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Effective methods verbal aspect | ||
Tags: Slavic Languages | Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4390 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 10 25 August 2014 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was wondering if you happen to know some effective ways to deal with verbal aspect with specific
reference to slavic languages . Is it enough tryig to infer the usage from input activities ? well I do not really know , since my russian is still in the embryonal stage and my exposure has been really limited so far . Another idea could be to supplement that by learning the first 500 pairs using a list and /or a SRS system . What is your take on that ? Any other suggestions ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5601 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 10 25 August 2014 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
From my experience I would say no. When I read a russian text, my brain sees the aspecual verb pairs as synonyms: Ah, there is one of the two verbs again, which mean that! That means, I havn't mastered the aspectual system of the russian language (and cannot use it), although I can read not too difficult texts. What to do about it? Ask someone, who managed it. (Well, I have never learned vocabulary in pairs, probably I should have done. But I did not profit much from the therory and the drills we did in class) Edited by Cabaire on 25 August 2014 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6107 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 10 25 August 2014 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I usually learn Polish verbs in pairs. So my Anki cards will have both aspects. If one aspect is rarely used I may not bother to add it, or I might type in fainter print. Wherever possible I'll add a sample sentence or two to illustrate aspect usage, case governance and/or stem changes.
Where a verb has reflexives, I'll make a note of those too. Apart from verbs of motion, I haven't done much aspect drilling. However, combined with extensive reading (and listening) aspects have become clearer. Edited by Mooby on 26 August 2014 at 9:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4585 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 4 of 10 25 August 2014 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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With Croatian I have just made sure that whenever I learn a verb I also learn whether it
is perfective or imperfective at the same time. I've found some textbooks are better than others at giving that information in the vocab lists. When I learn new verbs I add them to Memrise and note the aspect there as well. I haven't deliberately learned pairs, but I've found that as I've gone along I've naturally learned to recognise which verbs are related and the pattern as to which is which. There are still a few where I get confused - mostly those where the difference between the aspects is just a change in vowel - but overall when I write in Croatian I seem to get aspect correct more often than not, so I'm hoping that with increased exposure over time I'm just going to get the hang of it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 26 August 2014 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I have tried to learn pairs of verbs, and my Russian-Danish dictionary from Gyldendal has made a point about indicating these pairs very clearly. Some other dictionaries, like my thick Green Polish-Geman one from Pons, indicate the pairs, but not in as eye-catching a way. The problem is dictionaries which are written for Slavic native speakers, because they generally don't indicate when a verb is imperfective or perfective. And other small dictionaries written for foreigners may be just as lax about this distinction.
Right now I have the problem with Serbian, but my experience with Russian has taught me some basic ruless that make it possible to guess whether a given verb is perfective or imperfective - with some exceptions, like imperfective verbs on -ить, where you need to remember whether there is a variant with a typically perfective prefix. The infinitive endings in Serbian are different, but mostly they seem to follow a system parallel to the Russian one, so even though none of my dictionaries give the relevant information I can recognize many cases because of the similarity with Russian patterns. But I sorely miss the precise information from my Russian dictionary (or -ies, because I have several other Russian dictionaries which also are keen on marking the distinction). This of course leaves the problem of recognizing any other form that the infinitive, but unfortunately the rich morphology of the Slavic languages is a fact you have to live with. The rules for the distribution of perfective and imperfective are not quite simple, but on the other hand simple enough to be summarized on on green sheet (and I mean summarized: no details, just the bare bones). I have in some cases seen claims that native speakers feel the diffference intuitively and that they never make errors. OK, I don't feel I'm capable to spot their errors if there are any, but that's not the point: the point is that such a statement doesn't help a learner in any way, it is just irritating, and I find it curious that some pedagogic gurus think that you ought to learn the rules through unconscious osmosis and trial and error. Well, children of Slavic parents may have to do this, but I'm not in that category and I don't have time and spare neurons enough to run through the same process. If you have studied the rules in a grammar and maybe even put them on paper yourself, your chances of diagnosticating the cases you see in real life must logically be greater than if you have to guess everything from scratch. Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2014 at 11:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 10 26 August 2014 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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albysky, I've been comfortable with the approach taken by my Polish teacher. She explained a bit of the theory behind aspect, and then made us practice using them. It began with simple memorization of aspectual pairs for verbs that we as beginners would likely use (e.g. 'write', 'read', 'eat', 'go', 'say', 'drink', 'leave') before moving onto exercises in constructing sentences, and finally we were expected to refine further our grasp of aspect secondarily by exposure/use. She basically expected us to get better with practice over time. She wasn't expecting us to have it down in two semesters. Are you having trouble with picking the right aspectual variant on the first try or is there something about how Slavonic languages mark aspect that's bothering you?
Iversen, you can use the free online monolingual Serbian dictionaries or even the Descriptive Dictionary of Standard Croatian online to figure out if a verb is perfective or not. As an example here's what I got for doći "to come" (perfective) in those Serbian dictionaries.
The dictionary marks дoћи as perfective (see свр. near the end of the entry) with the imperfective counterpart долазити (it's preceded by несвр.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 7 of 10 28 August 2014 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Verbal aspect can be tricky.
