Thread: Remebering 'rule' for choosing aspect with negated verbs

I'm trying to find a way to remember which aspect to use with negated verbs:-

Я не позвонила - I failed to phone.
Я не звонила - I didn’t phone.

I'm finding it hard to just remember the 'rule' that 'failing to phone when you said you would' should be expressed as perfective, so instead I'm trying to see this situation from the point of view of whether something was successfully completed or not (which is an idea I find easier to bear in mind):-

1st one: I didn't phone during the time that I was supposed to. That time has gone, therefore the action I performed was 'not phoning', which I completed successfully.
2nd one: I didn't phone, regardless of whether I was expected to or not, therefore I simply didn't engage in any instances of phoning.

Is my 'logic' about this at all accurate? Or am I approaching this matter in a way that isn't going to be helpful?

How would you explain these 2 example sentences in terms of choice of aspect?

Thanks.

How would you explain these 2 example sentences in terms of choice of aspect?

Я не позвонила потому что не смогла.
vs
Я не звонила потому что не смогла.
?

Никак не объясню. Оба варианта допустимы.

They both perfectly fit into the basic concept of perfective and imperfective verbs, no matter negated or not. Tell me how you understand those concepts and I'll tell you how to treat both of the examples in terms of those basic concepts.

'Tell me how you understand those concepts'
Do you mean my understanding of perfective and imperfective aspects?

Originally Posted by grafrich

1st one: I didn't phone during the time that I was supposed to. That time has gone, therefore the action I performed was 'not phoning', which I completed successfully.

I don't think so. It is not about successfully completed 'not phoning'.
The perfective here is used in its usual meaning 'single action', 'action as a whole', action that has no significant time duration. We are just saying that this single action was not performed.

Originally Posted by grafrich

Я не позвонила
Я не звонила

How would you explain these 2 example sentences in terms of choice of aspect?

In my opinion, the choise of aspect is rather arbitrary in this particular example.
'Я не позвонила' - I didn’t perform the action of phoning.
'Я не звонила' - I didn’t phone. (I had a chance to phone but I never phoned.)
Aspect here does not tell us any essential information, and the grammar does not force the specific one to be used either, so both can be used:

- Ты звонила заказчику?
- Я не звонила. / Я звонила.

- Ты позвонила заказчику?
- Я не позвонила. / Я позвонила.

Originally Posted by grafrich

I failed to phone.

It should be дозвониться:
Я не дозвонилась.
Я не смогла дозвониться.
Мне не удалось дозвониться.

Do you mean my understanding of perfective and imperfective aspects?

Yep.

RedFox

does not force to use the specific one too

either?

Originally Posted by Medved

Я не позвонила потому что не смогла.
vs
Я не звонила потому что не смогла.

Should not the later one be Я не звонила потому что не могла?

I dunno. No difference I guess. Either one is correct.

Originally Posted by Medved

either?

Yep. Thank you.

No sweat, mate

Does 'дозвониться' mean 'to phone (someone)' in a general sense, or does it mean 'to get through (to someone) on the phone.'?
If it's the second one, then 'Я не дозвонилась' translated into English would be 'I tried to phone but couldn't get through'. I was actually talking about a situation where someone had just not picked up the phone and tried to call.

The information I had about use of perfective/imperfective with negated verbs goes like this:-

'Aspects in the negative
Using the negative with perfective verbs indicates the person failed to do that action. Using the imperfective will normally simply mean that it didn’t happen
Я не позвонила - I failed to phone (perfective) (but I was expected to)
Я не звонила - I didn’t phone. (imperfective)'

Which seems a bit obscure to me.

I can see RedFox's way of thinking. If you say 'Я не позвонила' it implies that you are discussing one single action of phoning, which in turn could imply that you were expected to phone.
Whereas 'Я не звонила' would just mean 'I didn't do any phoning'

As far as I understand it, aspect in general seems to go like this:-

Imperfective:-
Used when an action doesn't have one beginning, a middle AND an end. This can either be because it didn't happen, happened but was reversed, was attempted for a while but not completed successfully, happens repeatedly/habitually, is still happening (ie present tense,) or simply when you want to emphasise the fact that it WAS or WILL BE ongoing (past tense, future tense.)
A bit like just the pure action of something, the process of something 'ongoing', so to speak.

Perfective:-
When an action has one beginning, a middle AND an end (and isn't 'undone' in some way afterwards.) But this can include actions succesfully completed repeatedly, if you state that they happened a particular number of times.
So it's like a concrete example of some action being performed, and no longer being performed because this itteration of it has ended. Which is why it can't be used in present tense.

Originally Posted by grafrich

The information I had about use of perfective/imperfective with negated verbs goes like this:-

'Aspects in the negative
Using the negative with perfective verbs indicates the person failed to do that action. Using the imperfective will normally simply mean that it didn’t happen
Я не позвонила - I failed to phone (perfective) (but I was expected to)
Я не звонила - I didn’t phone. (imperfective)'

Which seems a bit obscure to me.

