Re: TECH: more thoughts on zi'o

[Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

JImc asks (re Russian):
++++++++>
 The distinction between unidirectional and multidirectional verbs of
motion: is this like xodit& (walk around) vs. podxodit& (walk up to
X2)? (Or whatever preposition.)  My teacher explaned this as a
imperfective/perfective distinction.  I could understand why podxodit&
is perfective, but I couldn't really see why xodit& had to be
specifically imperfective; I felt you could walk around perfectively.
 >++++++++

The way that preverbs work in Slavonic (and also in Georgian ta'o,
and I believe in Gothic) is that they are historically all
directional, but have acquired a perfective sense as well.
Some preverbs have then lost the directional sense, and are
left with only aspectual meaning (eg po- in Russian, ga- in Georgian and
Gothic).

You're then left without directed imperfective verbs, so they
often get supplied suppletively.
My Russian is very rusty, but as I recollect, xodit' is used with
directional preverbs in an imperfective sense, and the bare
xodit' is used only in the restricted imperfective sense of a
frequentative.

Colin