anglictina je analyticka.

 

[jasio]

... nuz to preto, lebo Slovanske jazyky su synteticke, kdezto anglictina je analyticka.

Synthetic-analytic opposition is gradual rather than binary in natural languages.

So yes, English is a highly analytical language. But the German is not, even though the number of grammatical cases is reduced - to four, if I remember correctly. Spanish and Italian are more analytical than most of the Slavic languages, but not even close to the extent of English. On the other hand, Bulgarian and Macedonian are highly analytical, unlike all other Slavic languages.

 

[Awwal12]

depending on whether the action is completed (perfective verbs) or uncompleted (imperfective verbs)

I always found this definition highly problematic - firrst of all, because of difficulties in defining "completion". I personally prefer to proceed from how the verb looks when placed on the timeline: if it can be reduced to a singular point, it will be by default perfective. Some perfective verbs denoting complex actions may be difficult to pinpoint like that, but it's equally difficult to label them as 'completed actions'. Most notably, that refers to the perfective Russian verbs that are productively formed from basic non-motion & multidirectional motion verbs with use of po-: "to do the specified activity for some time and abandon it". They don't specifically imply that the activity is non-resultative (e.g. я немного поработал лопатой и убрал весь снег), but if it is, it can be started again from the point where it was terminated.

Of course, there are also syntactical contexts when the verbs' actual aspectual characteristics become disconnected from the ' 'prototypical' meanings of the aspects, which may then acquire atypical usage (most typically, in various negations), but I suppose that's a separate matter.

 

[srečkokosovelfanclub]

I think our use of diminutives is quite unique to Slavic languages - of course, other languages use diminutives as well, but Slavic languages do use them comparatively often and well.
For example, compare this cutesy/fairytale-like Slovene sentence: "Miška je v gobček dala košček sirčka in se skozi okence zazrla v zvezdice." to the English translation: "The little mouse put the little piece of the little cheese in its little mouth and looked through the little window at the little stars."

 

[nizzebro]

if it can be reduced to a singular point, it will be by default perfective.

How would you reduce the situation of "the light came on" to a singular point - on the timeline?
The perfective always implies a change of state (be it completion, inception, or a stand-alone act), and therefore two states. The very idea of reduction to a "single point" comes to you when you imagine a situation of a completed action - which automatically means another state of affairs present in the time frame of the situation - but, this resultant state is always focused and therefore it has meaning, unlike in aoristic forms in Romance languages - where the focus is still on the action - but viewed "from distance".

The "point-wise" vision of the perfective is a result of spreading the useless nonsense written by English "academic linguists", specifically by B.Comrey. I recorded a video recently, to help people to get rid of this "single whole" idea (thanks to Pimlicodude who has helped me with proofreading.)

 

[Olaszinhok]

Slavic languages lack articles, although at least in some of them demonstrative pronouns are occasionally used to do the job.

Slavic languages also lack the Subjunctive mood 1) and the Conditioanl mood is extremely simple (at least in Russian), hence the hyphotetical period and the sequence of tenses are generally a walk in the park in Slavonic languages compared to other languages such as: Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, but also English and German. (In my humble opinion)

1) The Subjunctive mood is probably the most difficul grammar aspect to master in the main Romance languages.

 

[Awwal12]

The perfective always implies a change of state (be it completion, inception, or a stand-alone act)

What's the implied change of state for стукнуть ('to hit a single time'), for example? On the other hand, transition processes which cannot be pinpointed and essentially engulf the temporal focus will be obviously imperfective. So no, I don't think the idea of change of state can explain the aspect very productively.

 

[nizzebro]

What's the implied change of state for стукнуть

How do you know that it is a single act? You know that because there is a final, resultant, state after that - the state where the knock is over, otherwise you could not tell a single act from continuous knocking. Knocking as such is self-identical and therefore endless, as any meaning.

