Glagol'nyj vid v imperative v južnoslavjanskich jazykach

Verbal aspect in the Imperative in the South Slavic Languages. In the present paper the results from previous research done first on Russian are applied to Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian and Macedonian. It is confirmed that in imperative forms the verbal aspect may have pragmatical implications as regards politeness (or impoliteness). That is, as was observed in Russian, requests for actions that are expressed with the perfective aspect are the forms more generally used and thus more neutral, formally “correct”. On the contrary, those expressed with the imperfective are generally perceived to be impolite and are only rarely used. Their use is possible only in familiar contexts. This is the general tendency, but there also exist some differences between the South Slavic languages: the language that most readily permits the use of the IPF is Bulgarian, while Slovene is the language that uses it less of all.