Well... since the idea of "to be expected to do" is not a direct part of the grammatical meaning of the Russian aspect, there can be some patterns, but no strict rules.

As far as I can see, there is nothing special about negated "expected" actions. The same patterns can be applied to affirmative and interrogative sentences too.

So, both aspects can be used in the following examples:
Ты звонила/позвонила ему?
Ты говорила/поговорила с ним?
Ты ходила/сходила к нему?

But the perfective should be preferred here:
Ты приготовила ужин?
Ты убрала комнату?
Ты выкинула мусор?
Ты прочитала книгу?
Ты договорилась с ним о встрече?

Why?
I guess, the key difference is that the latter sentences are more direct. They directly indicate an action and the action's result. If a person приготовила ужин, the dinner is here and we can eat it. The dinner is either perfectively приготовлен or not, so the aspect makes the difference. Even if we know that she готовила ужин, we still can have nothing to eat.
So... we use perfective when we talk about a specific result of a specific single action. No news, it is just how perfective normally works.

At the same time, Ты звонила/позвонила ему? tells nothing about the expected result. Expected results are just implied:
Ты звонила ему? (и конечно договорилась с ним о встрече?)
Ты ходила в магазин? (и конечно купила всё необходимое?)
Ты говорила с заказчиком? (и конечно вы решили все спорные вопросы?)
We talk about some action or process, and we expecting some result. But the result is not connected directly to the action mentioned. So nothing prevents us from using an imperfective verb.

Ok, thanks.

So perfective gets used when you want to emphasise the result (or lack of result) of an action, whereas imperfective is used when a result is not seen as relevent. That sounds quite sensible, and fits with what I already know too. I think the idea I had picked up from my book about perfective being used when someone fails to do an expected action was just not well explained. Seems clear enough now though!

Perfective:-
When an action has one beginning, a middle AND an end

Some of perfect verbs can be tricky here:
"Я полюбил..." can be interpreted as "I started to love...". "Вода потекла..." - "Water started to flow...".
You can think about it in two ways:
- there is no end of action. beginning only is important to us.
- perfectness is about this hidden "to start" verb, that is hidden in prefix "по-", "за-" and so on.
You should look in dictionaries to determine is perfect verb is about completition or about beginning of action.
for example: "Вода потекла по руслу" is about beginning. "Вода протекла по руслу" is about completition.

Thanks Alex, I guess these "за-" and some "по-" prefixed verbs, etc don't fit that definition, but then I don't use the definitions I wrote very rigidly, unless I get stuck and have to go through a mental 'list' of rules of aspect. That doesn't happen very often, thankfully.

IMO, the perfective aspect indicates not only some result, but a transition to a new state in general.

Я приготовил ужин. --> the new state is the existence of the dinner.
Вода потекла по руслу. --> the new state is the presence of the water flow.
Я почитал книгу. --> the new state is... hmmm... some piece of the book is now прочитан.

Imperfective verbs are used to talk about processes and states, whereas perfective ones are used to talk about actions, their results and state transitions caused.

Я почитал книгу.

Also tricky one.
"Я прочитал книгу" means completition of reading of all book content.
While "я почитал книгу" means completition of some piece of text of the book. It means that some text of book was left unread.

'IMO, the perfective aspect indicates not only some result, but a transition to a new state in general.'
This is something I will try to bear in mind, I think, when looking at aspect. The idea of a 'change of state' sounds more solid than just a general idea of a 'result.'

When I see verbs like почитать vs прочитать I know I'm looking at something which needs to be considered as a special case; a lot of verbs have one imperfective form and a few perfectives, (and почитать has another meaning and it's own perfective too?) It gets a bit tricky for me, especially as many verbs also seem to have idiomatic meanings too.

Originally Posted by grafrich

When I see verbs like почитать vs прочитать I know I'm looking at something which needs to be considered as a special case; a lot of verbs have one imperfective form and a few perfectives, (and почитать has another meaning and it's own perfective too?)

It's already perfective it just means a different thing

почитать (per.) - to spend time reading
прочитать (per.) to read the whole piece of text

BTW, по+ base verb has a very wide and common usage in the meaning of "spend time doing something"

A few examples:

поговорить
погулять
поработать
побегать and etc, etc.

Sure, but isnt почитать also imperfective, with perfectives почесть or почтить?

Originally Posted by grafrich

Sure, but isnt почитать also imperfective, with perfectives почесть or почтить?

It is a homonym. It has nothing to do with почитать 'to read for a while'.
Although they are etymologically related (I guess), it makes little sense to treat them as related in the modern language. (As well as считать, учитывать and so on)