Punctive verbs has their own special marker, so punctivity is itself an additional semantics, in the same sense as that of prefixed verbs is additional. The punctive meaning is a more complex thing as compared to the "pure" perfectivity, which is nothing but two adjacent states of affairs, with the final state being continuous and representing the ultimate meaning - which fact makes any action/scenario single. Take "the light came on" - it is "no light" and "light". Now take the situation of "blinked": "no light, "light", "no light". Which is simpler? The former - and two adjacent and mutually exclusive states are the skeleton of perfectivity. Anyway, I'm reasoning about this in the video. All these things become trivial, once we stop thinking of an individual entity (as if isolated in the vacuum) as a measure of things.

 

[Awwal12]

How do you know that it is a single act?

Because it's a single, complete elementary sequence which started and finished. However, when we represent it with a perfective verb, normally we aren't specifically concerned with the moment at which it was finished; rather we imagine the whole action as momentary, at least by default (you still can ask "how long it took", but normal adverbial constructions of duration cannot be directly applied to such verb, which is quite remarkable).

 

[nizzebro]

Because it's a single, complete elementary sequence which started and finished.

Well, no doubt that it is single and complete, but I was asking about how do you know that it is - how this singularity is actually implemented within the contextual timeframe. How do you know that that single knock has not been followed by some other knocks? It is because the resultant state is continuous, that is, non-breaking - and, it is such because it has focus: it is the main meaning. The resultant state - or the relevant period of time, if you like - is the essential part of the meaning making the act single. For a physical object like an apple, you also know that it is single just because everything around it, which is available to your eyes, is not an apple; but with an apple, you still could continue staring at the apple's body after that - whereas with a complete action, you have to switch to the final state, want it or not - just because the time is running; so the final state appears as the current, actual meaning. The question "when?", with a perfective verb, is always about the resultant state - regardless of your concerns about that moment. Just try to convey that something happened at the very moment of "knock" - you would need an additional rephrasing "at the very moment when my hand touched the surface" or like that.

The imperfective can also convey a technically single thing. I was there, I saw him at 4.45 at the corner, I met him once - all these are imperfective (at least in Russian), while being also single and complete acts, pragmatically - the keypoint is that they do not pose a focused resultant state, lasting from the "body" of the action and up to the relative "now" moment. This is how the aorist is different from the perfective - and, despite that the simple past forms in the Romance languages are aoristic, English linguists still call them "perfective" - because they see both the aorist and the perfective as "a single whole", being unable to distuinguish between a focused "past fact" , and, a focused lasting resultant state. They are afraid of everything related to Yin, and allow only Yang...

 

[Awwal12]

How do you know that that single knock has not been followed by some other knocks?

It well might be, but they would simply lie outside of the timeframe we consider in the sentence and are irrelevant for it; all we're talking about in it is a singular sequence.
Ultimately, aspect is largely about what time period we're focusing on ourselves.

It is because the resultant state is continuous, that is, non-breaking

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you here. What would be the alternative?

The imperfective can also convey a technically single thing. I was there, I saw him at 4.45 at the corner, I met him once - all these are imperfective (at least in Russian)

No one said they cannot, but you cannot pinpoint them on the timeline. "I saw him at 4:45" literally just says that you were seeing him at the specified moment; it doesn't really say (though it well might imply) that you weren't continuously seeing him from 4:43 to 4:47. The practical choice of the imperfective aspect here seems mostly dictated by the usage of the particular perfective counterpart, which would literally mean "started to see at 4:45", and that would usually require some more specific context (though often the distinction of usage is blurry here and the ultimate choice will be arbitrary).

"I met him" (with imperf. встречал) seems quite illustrative. Both the perfective and the imperfective counterparts will have some nuances of usage that are irrelevant here, but only with perf. встретил you'll be able to use the adverbial modifier specifying the exact time, at least without influincing the semantics much (because я встречал его в 4:45 can only mean that you were preparing to meet him at that moment or were consumed with other accompanying activities back then).

 

[nizzebro]

I'm afraid I don't quite follow you here. What would be the alternative?

