A Comparative Study of the Past Tense Aspects in Russian and Italian

Introduction. The problem of aspect categorisation in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages, is studied not so profoundly compared to what has been done in Russian linguistics. The Indo-European Presence – Aorist – Perfect in their aspectual meaning, which are the most independent forms, have turned to build the tense system both in Italian and Russian. The brightest aspectual meanings are expressed in the forms of the Past. The different perception of ‘completeness’ and ‘incompleteness’ aspects in these forms by the speakers of Italian and Russian is probably connected with the peculiarities of the tense formation on the deep level of the language system. So, additional grammar comments are needed.

Methodology and sources. The main language unit is believed to be the semifinitive. Thereby we can facilitate the application of formal logical modelling to the description and explanation of syntactic phenomena. The material of the investigation is the surface structure of a predicate, which is formed, on the deep level, by a verbal semifinitive and a time specifier.

Results and discussion. A scheme has been elaborated, demonstrating, how a verbal semifinitive becomes polarised by a time specifier. The whole range of aspectual variants, which may occur in a predicate due to the interaction of its constituents through their charges, has been shown. It is reasoned about a charge on participle II. The notion of polarisation is added to the notions of Indefinite or Perfect aspects to represent traditional grammar tenses more exact. This investigation allows to establish a correspondence of Italian and Russian tenses to different charge states of a semifinitive, touched by a specifier. It is rather admittable that the difference between incomplete and complete aspects in Russian is expressed by participles II, which are in complex semifinitives, and in Italian – by simple semifinitives.

Conclusion. A comparative analysis of the verbal aspect category in Indo-European tenses, including the past ones, can be carried out, to our mind, both by stemming from the polarisation peculiarities of verbal semifinitives, and through investigation of literature translations, where correspondence is established on the level of language examples. In this case the genetic identity of Indo-European constructions has a chance to be represented as evidently as possible. 

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