Russian 0010 (Elementary Russian 1): The past tense of Unit 5 verbs

Autumn 2007 (2081)

Prepared by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt+russ0010@pitt.edu)
Last modified: 2007-11-12
Location: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~russ0010/2081/unit5-past.html
Main course web site: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~russ0010/2081/

The past tense of Unit 5 verbs

Aspect and the past tense

Russian has only three verb tenses (past, present, and future), but those intersect with two aspects, called imperfective and perfective. You learn about aspect in Unit 9, but you get a few hints about it as early as Unit 5. Basically, aspect lets you indicate whether something is accomplished one time (perfective; ‘last night I went to bed at midnight’) or not. The “not” has several flavors, the two most common of which are habitual action (e.g., ‘when I was younger I used to go to bed at 9:00 p.m.’) and action in progress (e.g., ‘while I was in the process of going to bed I got a telephone call’). Note that both habitual action and action in progress are not action that is accomplished one time; habitual action happens more than once and action in progress hasn’t been accomplished at the moment when something else supervenes.

In Unit 5 you are advised to use special “shorter alternate past tense forms” for two verbs to indicate that you did something one time. Those shorter forms are perfective, and they are therefore used to indicate a single completed action (that is, something you did one time). The longer forms are imperfective, and therefore indicate habitual action or action in progress. The verbs in question are встава́ть ‘get up’ (regular past tense встава́л, shorter past tense for doing something one time вста́л) and ложи́ться ‘go to bed’ (regular past tense ложи́лся, shorter past tense for doing something one time лёг, легла́, легли́). Note that this latter verb has what for now looks like an irregular past tense, since there is no /l/ sound in the masculine singular form.

Here are some examples:

• Ра́ньше я́ всегда́ ложи́лась в се́мь часо́в. ‘Earlier (previously), I always used to go to bed at 7:00.’ (Regular imperfective form because it is habitual, that is, because you did it more than once)
• Вчера́ я легла́ в во́семь часо́в. ‘Yesterday I went to bed at 8:00.’ (Shorter perfective form because you did it once)

You actually encountered aspect earlier in the textbook without being aware of it. The expression Ка́к вы́ сказа́ли?, which you learned way back in Unit 1, is the perfective past tense (‘you said [once]’) that corresponds to imperfective вы́ говори́ли (‘you were in the process of saying; you used to say [habitually]’).

Aspect is only relevant in the past tense and the future (and you don’t know the future yet). In the present tense, always use the imperfective (all the present tense forms you’ve learned are imperfective, so you don’t even have to think about aspect and the present tense).

Verbs of motion

Directionality

Russian verbs of motion (verbs that describe going by foot or by vehicle), like other Russian verbs, have aspect (they can be perfective or imperfective), but they also make a distinction between making a single trip in a single direction and other motion (the most common types are regular or habitual travel [i.e., more than one trip] or round trip [also understood as more than one trip, since going somewhere is one trip and going back is another]). These types are sometimes caled unidirectional (one trip in one direction) and multidirectional (either more than one trip or more than one direction [such as a round trip]). The principal difference between aspect and directionality is that verbs of motion incorporate the question of how many trips are being discussed, while aspect just deals with whether the action is accomplished one time or not. Your textbook presents verbs of motion and aspect in a controlled way, adding a bit of additional information chapter by chapter and providing rules of thumb that make their use very simple. You don’t need to learn the entire system at this stage; just learn the material in this unit for now, and wait for additional information later.

Foot or vehicle

In addition to aspect (which is a property of all verbs) and directionality, verbs of motion also distinguish whether the motion is by foot (идти́ and ходи́ть) or by vehicle (е́хать and е́здить). If it could be either (that is, the trip is within a single city and no vehicle is mentioned or otherwise present), use the foot verbs. Use the vehicle verbs for trips between cities or when you mention or see the vehicle.

Guidelines

You learn about verbs of motion more comprehensively in Unit 10, but you get a few hints about them as early as Unit 5. What you should learn about verbs of motion for the moment is:

• Present tense: In the present tense, decide whether you are on foot or on vehicle, and whether you are speaking about a single trip in a single direction or something else (most commonly either habitual travel or a round trip).

  	One trip in one direction	Habitual or round trip
  Foot	идти́	ходи́ть
  Vehicle	е́хать	е́здить

  There is one exception: When you’re giving a list of things you habitually do in order (e.g., ‘every day I get up, take a shower, go to the university, etc.’), you use a unidirectional verb (ќаждый де́нь я́ встаю́, принима́ю ду́ш, и иду́ в университе́т), even though habitual action involves more than one trip. Otherwise, though, when you go somewhere habitually, use a multidirectional verb.
• Past tense: For now, in the past tense use only the multidirectional forms (ходи́л, е́здил). The reason your textbook presents verbs of motion this way is that most of the time when you use the past tense of a motion verb in real conversation, you’re talking about a round trip (e.g., ‘yesterday I went to school,’ which is a round trip because you didn’t stay there) or habitual action (‘I always used to go to school at 7:00 a.m.’). Note that вчера́ я́ ходи́ла в библиоте́ку, which literally means ‘yesterday I went to the library (and came home)’, is an excellent Russian translation of ‘I spent some time in the library yesterday’. There are ways to say things like ‘while I was on my way to school yesterday I saw a penguin’ (single trip in progress) or ‘I set out for school yesterday morning at 6:30 a.m.’ (inception of a single trip), but because we tend to say things like that less often than we talk about round trips or habitual trips, your textbook defers these other past tense forms until a later unit.
• Future tense: You haven’t learned the future tense yet, so don’t worry about how to form it.
• Infinitive: After до́лжен (‘have to’), use the special infinitives пойти́ and пое́хать (e.g., я́ до́лжен пойти́ ‘gotta go!’). You‘ll learn more about these forms later in the textbook; for now think of them as special infinitives to be used after до́лжен.