For instance, the English Perfect. It also suggests a final state in the present time (assuming a lexically resultative action), but, whether it is a unique action or a sequence, depends on the context - because we have two separate segments of tenses, and, the "body" of the action, residuing in the past segment, is denoted by the same preterite form allowing both a single action and a cycle. On the other hand, the perfect continious gives us a non-breaking "body" of the action - its processual part. And, roughly speaking, the perfective form does the same trick for the final state of the action, which appears non-breaking. The perfective is never about the action's "body". It denotes its resultant state only, while the subtleities of the transition are lexical, mostly encoded by affixes, as well as that whether the action has both the beginning and end, like the punctive verbs or those prefixed with по-, or, it represents only the basic switching of states, such as "came" (where the initial process has no beginning and so the action can't be "reduced it to a single point" - if you think of the moment of transition as this minimal point, it makes no sense alone, without the preceding motion).

And, similarly,

but you cannot pinpoint them on the timeline.

So you think that the fact that видел cannot be pinpointed and увидел can, means that the latter can be reduced to a point? Again, it is a transition between two states of affairs "I can't see him" and "I have seen him (now I have his image in my brain, I have an idea of his location, and so on)". You cannot isolate the moment of transition and say - okay, I have reduced it to a single point: this point is nothing without the preceding "non-seeing" and the following "having-seen" (and the precise time specification refers to the final state, anyway). It is a connection of two mutually exclusive states. The imperfective видел, on the other hand, represents a single state of seeing, but, I agree that it also cannot be a single point - just because you still need two points in time, to make a conclusion that it is a self-identical thing. Everything is dual.

The same is true for the perfective "met". It is in any case a transtion to a resultant state: without this state, the whole action makes no sense - but, this final state as well makes no sense without the preceding period where that man wasn't met yet. What is the point of a single point? It is zero, it can't have any specific temporal meaning.

As for the incompatiblity of the imperfective with a precise time, the reason is only the lack of a progressive structure of the intital state in this action. With "the light came on" (or, "went off") it is the same: you cannot picture it as an ongoing action, but nevetherless you have a succession of two states with nothing in between, but, the action makes no sense without any of these two states.

 

[Awwal12]

Again, it is a transition between two states

Transitional between two states always can be fundamentally pinpointed.
Trouble is, it's not the only thing that can. Moreover, even such transition doesn't need to be strictly instantaneous to be pinpointed like that; ultimately it's just the speaker's choice to represent it that way.

 

[nizzebro]

Transitional between two states always can be fundamentally pinpointed.

It can; I didn't say that it cannot, the question is only whether referring to this effect is enough for a definition of the perfective function. When you are mentioning this pinpointing, is still not about that the pictured action (more precisely, situation) as a whole can be reduced to a point, but rather about that some sort of "center of mass" can be located on the timeline - and then, what you actually referring is not the very boundary but rather an infinitesimal piece of the resultant state, starting right after the transition.

Actually your approach is correct; I dare to be as familiar as to say that "you are on the right truck" and all you need is to make the next step and discard all those points/quants etc and accept that things in time are different from those in space - the notion of a separate entity is not the elementary basis there, but rather a complication.

 

[nizzebro]

Btw, I have been watching a Youtube channel about Russian sign language - the lady hosting the channel seems to be an expirienced translator - and it's interesting that in the video dedicated to tenses, she started with that there are four tenses in the sign language: present, future, and - two for the past: one of them is preсeded with the sign "already", and another with the sign "was", and, it's clear, from her further explanations, that these are actually projections of the aspects. Of course, sign languages have their own specifics, but it is quite telling that she highlighted that "process vs result" dichotomy; in contrast, in the videos about American sign language I've watched, I didn't see any accent put on that: instead, the tutors start with the general idea of tenses on the timeline, with the past associated with the area behind and the future with that to the front, and, it seems like there is a strong reliance on time adverbials and various contextual additions there, bound to common patterns. It is interesting, if the sign languages in other Slavic countries are also biased towards aspects.

 

[jasio]

Because it's a single, complete elementary sequence which started and finished. However, when we represent it with a perfective verb, normally we aren't specifically concerned with the moment at which it was finished; rather we imagine the whole action as momentary, at least by default (you still can ask "how long it took", but normal adverbial constructions of duration cannot be directly applied to such verb, which is quite remarkable).

