Talk:Bulgarian verbs

Evidentiality

Bulgarian is supposed to have evidentiality (see [1] for one of the first hits Google turns up). This should be mentioned here. Which forms in the analysis given here are involved? 4pq1injbok (talk) 01:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Transcription

Shouldn't there be some kind of transcription (or transliteration) of the Bulgarian text in the examples and the tables? After all, this is an article in the English Wikipedia and the reader may, or may not be acquainted with the Cyrillic.

And wouldn't the bigger tables look neater if there weren't listed all the gender forms of the participles (with the fact that the participles do have different forms for the three genders in the singular possibly mentioned in a note after the table)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uanfala (talk • contribs) 10:21, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Expert needed

The article does not make clear what the difference is between (in)completive and (im)perfective. Also, it speaks of the "aorist" rather than the perfective, calls the perfect a "tense", and is not clear about which forms are simple aspect and which combinations of pfv and ipfv. All of these things are either inaccurate, misleading, or difficult to correlate with other WP articles. (Also, there are some fictitious tense/aspects promulgated by the Bulgarian govt which do not actually exist; I'd need to dig up some refs to see if they've been included here.) I'd make a stab at it, but would most likely just make things worse. — kwami (talk) 21:01, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The author(s) seem to have used (in)completive and (im)perfective to mean the same thing. I changed the only occurrence I found of completive to perfective, to make the language consistent. However, I do not know if his is the preferred English linguistic term for the concept.

As for the tense versus lexical aspect issue, you neet to know that Bulgarian language makes distinction betweeen "perfective verbs"/"imperfective verbs", and both types of verbs can be in any of the "aorist tense", "imperfect tense", "perfect tense", etc. For example, you can have an imperfective verb in the perfect tense, a perfective verb in the imperfect tense, in the aorist tense, etc. All combinations are possible and used. Both "aspect" and "tense" have to do with whether the action is completed or in-progress. (Very roughly, "aspect" tells you whether the speaker wants to talk about a complete action or about an in-progress action, while "tense" tells you whether the action was in fact complete or in-progress at a particular time. So a complete action that was nevertheless in-progress at some point in the past would require a perfective verb in the imperfect tense.) Yes, this is confusing, since the distinction is subtle. But unfortunately, to the horror of non-natives who are trying to learn the language, Bulgarian speakers do make these distinctions in everyday speech. The article definitely needs to be improved, but don't worry, as far as I can tell, it doesn't contain nonexistent stuff promulgated by the government. 183.76.106.209 (talk) 01:07, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Perfective vs. Imperfective

The following information in the text is completely mixed up/wrong:

"The verbs are either of perfective (глаголи от несвършен вид) or imperfective (глаголи от свършен вид) aspect. The former describe actions in progress (uncompleted actions) and the latter whole completed actions (actions which have a beginning and an end)."

It should read the other way around, i.e. "The verbs are either of IMPERFECTIVE (глаголи от несвършен вид) or PERFECTIVE (глаголи от свършен вид) aspect. The former describe actions in progress (uncompleted actions) and the latter whole completed actions (actions which have a beginning and an end)." Lebensmuede (talk) 11:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. 183.76.106.209 (talk) 00:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Aspect

First I'll start by saying I am a native Bulgarian speaker. When reading the article, I noticed that there is no example for secondary imperfective verb in the past aorist because it is said to be the same as in past imperfect. All forms but those for the 2d and 3d person singular are identical, yes. However my point is that using those two different forms I cannot think of any example that sounds right. My language sense tells me that the secondary imperfective verbs are not used in this tense (or at least not anymore). I want to ask if someone can find a proof for this in a grammar book and whether the other native speakers think like me.Xr 1 (talk) 21:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering about this too (I am a non-linguist native speaker). Natural examples of the aorist tense are rare not only with a secondary imperfective verb but also with other imperfective verbs that are part of an absolute perfective/imperfective pair (such as чуя—чувам). When the verb is part of such a pair, in most cases my intuition seems to prefer either the perfective aorist or the imperfective imperfect tense. However, after some thought, I was able to come up with situations where I would use the (secondary) imperfective aorist. Take for example мета—измета—измитам (this is the first verb triple from table in the article):

• Безобразие! Спри го тоя шум! Ти измита двора вече 3 пъти тая сутрин, пак ли ще го метеш? (secondary imperfective aorist)
• Безобразие! Спри го тоя шум! Ти измете двора вече 3 пъти тая сутрин, пак ли ще го метеш? (perfective aorist)
• Безобразие! Спри го тоя шум! Ти мете двора вече 3 пъти тая сутрин, пак ли ще го метеш? (initial imperfective aorist)

Here I would use the secondary imperfective aorist because it feels to express my anger more strongly. The focus is on the process of the annoying action itself (imperfective verb), but it is still the complete action performed three times over again that annoys me.

Another example using вадя—извадя—изваждам (the second verb triple from the table in the article):

• По онова време, когато зъболекари нямаше, ти изважда зъбите на хората в това село 10 години, а никой нито веднъж едно благодаря не ти е казал.

Note that вади is also possible here but that would sound somewhat more rough (at least to my ear).

Here are other examples along the same lines:

• Вчера ти изважда пищова 3 пъти, пък нито веднъж не посмя да гръмнеш.
• Вчера ти уж го научава това стихотворение, ние цял ден тишина ти пазихме, пък сега защо не можеш да кажеш и дума от него?

Some other verbs may be harder to come up with natural examples but that doesn't necessarily mean the aorist is impossible gramatically. Just an awkward enough situation might be required. 183.76.106.209 (talk) 00:26, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation

I recently made an edit concerning this topic that was later changed. I'm going to revert to my version unless someone provides me a reason not to.

This is the edit in question.

There is a clear distinction between the unreduced and the reduced version of ъ. This is proven by the fact that native speakers sometimes mistake the reduced vowel for а (which sounds the same way while reduced) while the unreduced vowel is correctly identified as ъ. As a native speaker, I can clearly distinguish the unreduced and reduced versions of ъ. The former is usually identified as /ɤ/ and the latter - as /ɐ/. The same applies for у - while unreduced, it's pronounced as /u/ and while reduced - as /o/.

Martinkunev (talk) 19:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

In the resume of my change I gave you a link to a Bulgarian article which explains the reduction (bg:Редукция на неударените гласни в българския език). Read note (бележка) #4 there. The main thing is, reduction only occurs in unstressed vowels. --V111P (talk) 21:17, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

The citation from the source says that the occuring phenomenon is not called vowel reduction (I can accept that). It doesn't say anything about the actual pronunciation of the words. Also, the source describes pronuncation with cyrillic letters and thus, is a subject of different interpretations. The 8 vowels in bulgarian are represented by 6 cyrillic letters so describing ponunciation with them is not reliable and can not be taken seriously. Martinkunev (talk) 19:28, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

It does say in the actual book (and in other books) how to pronounce these vowels (as ъ). And only unstressed vowels are reduced. You are free to look for sources that claim otherwise. --V111P (talk) 17:38, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

It's definately not pronounced /ɤ/ - the last vowel in "чета" is obviously the same as in "маса" (/masɐ/) and "ъгълът" (/ɤgɐlɐ/) and different from the one in "път" (/pɤt/) and "вълк" (/vɤlk/). Anyway, I can't find any online resource on the topic so I guess I'll have to visit a library. "ъ" is not a pronunciation - it's just a letter so this doesn't actually mean anything. So there's nothing to support your claim. And since for the moment we have no source providing IPA pronunciation, I'm removing the IPA symbols for now.Martinkunev (talk) 00:21, 31 January 2014 (UTC)