Aspect and tense for style

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Aspect and tense for style: what makes one telling different from another

You already know every form this lesson needs: aspect (the lessons “The concept of aspect”, “Aspect in the past”, “Aspect with future & modals”), the four past tenses, the narrative present, tense in reported speech. There are no new forms here. The lesson is about the choice: why, out of a dozen equally correct versions, a native speaker picks this one, and what the listener reads from the choice itself before taking in the content. The aim is practical: to retell one incident in several ways on purpose, not by accident; to choose aspect for the events and for the setting; to use the perfective present and the polite past naturally; and, in a book, to see why the author changed tense.

It works just as word order does (“Word order and style”). The language has a neutral, or unmarked, way to tell an episode, the one nobody notices. Any departure from it is marked, that is, noticeable, and each departure has a price and buys something: it speeds the story up or slows it down, pushes an event into the light or into the shade, moves the camera closer, ages the text by a hundred years, paints a habit, softens a request. A departure only works next to neutral text: if everything stands out, nothing does.

One episode, five performances

Here is one incident: at three in the morning the phone rings, a man gets up, switches on the light, picks up, and nobody is there. The facts are the same in all five lines; only the performance changes.

The third line opens with a bare participle without je: this is the truncated perfect from “Past tenses in a story”, a fast, clipped opening. English can copy the first four closely, down to the storyteller’s So the phone rings, I get up…. The fifth has no English twin: English has one simple past for both jobs, so the weight of the aorist can only be hinted at with lofty words, never with a tense. So in your own speech the first four will serve you, the bookish one in deliberate period style, and in reading you need to recognise all five.

Pace: how many events per sentence

Speed depends on the number of event verbs in a stretch and the step between them: the denser the events and the shorter the gaps, the faster the text reads. The four lines below say the same thing and differ only in packaging.

The difference shows best in the clitic sam, the short unstressed auxiliary that never comes first in a sentence. A chain on a single sam is said in one movement: the person is named once, then come only events. Each pa starts a new clause, brings sam back and makes you take the step again, hence the feeling of effort. A full stop cuts even more sharply, but its pause reads not as effort but as a blow.

Suspense comes from the opposite device, delay: the event verb is pushed to the very end, with circumstances and a whole kad clause piled up in front of it.

The first example holds the reader through a whole kad clause and releases only at the end. The second shows a neighbouring lever: the lone aorist zazvoni, in a short sentence of its own, strikes against the conversational chain. Written stories put an aorist like this at a sudden turn even in the middle of the perfect (lesson “Past tenses in a story”). Why long material drifts to the end of the sentence is explained in “Word order and style”.

Events and setting: what each verb does

Every verb in a story does one of two jobs. Either it moves, answering “what happened next?”, and then it is an event, the story’s foreground: the perfective, the aorist, the narrative present. Or it holds, answering “under what circumstances?”, and then it is the setting, the background: the imperfective, the imperfect. “Past tenses in a story” divided them the same way. The pluperfect stands apart: it neither moves nor holds but steps back into what came before (lesson “The pluperfect”).

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Aspect and tense for style

Three levers: aspect (point or line), tense (where the narrator stands), density (events per sentence). A noticeable device works only next to neutral text: one departure per episode, and for each an answer to “what did it buy?”.

One episode, five performances

Pace

• Fastest: short sentences: Ustao sam. Upalio sam svetlo. Javio sam se.
• Neutral: one sam for the chain: Ustao sam, upalio svetlo i javio se.
• Slow: steps: Ustao sam, pa sam upalio svetlo, pa sam se javio.
• Freeze-frame: Dok sam ustajao, telefon je i dalje zvonio.
• Suspense = a delayed verb: Kad sam posle pola sata, u mraku, napipao slušalicu i konačno se javio, veze više nije bilo.
• Jolt = a lone aorist: I tada telefon ponovo zazvoni.

Events and setting

Moves (“what next?”): perfective, aorist, narrative present. Holds (“under what circumstances?”): imperfective, imperfect. Steps back: pluperfect. Test: delete the sentence; if the chain closes up, it was setting. All events = police report, all setting = standstill.

Perfective present without a conjunction

In the 3rd person singular aorist and present often coincide (dođe, ode, reče); the neighbours and the 1st person tell them apart: uđoh against uđem.

Past habits, built to be broken

Weight of form and politeness

• Ode voz! (the aorist strikes) against Voz je otišao. (the perfect reports).
• The imperfect in an everyday text = pastiche; in talk almost only Kako se ono beše zove?
• A step back softens: Da li biste mogli…?, Hteo sam nešto da vas pitam., Htedoh da vas pitam., Zvao sam da proverim termin., Da vam donesem još jednu?
• Commands: a perfective is not curt; Izvolite, uđite is warm; “take a seat” is Izvolite, sedite (also Sednite).