In case of knocking the action is naturally momentary indeed. However I would be more inclined to say that the speaker simply does not care, how much time the action needed - like in your earlier example with the work: "popracowałem trochę". It's definitely not momentary - I just don't care how much time it took.

Never the less, depending on the context or the verb, the semantics may differ. In some cases an atomic structure (viewed from outside) of the action is more important, in other - focus on the result, single repetition, sometimes indeed even duration of the action. Like in case of "jechałem do Kijowa" vs. "pojechałem do Kijowa": the former phrase gives an impression that it was a longer trip than in case of the latter, and builds an expectation that I want to discuss something which happened during the trip, while the latter - something which happened in Kiev or after my return. Either way, the usage is different than in case of imperfect tenses in Romance languages, in which which imperfectum should not be used to mark the duration of the action; and if the action is over, the perfect tenses (passato semplice in Italian, preterito indefinido or preterito perfecto in Spanish) should be used instead.

Never the less, my intention was not to discuss the theory and complexity behind the perfective aspect, but rather to demonstrate the difference between perfective-imperfective verbs in the Slavic languages, as opposed to the system used in the Western languages, in which the aspect is a component of the grammatical tenses.

 

[jasio]

Btw, I have been watching a Youtube channel about Russian sign language - the lady hosting the channel seems to be an expirienced translator - and it's interesting that in the video dedicated to tenses, she started with that there are four tenses in the sign language: present, future, and - two for the past: one of them is preсeded with the sign "already", and another with the sign "was", and, it's clear, from her further explanations, that these are actually projections of the aspects. Of course, sign languages have their own specifics, but it is quite telling that she highlighted that "process vs result" dichotomy; in contrast, in the videos about American sign language I've watched, I didn't see any accent put on that: instead, the tutors start with the general idea of tenses on the timeline, with the past associated with the area behind and the future with that to the front, and, it seems like there is a strong reliance on time adverbials and various contextual additions there, bound to common patterns. It is interesting, if the sign languages in other Slavic countries are also biased towards aspects.

Probably it's because for our Slavic minds the aspect is a lexical phenomenon rather than grammatical.

For example, there are two distinct verbs meaning "to read" in Polish: perfective 'przeczytać' and an imperfective 'czytać'. They are two distinct verbs, with two separate infinitives. And an aspect-free form of the verb simply does not exist. The same goes for almost any other verb in the language, save a handful of exceptions. This is so crucial to our minds that when we use English or other languages lacking this kind of feature, we're tempted to emulate it using other forms. Consequently, overusing past continuous tense in English is quite an efficient way of recognizing the Slavic people. On the other hand, in English various past tenses are simply a matter of applying some grammar structures to a single verb - which leads to entirely different ways of thinking about the verbs and tenses.

The same goes for the future tenses, btw. For example the word "przeczytam" (a 1 person singular, future tense of the perfective "to read") means that I declare to complete the reading, and perhaps understand or learn the contents, while "będę czytał" (a 1 person singular, future tense of the imperfective "to read") only means that I will do the reading, but does not say anything about the results, it's closer to "I'll be reading".

 

[nizzebro]

Probably it's because for our Slavic minds the aspect is a lexical phenomenon rather than grammatical.

I'd say it depends on what we call lexical and grammatical. Actually, it is rather a mix. If we take the prefixed forms, derived from a trivial imperf. form, that yes - these have an admixture of additional lexis, because prefixes are themselves lexial elements (or, better said, they mark additional semantics needed for the perfective aspect, as the resultant state cannot be represented by the vacuum: it needs a specific meaning in each case). But on the other hand, the relationship between perfectives and the secondary imperfectives (like that between "podpisać" and "podpisywać") is purely grammatical in that sense that it is only about the aspect - no additional semantics is involved. The issue is that the term "grammatical" is rather used for forms, whereas "lexical" is rather about meaning; but I personally prefer to consider any functions as semantics of different levels - even the parts of speech. So, aspects are low-level semantics, and everything marked by prefixes or related to the specificities of the basic process encoded in the stem, is an additional semantic admixture on the top of the aspect.

