Notes on aspect in core vs derived motion verbs

Most verbs come in pairs with a perfective vs imperfective.

• the imperfective covers:
  • the simple imperfective (teraz: now I’m doing something once off)
  • the habitual imperfective (codziennie: everyday I do something)
  • the frequentative (niekiedy: from time to time I do something)
• the perfective covers:
  • the whole completion of the action (jutro: tomorrow I will do something entirely)

The core motion verbs come in triples, with a perfective, a ‘determinate’ imperfective, and an ‘indeterminate’ imperfective. The determinate imperfective covers the ‘teraz’ once off case, while the indeterminate covers the ‘codziennie’ and ‘frequentative’ cases.

The other core motion verbs look like so:

Then we have derived motion verbs. These look a lot like the core ones, but like regular non-motion verbs, they only come in pairs and they split aspect simply into perfective vs imperfective:

Why is this important? Because it sounds wrong if you use a form of the imperfective which doesn’t line up with the aspect you’re describing and it can imply something you didn’t mean to imply.

The forms with ‘chodzić’ can be particularly confusing, because un-prefixed, chodzić is only possible in the codziennie and niekiedy readings, whereas when prefixed, the form with ~chodzić is used for all imperfective readings including ‘teraz’.

The Axes of Aspect

The Axes of Manner

The Axes of Direction

Extra: notes on frequentative verbs

In Polish, it’s not only motion verbs that can come in triples, there is another set of verbs called frequentative verbs which also come in triples. However, they divide the imperfective space up differently from the way the verbs of motion do, which can be confusing. These verbs tend to describe basic everyday activities and are fossilised forms, it isn’t possible to derive new ones, although the pattern is visible.

Some other frequentative verbs include:

Extra: iść: the verb that comes as a quartet

So the full table of options looks like this: