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

J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:


> I have been said that even though the perfective imperative is more
polite,
> the imperfective imperative will be used when it is a severe commitment,
> e.g. in _marry me!_ or in _give me a loan of a million dollars!_ Is this
> true (it was in Serbian, not in Russian, but for what I know the
> perfective-imperfective distinction is common to all Slavia)?
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'_).

PA:IA opposition is indeed common to all Slavic langs, but they treat it
sometimes very differently (I looked through Czech grammar book one day).
And don't forget that e.g. Bulgarian has also tense oppositions combined
with it, having preserved the old Slavic aorist and imperfect (NB: modern
Slavic "past" is diachronically a perfect).

-- Yitz

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