Thread: Simple Perfect / Imperfect Question (again...)

What is the exact difference between saying:
"Я ничего не сделала!" and "Я ничего не делала!"
What do they translate to, precisely, respectively.. ?
Sorry I know I have asked about something similar before, but it is very tricky.

The first one which is with perfective verb "Я ничего не сделала". In most cases perfective verb is used to address the results of the action expressed by the verb. Here the sentence means that "I have done (or finished) nothing". Note that here we don't know did I do something or not. Maybe I was working hard but had not enough time to finish my work. Here we addressing only the results of the action.

The second one which is with imperfective verb "Я ничего не делала". Imperfective verb in most cases is used to indicate not the result but the action itself. This sentence means "I was not doing anything". In other words "I did nothing to perform this task". Note that here we don't know the result, maybe the task was performed by somebody else.

Perfect explanation! Thank you CoffeeCup!

I was thinking about somebody who says, defensively "I wasn't doing anything!"