Quote Originally Posted by ShakeyX View Post
Yes we might have different tenses in English but the point was both those sentences in English could be analysed as being "Perfective": they both denote the action was completed. That is what strook me as weird but I guess other than the rigid rules I know about imperfective and perfective, I will just have to get a feel for individual nuances from verb to verb.

- Сейчас я смотрю футбол, а вечером буду писать курсовую работу. Кстати, Восток - Запад я уже посмотрел.
- А когда ты его смотрел?

For the person to state perfectively (I have watched) and the person to respond imperfectively (When were you watching?) just seems odd to me. Obviously the English sentence you actually use to translate each instance of perfective/imperfective is quite loose (due to us for example being able to show continuous aspect without using -ing: The river ran down the mountain).

Maybe it is something to do with the fact the verb "watch/look" in itself is a sort of continuous action, it is not something you can do in the snap of a millisecond, it is a prolonged action to watch any film. I am only speculating here, but I would assume in other circumstances the imperfective would seem silly in russian to try and say that you have completed an action (e.g. I opened (perfective) the door and let him in).

Surely the imperfective could only be used here in such sentences as (I was opening (imperfective) the door when I realised that I haven't even eaten today).

Sound logic or another bad day? :P
Yes, it's logic, and it's the way to understanding the Russian verb tense/aspect system. The thing is there are more than just two verb aspects in Russian. There are aspects that denote instantaneous actions, repetitive or habitual actions, continuos actions, a beginning of a continuous action and so on. Different aspects are formed by the use of different prefixes and suffixes (and even root change) which impart a new lexical meaning to the verb. For example, one can say:
"Я был в Америке", "я бывал в Америке", "я побывал в Америке", "я побыл в Америке", "я пробыл в Америке несколько лет".
All these verbs not only have different aspects, they have slightly different lexical meaning, and as for me, I am not sure where the actual border between grammatical aspect and lexical meaning goes.
There is quite a big difference between the English and Russian verb tense/aspect system in that the English system is more analytical, it sets a bunch of grammatical patterns that you can use on almost every verb (except for the modal ones) while the Russian verbs are individualists who don't like to accept standardized rules. Of course there are groups of verbs which follow their common patterns, but those patterns are not so universal, as the patterns of the Ehglish tenses.
As for the above-mentioned conversation about the watching a film, there is also a lexical meaning hidden behind the aspect.
"Я уже посмотрел этот фильм" - means that I have a result of watching the film.
"Когда ты смотрел этот фильм?" - the question is not about the result of watching, but about the time of the process of watching.
If you use different aspects you'll get different meanings. For example:
"Я уже смотрел этот фильм". - there is a bit of uncertainty in this phrase. It may mean that I have seen this movie for several times before or it may mean that I watched it partly, not to the end, or not from the very beginning of it.
"И когда же ты успел посмотреть этот фильм?" - there is amazement in tis phrase because, for example the movie may be completely new and nobody has seen it before, but I say that I have already seen it, or may be I'm so busy that I'm not supposed to have time for watching movies, but I have and that causes the amazement.
Hope, this helps.