Re: Russian verbal forms (was: (In)transitive verbs

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> wrote:

> . po ¯ krik ¯ ivat’, “to utter small cries now and then”, or “to
> scold now and then”
  I've forgot to put this comment in my previous posting. The
"small cries" above are "small" in time, not in terms of intensity.
This means rather 'to utter short cries repeatedly but
occasionally'.

  <po-> is not an attenuative prefix, but gives limitedness to the
verb, e.g. <krichat'> 'to cry' > <pokrichat'> 'to cry for some
time'. Thus if "*" denotes the time of the action and "-" stands
for the lack of the action, the following time diagrams can be
sketched:

<pokrichat'>:  --*******-----------------------
*<krikivat'>:  --*****************************-
<pokrikivat'>: --*--*-*---**--*---*-*---*-*--*-

  It's important that <po-> is polysemic. It's a resultative
morpheme in cases like: <letet'> 'to fly (in a certain direction)'
> <polelet'> 'to take off, to fly away'. Or sometimes, it's
inchoative, cf. <mchat'sja> 'to rush, to tear along' >
<pomchat'sja> 'to begin to rush'.

  Another interesting topic in Slavic verb system are the motion
verbs. The motion vebs form determined ('to move once, this time,
in a certain direction, with a certain aim') -- indetermined ('to
move repeatedly, customarily, always, with no specific aim, in
various directions) pairs like determined <letet'> 'to fly (once,
in a certain direction etc.)' ~ indetermined <letat'> 'to fly
(repeatedly, in varous directions etc.)'. If we stick the verbal
prefix <po-> to these verbs, we get a resultative verb in case of
determined base (see example above), but the meaning will be
limited in case of indetermined base: <polelat'> 'to fly for a
time'.

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