For example, as a general rule, basic verbs (no infix) are perfective more often than not, imperfectivization is achieved by inserting an infix, both imperfective and perfective verbs can get a prefix, which functions like a phrasal verb in English, and does not always change the aspect of the verb: sjesti = to sit down [perfective] zasjesti = to sit down and don't leave, to occupy [perfective] zasjedati = to be in session (eg. parliament) [imperfective] sjedati = to be sitting down, or used to sit down [imperfective, motion] sjediti = to be seated, to be sitting [imperfective, static] The weird thing : the aspect can be used in imperatives for expressing immediacy: Sjedni ovdje! = Sit here! (perfective) Sjedaj ovdje! = Sit here right away! Be seated immediately! (imperfective) Zatvori vrata! = Close the door! (perfective) Zatvaraj vrata! = Won't you close that door right away!? (imperfective, literally: Be closing the door!) Daj mi to! = Give it to me! (perfective) Davaj/daji mi to! = Give it to me right away! (imperfective) Negative imperative is formed with ''nemoj'' (sg) or ''nemojte'' (plural) which are like ''don't in English'': Nemoj zatvoriti vrata! (perfective) [Don't close the door!, /Leave the door open!, it means the door is still open] Nemoj zatvarati vrata! (imperfective) [It means you've already closed the door, and I'm annoyed because of that, don't do that anymore!]. All Croatian verbs can be checked for aspect in Croatian Encyclopedic Dictionary: http://hjp.novi-liber.hr/ (nesv. = imperf.; svrs. = perf.) The confusion between perfective and imperfective in Croatian is not great, you are understood even if you get the aspect wrong, and verbal tenses usage is not governed by aspect in modern Croatian. In old Croatian (as is still the case in Bulgarian and Macedonian), knowing the verbal aspect was crucial: because AORIST [synthetic perfect] can be made only from perfective verbs, and IMPERFEKT [synthetic imperfect] can be made only from imperfective verbs. In modern Croatian, both written and spoken the compound perfect is used instead of aorist and imperfekt. I've noticed that younger people tend to use more imperfective verbs than older people, I guess because they feel kind of more dynamic...Objects tend to favor the perfective aspect if repeating of the action is not implied: Idem kupovati. = I go / I'm going shopping. (imperfective) Idem kupiti kruh. = I'm going to buy some bread. (perfective). but: Idem čitati. I am going to read something. Idem čitati knjigu. I am going to read a/the book. Idem pročitati knjigu. I am going to read it through. it is best to memorize like this: čitati v. imperf. - to read, to be reading, used to read pročitati v perf. - to read through kupovati v imp. - to be/go buying, used to buy kupiti v. perf.- to buy, to purchase rađati v imp. - to be giving a birth, used to give a birth roditi v perf. - to give a birth English progressive tenses (I am traveling, I will be traveling, I have been traveling, I was traveling) and used-to-perfect (I used to like reading) are always translated with imperfective aspect. Some verbs (like BITI, to be) are both perfective and imperfective, because both AORIST and IMPERFEKT are listed in their conjugation chart. With participles, the aspects are often times merged: - pisano pravilo- (a/the written rule) is used for both perfective (a rule written down), and imperfective (a rule that was being written)...-napisano pravilo- can only be perfective... So in this case again, it is the imperfective aspect that wins... Some pairs are not easily ''guessable'': [spavati v imperf. = to be sleeping, to sleep] ''base form'' zaspati v perf. = to fall into sleep usnivati v imperf. = to be falling into sleep Some verbs like sanjati ''to dream'' don't even have the imperfective pair with a meaning corresponding to English simple vs compound tense difference. There is only a phrasal version of that verb which is perfective: ''odsanjati'' get a grip, stop dreaming (lit. ''to dream through''.) ''to give a call'': from more perfective to more imperfective: nazvati -> zvati -> nazivati by using the intermediate ''base'' form (imperfective which can replace perfective in some cases), you can minimize making mistakes. Nemoj me nazvati, ako ne želiš. (Don't give me a call, if you don't want to). Nemoj me zvati, ako ne želiš .(Don't call me, if you don't feel like it). Nemoj me nazivati, osim ako nemaš nešto pametno za reći.(I really wish you would you stop calling me, unless you have something to say). nazvati - give a call (just one call) (Neću te nazvati. I won't give you a call). zvati - to call, be calling, give a few calls (it can be used semi-perfectly, for just one call, especially in future: Neću te zvati. I won't call you) nazivati - to keep on calling (Neću te nazivati. I will not be calling you) Edited by Medulin on 28 August 2014 at 4:34am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3844 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 10 28 August 2014 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I regularly make mistakes with aspects in russian.
One of the more frequent mistake I make is whether the action has a result or not. The classical exemple is with the verb "to call" (on the phone): я ему звонил : I called him (imperfective) я ему позвонил: I called him (perfective) The difference (as I understand it) is that in the second case, the person answered the call, and in the first case we don't know (in fact we know: the russians use that aspect when nobody answered): in the first case, the accent is put on the fact of calling and not on the result of the call. The exemple of the verb "to call" is easy to understand, but other verbs are really tricky: you don't know if you're interested in the "result" or in the "action". As a side note, I've noted that russians learning french have also a lot of difficulty to make the difference between the "passé composé" and the "imparfait". Edited by Arnaud25 on 28 August 2014 at 10:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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