Completed Events and Ongoing Actions

Level 4

Perfective and imperfective are lexical verb-aspect distinctions.

How It Works

Perfective and imperfective are lexical verb-aspect distinctions. Imperfective often presents an activity or repetition; perfective presents a bounded event. Aspect is not simply past versus present.

Bral sem can describe time spent reading without saying the book was finished. Prebral sem presents the completed reading event. Repetition can also favor imperfective, but individual perfective events may occur repeatedly; context matters more than English verb endings.

Examples (3)

  1. Bral sem knjigo.

    I was reading a book.

  2. Prebral sem knjigo.

    I read the whole book.

  3. Vsak dan berem.

    I read every day.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

Completed Events and Ongoing ActionsLevel 4

Learn This First

Distinguish the verb's aspect from the already known past-tense construction.

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Patterns that build on this one.