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

'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.

Okay, I see your point.