11.5 - And the rest ...

We do not aim, in these materials, to be exhaustive in covering all the imperfective and perfective forms. Most types have been covered in the preceding pages. The most important of the rest are covered here.

For many verbs whose stem ends in a labial consonant (б, в, м, п and ф), the consonant л is present in the imperfective but is dropped in the perfective:

There is a significant number of verbs where the vowel of the stem ending changes to ну in the perfective infinitive:

For some verbs, the only marker of aspect in the infinitive is the change of stress.

For a small number of verbs, the imperfective and perfective infinitives appear completely different, probably owing to the way they developed in the past:

* applies also to compounds of -ймати e.g. займати – зайняти (occupy, take over), наймати – найняти (hire)

** applies also to compounds of -ходити e.g. переходити – перейти (cross, go over).

To practise the above go to Exercise 11.5A and Exercise 11.5B.