...Looking at this again, I don't think there is really anything unusual about the use of Russian aspect, although the way the translation is divided into sentences is a bit misleading, perhaps based on the original Russian punctuation (but I haven't seen the Russian text to check). It seems clear to me that everything up to "they allowed (impfv.) themselves some dirty tricks" is repetitive and habitual. But after that a specific unique incident is described: Zadorov's refusal to take the revolver and his demand. Following that is a new one-off beginning "I began (pfv.) to go out..." and a description of new habit "[I] still gave (impfv.) the revolver to Zadorov". Imperfectives are used for repeated and habitual verbs, and perfectives for one off occurrences, including the start of a new habit, according to the regular rule.
Hopper gives the following example from Russian:
...Peasants returning from the city whipped (impfv.) their horses and rushed by (impfv.) in silence past these regualarly distributed figures with their highly felonious appearance. The soxoz managers and the authorities rumbled by (impfv.) on carts and demostrably showed (impfv.) the colonists their double-barrelled and sawed-off shotguns, while people on foot stopped (impfv.) at the bridge and waited (impfv.) for other travellers.
While I was around the colonists never misbehaved (impfv.) or bothered (impfv.) the travellers, but when I wasn't they allowed (impfv.) themselves some dirty tricks, so that soon Zadarov refused (pfv.) to take the revolver and demanded (pfv.) that I absolutely had to spend time out on the road. So I began (pfv.) to go out with every detachment, but still gave (impfv.) the revolver to Zadorov, so as not to deprive him of deserved pleasure.
Hopper's comment, "The habitual actions here do not come to an end with the event verbs 'refused', 'demanded', and 'began', but are thought of as on-going. The three perfective verbs, however, are sequenced among themselves, and in fact the morphological difference between perfective and imperfective is a clear signal that these, and only these, events are presented as sequenced, and that they are not sequenced with respect to the imperfective verbs."
p. 10 "Aspect Between Discourse and Grammar" from _Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics_, ed. Hopper. Amsterdam/Phila.: John Benjamins, 1982.
1a) The basic reason why WAYYIQTOL is viewed either as preterit of perfective is that most of the occurrences have past reference. The universal view has been, and is that only perfective verbs or preterits can systematically be used with past reference. But this is an example of how the linguistic views of the scholars are forced upon Hebrew. This is also based on anerroneous definition of Hebrew perfective/imperfective as completed/complete versus incomplete. ...
... The new definition of the imperfective aspect that emerges from a systematic study of the relationship between reference time and event time in Hebrew, allows imperfective verbs to express past terminated events.
In my dissertation I discuss 2,198 participles, 900 infinitives, and 1,027 YIQTOLs that function as finite verbs and express past terminated actions. Applying the same viewpoint to these 4,125 forms as to the WAYYIQTOLs, all these forms must be perfective as well! But nobody would argue that way, and these examples show that forms in great numbers that neither are perfective nor preterit can be used for past terminated actions. Thus, the basic assumption behind the preterit/perfective view of WAYYIQTOL is shown to be invalid.
As for the 1,027 YIQTOLs expressing past terminated actions or states, 896 has some word element preceding, and a great number of these elements have a prefixed WAW. It is shown that the reason for the choice of YIQTOL in most of the 896 cases is word order: When the author wants a subject, object, adverbial, particle etc precede the verb, he had to choose a YIQTOL rather than a WAYYIQTOL. If the word order were reversed and the verb was sentence initial, the YIQTOL would be changed into a WAYYIQTOL.
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