Perfect of overall result in the European languages (against the background of Russian)

The aim of the paper is to show that the meaning of overall result should be included in the perfect cluster. This meaning involves a description of the total number or degree of results achieved or the number of actions in a given period of time. In the first part of the paper, the basic features of the construction of overall result are presented using examples from Russian. The second part examines verbal forms that can express this meaning in those European languages that have a fullfledged perfect (English, Swedish, Spanish, Latvian, Bulgarian). The meaning in question proves to be consistently expressed by the perfect in all the investigated languages. Moreover, the highest values (more than 90 %) were found precisely in the languages with perfects closest to the prototype — English and Swedish, which clearly shows that the meaning of overall result should be included in the perfect cluster.