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12. Prored svuda 1,5. Samo abstraktu 1. To je to.

1. Introduction
Duration in every language is a complex and ambiguous topic. This complexity exists due to the
fact that different grammarians relate the notion of duration to various linguistic categories and
terminologies. This research paper will try to provide the definition of duration in English and
Serbian language as well as to differentiate between concepts related to duration concerning the
given languages such as aspect and aktionsart, perfectivity and imperfectivity, duration and
punctuality etc.
Razlike I slicnosti S I E
dodati da ima veze sa aspect action telic atelic bla bla
PRODUZI JOS MALO
In order to fully understand the terminology used in this seminar paper, certain key notions and
oppositions related to duration will be defined:

Aspect and Aktionsart

Aspect is concerned with speakers/writers subjective perspective on the situation
denoted by a verb. Depending on the experience and speakers own choice, the event can be
expressed in various ways such as complete ( perfective aspect), ongoing (imperfective aspect),
continuing (continuative aspect), beginning (ingressive aspect) , ending (egressive aspect) or
repeating (iterative or habitual) (Brinton, 1988: 3).
On the other hand, aktionsart depicts the inherent nature of the situation denoted by a
verb. It is German term meaning kind of action thus implying intrinsic temporal quality of the
situation. As opposed to aspect, it is objective and does not express speakers/writers point of
view on the situation but rather connote inherent or semantic aspect (Comrie, 1976: 41-51).
Aktionsart is the character of a situation named by a verb.
This distinction is sometimes hazy and depends on often imprecise or unadjusted
terminology of various authors thus sometimes leading to confusion, although Gonda (1962:29)
states that neglecting this opposition is much to be regretted.

Duration in Serbian language

According to traditional grammar as well as Stevanovic (???) Serbian verbs have several
characteristics, one of which is aspect (vid), related to duration. Two main subcategories of verbs
related to duration are imperfective (nesvreni) and perfective (svreni). Another subcategory of
aspect are biaspectual (dvovidski) verbs. Biaspectual verbs are those that depending on the
context can be both perfective and imperfective. All three subdivisions are to be elaborated on.
Verbs that refer to situations that last in time are known as imperfective). On the other
hand, verbs that denote situations limited to a point in time are referred to as perfective.
Regarding the second category, perfective verbs, their main function is to denote the completion
of the given situation.
In order to illustrate the aforementioned opposition of subcategories related to duration in
Serbian language several examples will be provided. Imperfective verbs will be exemplified in
sentence 1) (a,b) whereas perfective will be exemplified in 2) (a,b). Also, translation of the
examples in English will be presented in order to focus on possible similarities and differences of
the two languages in question.
1) a) etao je ulicama satima ekajui da svane.
b) He walked down the streets for hours waiting for the dawn.
2) a) Sino je iitao novine i zaspao.
b) Last night, he read the newspapers and fell asleep.
Imperfective and perfective verbs are both further divided into types that are in Serbian
referred to as likovi.
There are two types of imperfective verbs. The first type are durative (trajni) verbs.
Durative verbs are used to denote longer or shorter continuous situation. Some of these verbs are
etati (to walk), sumnjati (to doubt) , voleti (to love), verovati (to believe). On the other hand,
verbs denoting situations that are repeated and thus continuous but including intermissions
between each new turn are iterative (uestali). Some of the examples of iterative verbs are
kuckati (to knock), pribojavati se (to be afraid), izbegavati (to avoid).

Regarding the perfective verbs, they can be further divided into momentary-perfective
(trenutno-svreni ), ingressive (poetno-svreni), egressive (zavrno-svreni) and unspecifiedperfective (neodreeno-svreni). Momentary-perfective verbs denote situations completed at one
single moment in time such as sesti (to sit), pasti (to fall), kucnuti (to knock), trepunti (to blink)
etc. Ingressive verbs denote that the situation is completed at its very beginning although it can
but does not have to be continued afterwards. Verbs that belong to this type are: progovoriti (to
start talking), zaigrati (to start dancing), zaplakati (to start crying) etc. Verbs denoting that
situation is completed at its very end and that it could but not necessarily did last continuously
before the completion are referred to as egressive. Some of the egressive verbs are doi (to
arrive), popiti (to drink up), proitati (to read) etc. Unspecified-perfective verbs denote both the
completion of the situation as well as its longer or shorter ongoing process. Zagristi (to take a
bite), posvirati (to play) and poplakati (to cry) are just some of the unspecified-perfective verbs.1
It was mentioned that there was another type of verbs added to the general perfectiveimperfective division called biaspectual verbs.

Biaspectual verbs are both perfective and

imperfective in the sense that the lexical root for both aspects is the same. When determining the
aspect one must observe a verb in a sentence, according to context. This relevance of the context
makes Serbian language similar to other Non-Slavic languages such as English. On the other
hand, having the same lexical root for aspectual opposition perfective- imperfective differentiates
it from those languages. The importance of the context will be presented in the following
examples : a) Evo sedim i jedem. as opposed to b) Kad jedem, zvau te In the first sentence verb
jesti (to eat) is imperfective whereas in the second it is perfective. Some of the other biaspectual
verbs are uti (to hear), videti (to see), ruati (to have lunch) veerati (to have dinner) etc.
Stevanovic believes that imperfective verbs denote unlimited duration of a process
whereas perfective verbs have limited duration. However, perfective verbs having unlimited
duration is an ambiguous statement for several reasons if it is taken into consideration that
perfective verbs can denote situations that occupy a mere point in time such as sesti (to sit) or
trepnuti (to blink). However, perfective verbs such as zapisati (to write down), zasiti (to sew
1 It must be taken into account that there can be no precise one to one
correspondence of the verbs given as the examples but should all rather be
contextualized since context has one of the essential roles when determining the
similarities and differences between Serbian and English language.

