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Re: (in)perfective imperatives (was: past tense imperative)

From:Vladimir Vysotsky <trivee@...>
Date:Thursday, April 21, 2005, 6:16
Isaac Penzev wrote:
> I'm not a specialist in Russian, I'm merely a native speaker. So the > distribution of perfective and imperfective imperative is a bit vague for > me. Maybe I need to consult a good RuSL grammar book. > > Anyway, "marry me" is indeed in IA: _vykhodi za menya zamuzh_ (the verb is > _vykhodi_ from INF _vykhodit'_). But "give me a loan of etc." would surely > demand PA: _zaymi mne million_ (from _zanyat'_).
Yitzik, sorry for nitpicking, but a) as for imperfective vs perfective, "vyjdi za menia" (P) and "vykhodi za menia" (I) sound almost exactly the same to me, the perfective being a bit more formal. Google confirms this: it finds 20000 "vyjdi" vs 30000 "vykhodi". Here are my examples of unequivocal choice between imperfective and perfective for the same verb: vyjdi von! / *vykhodi von! "get out of here!" *vyjdi po odnomu! / vykhodi po odnomu! "exit one at a time!" b) as a native speaker, you should be ashamed of "zajmi mne" :), which is vernacular and not proper literary Russian; the correct usage is "odolzhi" or "daj vzajmy". Vlad