 

[jasio]

I'd say it depends on what we call lexical and grammatical. Actually, it is rather a mix. If we take the prefixed forms, derived from a trivial imperf. form, that yes - these have an admixture of additional lexis, because prefixes are themselves lexial elements (or, better said, they mark additional semantics needed for the perfective aspect, as the resultant state cannot be represented by the vacuum: it needs a specific meaning in each case). But on the other hand, the relationship between perfectives and the secondary imperfectives (like that between "podpisać" and "podpisywać") is purely grammatical in that sense that it is only about the aspect - no additional semantics is involved. The issue is that the term "grammatical" is rather used for forms, whereas "lexical" is rather about meaning; but I personally prefer to consider any functions as semantics of different levels - even the parts of speech. So, aspects are low-level semantics, and everything marked by prefixes or related to the specificities of the basic process encoded in the stem, is an additional semantic admixture on the top of the aspect.

For me the prefix (in this case) is just a tool, not the merit. So is the infix in your example. "Czytać" and "przeczytać" are two distinct verbs. So are "podpisywać" and "podpisać". They have slightly different meanings, and they even behave differently from the grammatical standpoint. For example, the latter verb in each pair does not have the present tense, and the former forms a compound future tense rather than a simple future tense. As far as I can recall, In the Russian language it works alike, if not identically.

On the other hand, "I read" and "I was reading" is merely one verb used in two different tenses.

 

[nizzebro]

For me the prefix (in this case) is just a tool, not the merit. So is the infix in your example. "Czytać" and "przeczytać" are two distinct verbs. So are "podpisywać" and "podpisać". They have slightly different meanings, and they even behave differently from the grammatical standpoint. For example, the latter verb in each pair does not have the present tense, and the former forms a compound future tense rather than a simple future tense. As far as I can recall, In the Russian language it works alike, if not identically.

Well, no objection that a prefixed verb is a distinct verb lexically; I see no disagreements with your position here, but it is not the same with the infix (or more precxisely, with a secondary form that is derived from a perfective; because it can be formed in some other way). I see "podpisywać" and "podpisać" as counterparts with a "one-to-one" relation, which relation is purely aspectual, and the effects you are describing are as well aspectual - any perfective form naturally is incompatible with the present tense (although our Czech and Slovak friends use the perfective pres. form for a habitual action, but I suppose it is rather some influence of their preterite-using neighbours). On the other hand, a prefix is not just a marker of the aspect, but is always bound to a certain additional semantics.

Of course, we can consider each of these a distinct verb just because it is conjugated in all forms, including the infinitive and imperative - it is only a matter of formal classification. My point was only that pisać-podpisać and podpisać-podpisywać are pairs of a different kind: the former is part of a one-to-many approach to formation with lexical values added, and the latter is only about the aspect. And the reason why the former case is one-to-many and needs additional lexical values (those of prefices) is exactly that it is the perfective made from the primary imperf. process. The perfective represents two states and this is the reason why it always needs a specific additional semantics and so a specific lexis. In my vid mentioned in #7, I touched all these issues.

 

[nizzebro]

I'd formulate the spirit of Slavic languages as rather connected to live perception and essentially more impersonal, compared to the rationalistic nature of the neighbours. This is expressed in both the aspect, as focused solely on the structure of the action and not its position relative to the speaker, and, the rich morphology providing the so called free word order, which actually manifests a flexible handling of the information structure, resulting in more control on the attention of the hearer and details of the imagery created. Languages that move away from the abstracted semantics of morphemes and stick to a rich vocabulary of stems, such as English, do obtain, of course, a laconicity and precision, beneficial for techologies and functions of lingua-franca, but, these benefits are achived at the expense of that the narration becomes closer and closer to a sort of byte-code. As one of our political emigrants said, "I can't force myself to speak English, because I feel as if I'm not speaking but rather sending a telegram"... English is extremely rich in the sense of the root lexis, but, it is like to come to a grocery store with a huge assortiment of ready-to-use canned products, while the Slavic langauges, to me, are much closer to cooking from a natural food, even if the process of cooking is not so rational, somewhat messy and inpredictable - in some cases it looks too limited and in other cases it is highly flexible.