This page contains links to lists of the aspectual clusters for the verbs in Nachalo Books 1 & 2 and V puti. The goal of this database is to represent the main features of the Russian cluster system. Neither the clusters nor the glosses are intended to be definitive or exhaustive. The representations here are fairly conservative, including only verbs that most Russians would not find strange or unusual. For definitions of "Natural Perfective", "Specialized Perfective", "Complex Act Perfective" and "Single Act Perfective", see notes at the bottom of this page.
NOTE: The links to the Cluster Reports lead to Adobe Acrobat Files. In order to view them properly and search using cyrillic, one needs to install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (8.0 or above), which is available for free at this link.
HOW TO SEARCH THE CLUSTER REPORTS: Once a cluster report is opened, you may search for any verb (or any combination of letters contained in any verb) by pressing CTRL+F and inserting the cyrillic letters you want to search.
Complete Pedagogical Database (234 KB) This database lists all 266 verb clusters in the database. The clusters are appear in alphabetical order according to the Activity verb on which each is based. If there are two Activity verbs, as in the case of the motion verbs, the Non-determined stem was used for alphabetization. There is one cluster that lacks an Activity verb -- it is alphabetized according to its Natural Perfective, состояться.
The remaining reports list subsets of the database, according to the cluster structure types. Within each report, the clusters appear in alphabetical order according to the Activity verb on which each is based.
Key Cluster 1: Activity + Natural Perfective (50 KB)
Key Cluster 2: Activity + Natural Perfective + Specialized Perfective (104 KB)
Activity + Specialized Perfective (40 KB)
Activity + Complex Act Perfective (30 KB)
Activity + Natural Perfective + Complex Act Perfective (32 KB)
Activity + Specialized Perfective + Complex Act Perfective (73 KB)
Activity + Complex Act Perfective + Single Act Perfective (25 KB)
Activity + Specialized Perfective + Complex Act Perfective + Single Act Perfective (28 KB)
Natural Perfective – This is the Perfective that is the natural culmination of an Imperfective Activity, equivalent to the Perfective “partner” in the pair model. The Perfectives сыграть ‘play’ and спеть ‘sing’ are Natural Perfectives. A few Natural Perfectives, like услышать ‘hear’, describe a sudden attainment. Natural Perfectives do not normally have secondary Imperfectives.
Specialized Perfective – This type of Perfective is present when a prefix adds new information, usually motivating the derivation of a secondary Imperfective, as we see with выиграть ‘win’ and переработать ‘revise’. When we say that a cluster contains a Specialized Perfective, this means that there may be one or more Specialized Perfectives, along with any secondary Imperfectives and Complex Act Perfectives derivable from the secondary Imperfective(s).
Complex Act Perfective – This type of Perfective combines an Activity with a limit on its beginning, ending, or duration. The prefixes most commonly used to build Complex Act Perfectives are по- ‘for a while’, про- ‘for a certain duration’, за- ‘begin’, and от- ‘stop’. Some examples are поиграть ‘play for a while’, запеть ‘begin to sing’, проработать ‘work for a certain duration’, отработать ‘work and then stop after a certain duration’. It is generally not possible to derive a secondary Imperfective from a Complex Act Perfective.
Single Act Perfective – This type of Perfective tells us that only a single act was performed, extracted from an Activity made up of conceptually identical repeated units. An example is чихнуть ‘sneeze once’, since чихaть ‘sneeze’ is an Activity composed of identical units. Most Single Act Perfectives contain the suffix –ну, but motion verbs can use prefixes for this purpose, as in сходить ‘walk someplace and back once’. It is generally not possible to derive a secondary Imperfective from a Single Act Perfective.
This page was last updated on 20 Feb 2008.
Here is the Axcess file.