together) refer to situations that occupy a certain period of time. Furthermore, stating that
imperfective verbs denote unlimited duration of a process is also questionable since in Serbian as
well as in English adverbials play an important part. The aforementioned is to be exemplified in
the following examples: a) Saila je haljinu za 3 meseca. (She sewed the dress in three months.
b) Radila je domai 3 minuta. (She has been doing her homework for three minutes). It can be
concluded that due to the context and use of adverbials perfective verbs in Serbian language can
behave as imperfective and vice versa.
Finally, it is crucial to mention the importance of affixes and their role in determination of
the aspect in Serbian. Most non-prefixed verbs are imperfective and this action denoted is in
process or repetitive. Addition of prefixes alters them into perfective verbs. Imperfective verbs
itati (to read), uiti (to learn) and gledati (to look) if changed by the addition of prefixes
(pro-,na-, po-) become proitati (to read up) nauiti (to learn up) pogledati (to take a look). In
addition, some perfective verbs can be turned into imperfective by adding suffixes (-ati; -ivati;
-avati), as demonstarted in the example where perfective verb prepisati (to write down/rewrite) if
followed by suffix alters into imperfective verb prepisivati (to write down/rewrite).2 Moreover,
insertion of infix changes the aspect of a verb as in example where imperfective verb kucati (to
knock) altered by the infix -nu becomes kucnuti (to knock3).
Regarding aspect and duration in Serbian it can be concluded that affixes and adverbials
greatly influence the aspect of the verb whereas English language is irrespective of affixes but
afflicted by adverbials and overall context.

Grubor, Serbo- Croatian linguist goes step further in attempt to define notions of aspect
and aktionsart, perfectivity and imperfectivity as well as duration in Serbian language. He states
that:

Imperfective and perfective verbs are intolerable. Together, they follow the action from

the beginning to the end. It's just not looking in the same direction, their roles were exactly
divided them. Imperfective verbs point of view is on development, and the perfective verbal point
turned his back and looking to the finished part of the action.(Grubor 1953: 136).
2 repetition is implied in Serbian example
3 with implication just once

He defines the term aktionsart as a way of realization of actions and notes that it does
not match the term aspect but does not underline the difference. Accordingly, perfective aspect
should not be associated with shortness and imperfective with duration since perfectivity and
imperfectivity are notions related to the very verb and speakers/writers view of situation
whereas shortness and duration are related to internal structure of the given situation. Therefore
he proposes the model consisting of two major oppositions. He states, similarly to Stevanovi,
that aspect in the Serbian language includes couples of perfective and imperfective verbs. For a
more precise determination of the meaning of these couples he differentiates between the
development of verb (R verbs) and the state of verb (S verbs).
Verbs that denote situation during which there are changes in the subject or object are R
verbs but do not imply passage of time. On the other hand, S verbs imply that someone /
something in a given situation has certain characteristics, regardless of the changes but indicating
the passage of time and thus duration.
R perfective verbs show the entire complete operation whereas S perfective verbs indicate
the termination of the period of time denoted by verb. On the other hand, R imperfective verbs
indicate development of the action in progress regardless of the duration while S imperfective
verbs imply both duration and the state in which someone/something is located.
All in all, imperfective verbs always indicate duration by focusing on the point being
realized, disregarding the completed ones. As opposed to imperfective, perfective verbs do not
denote a moment or a period of time occupied but rather indicate the sense of the totality.
Rianovi (1976:7) concludes that regarding the situation denoted by the verb, duration
and shortness, as well as perfectivity and imperfectivity are to be neglected. He believes that the
main focus should be on the fact whether the situation can or cannot be divided. Therefore, he
proposes that the verbs denoting situations possible to be divided are totive (totivni) whereas
those that denote situations that cannot be divided are non-totive (netotivni).

Duration in English language

Along with the lack of precise definition of aspect and aktionsart and their difference in
various approaches there has also been much terminological confusion related to the notion of
duration in English language. Friedrich (1974:7,21,35) believes that primary opposition in IndoEuropean referring to aspect was durative/non durative and that these terms correspond to
English progressive/perfective. Otto Jespersen (1932:178) states that progressive does not imply
duration but is rather present to provide relative duration and temporal frame for another shorter
action expressed in simple tense. In the example He was eating when I came home, progressive
part of the sentence actually indicates that he had begun eating and had stopped eating involve,
incorporate and surround when I came home action. Henry Sweet (1898:96-9) states there are
long and short tenses. Accordingly, long tenses can be continuous and recurrent whereas short
tenses can be inchoative and point-tenses. George Curme (1931:373-88) neglected the possible
difference between aspect and aktionsart but rather focused on categorization of the aspect. He
proposed four major categories: durative, point-action, terminate and iterative aspects all of
which are to certain degree related to duration. Similarly, Hendrik Poutsma in his A Grammar of
late Modern English discusses aspect and categorizes it according to duration into 3 major groups
momentaneous, durative and iterative (1926: 285-313). Laurel Brinton (1988:25) indicate the
importance of distintion between punctual (momentary) and durative situations. Wirh punctual
verbs, the progressive indicates that situation is repeating (e.g. John is breaking bottles), whereas
with durative verbs, the progressive indicates that the situation is ongoing (e.g. John is humming
a tune) (Brinton, 1988:25). It often leads to confusion whether punctual verbs denote the same
situations as perfective and likewise, whether durative verbs denote the same situations as
imperfective.