Grammatical aspect in the Slavic languages

Summary

All Slavic languages distinguish between at least two kinds of grammatical aspect: the imperfective aspect and the perfective aspect. While usage varies between languages, imperfective forms are typically used to signify incomplete actions, actions which occur regularly, or actions still in progress. By contrast, the perfective is commonly used to express completeness or totality, and often contextualizes an action within a specific point in time and space. The use of one aspect over another in certain contexts can connote a certain level of politeness. Aspectual pairs are typically formed using imperfectivizing suffixes or perfectivizing prefixes, though alternations in vowel quality, vowel length, or stress may also be used. Some verbs, especially loanwords, may perform the grammatical role of both aspects, though some languages deal with the ambiguity by applying a perfectivizing prefix or an imperfectivizing suffix to the word in order to give it a more clear grammatical role in the sentence.