Russian Partitive and Verbal Aspect
Résumé
The present article provides some new ways of solving a well-known mystery of the aversion of the Russian partitive genitive for the imperfective aspect (cf. Jakobson 1936, Padučeva 1998). According to our analysis, the functioning of the Russian partitive genitive should not be considered comparable to that of the Finnish or French partitive as far as verbal aspect is concerned, as the aspectual marking in Russian is explicitly present on the verb and is independent from the tense marking. Therefore, the verb (im)perfectivity is always expressed independently from the case of the object (or the subject). We argue that the partitive marked argument denotes a certain indefinite quantity presented as an indivisible whole, the delimitation or bounding of the referent is thus mandatory. It can come from the process, which explains the predilection of the partitive for the perfective aspect, or from other elements in the context, thus making the imperfective compatible with the partitive, including in its progressive reading.