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I'm doing an exercise on aspect of verbs and I have a doubt on the following phrase (it refers to Yuri Gagarin before entering the Vostok). One must put every verb in past time, changing where necessary the aspect of verb :
Каждый пожимает космонавту руки, обнимает, желает успеха.
I think that imperfective aspect must be used, since I don't see the concretion usual in perfective aspect.
So I thing it must be:
Каждый пожимал космонавту руки, обнимал, желал успеха. It is like this?

By the way обнимать - обнять seems to be a rather funny word (if I'm not mistaken) облетать = to fly around; обнимать = to take something around, and further from the same root of the German nehmen = to take. Who has said that the Russian if boring?
Thanks.

I'd say it should be perfective, as each activity is a single concluded activity per person. If I'm not mistaken*, then with imperfective verbs it would refer to an ongoing activity (they were all shaking hands, embracing and wishing success for a while), but it should be more like "each of them shook his hand, embraced him and wished him success", each being a single and completed activity.

* ) Which I frequently am regarding Russian verb aspect... ;)

If we are talking about what happened before the first enter of Gagarin into the Vostok. I would use perfective aspect: Каждый пожал космонавту руку, обнял, пожелал успеха.

But if there were a lot of persons who shook Gagarin's hand and every shaking took a long time the imperfective aspect is also acceptable: Каждый пожимал космонавту руку, обнимал, желал успеха.

However, the perfective aspect is more suitable here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by radomir

Каждый пожимает космонавту руки, обнимает, желает успеха.
I think that imperfective aspect must be used, since I don't see the concretion usual in perfective aspect.
So I thing it must be:
Каждый пожимал космонавту руки, обнимал, желал успеха. It is like this?

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Actually both ways are acceptable. First phrase is built as if it is going on right now, and the correspondent broadcasts the reportage. It may be a stylistic figure.

пожимает-обнимает-желает or пожимал-обнимал-желал or пожал-обнял-пожелал, all ways are acceptable but it should be in the same manner as all of the article, otherwise it will be crazy.

Quote:

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By the way обнимать - обнять seems to be a rather funny word (if I'm not mistaken) облетать = to fly around; обнимать = to take something around, and further from the same root of the German nehmen = to take.

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Yes, actually it is the same root as in "иметь", it has very many different applications. Compare to понять, занять, отнять, принять, нанять, перенять, донять, унять etc. etc.

Thank you for your interesting answers.