Nearly two thousand perfective verbs in Russian are formed via the addition of so-called “empty prefixes” (čistovidovye pristavki) to imperfective base verbs. The traditional assumption that prefixes are semantically “empty” when used to form aspectual pairs is problematic because the same prefixes are clearly “non-empty” when combined with other base verbs. Though some scholars have suspected that ...

Sometimes languages present speakers with choices among rival forms, such as the Russian forms ostrič’ vs. obstrič’ ‘cut hair’ and proniknuv vs. pronikši ‘having penetrated’. The choice of a given form is often influenced by various considerations involving the meaning and the environment (syntax, morphology, phonology). Understanding the behavior of rival forms is crucial to understanding the ...

One of the major difficulties for students of Russian as a foreign language is to understand the use of unidirectional and non-directional motion verbs like идти and ходить. But when they have finally mastered the directionality distinction it comes as a surprise that it only occurs in unprefixed motion verbs. Why is there no distinction between unidirectional and non-directional prefixed verbs ...