Наблюдения над функционированием вида в болгарских претеритальных формах при обстоятельсвах ограниченной кратности (в сопоставлении с другими славянскими языками)

This study continues the research on differences between Slavic languages with respect to the distribution of the aspects in past tense sentences with adverbials of “bounded repetition” (twice, ten times, many times etc.) (Barentsen et al. 2015). In a collection of about 500 parallel examples of bounded repetition a distinct difference was found between Russian as representative of the eastern type of Slavic aspect, where imperfective aspect prevails, and Czech, representing the western type, where the proportions are reversed. Polish and Serbo-Croatian can be located somewhere in between. For the present study comparable Bulgarian material is added. It shows that in this respect Bulgarian is located in the very middle of the Slavic aspectual continuum.

The new material confirms the relevance of distinguishing “narrative” and “retrospective” use of past tense forms. In the latter case the differences in aspect choice between the languages are far more manifest. Bulgarian uses imperfective aspect in 75% of these examples, whereas in Czech only a little more than half of these examples have imperfective aspect.

Attention is also given to the distribution of the various past tense forms (aorist, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect) in the Bulgarian material. This reveals some interesting facts: e.g. the predominance of imperfective aspect in examples with the perfect and pluperfect. In retrospective cases with the aorist perfective aspect predominates, but the number of imperfective aorists is also relatively high. Rather surprisingly, a number of retrospective examples contain the imperfective imperfect. The latter fact seems difficult to explain on the basis of the usual definitions of the meaning of the Bulgarian imperfect and deserves further study.