Imperfectivability of Russian prefixal perfectives (the case of pro- and u-verbs)


2019. №1, 58-74

Elena V. Gorbova
Saint Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia; e.gorbova@spbu.ru

Abstract:

Based on an analysis of the possibilities of imperfectivation (imperfectivability) of Russian verbs with the prefixes pro- and u- found in the Russian National Corpus and on the Russian-language Internet, the paper discusses the regularity of the morphological mechanism of suffixal imperfectivation. In a sense it is a response to Victor Xrakovskij’s papers of 2015 and 2018 and continues the discussion about the theoretical model of Russian verb Aspect, i. e. whether it should be considered an inflectional or a derivational (classifying) category.

Keywords
aspect
imperfectivization
inflectional categories
prefixed perfective
regularity
Russian
word-classifying categories

For citation:

Gorbova E. V. Imperfectivability of Russian prefixal perfectives (the case of pro- and u-verbs). Voprosy Jazykoznanija. 2019. No. 1. Pp. 58–74. DOI: 10.31857/S0373658X0003594-2.

Acknowledgements:

The author would like to express sincere gratitude to Hannu Tommola (University of Tampere), Björn Wiemer (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), Hans Robert Mehlig (Kiel University), Andrey Gorbov (National Research University Higher School of Economics), Dmitry Gerasimov and Maksim Fedotov (Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences), Daniel Tiskin (Saint Petersburg State University) for their valuable comments which have greatly helped improve the initial version of the article whose revised part constitutes the text of this paper. The remaining flaws are solely the responsibility of the author.