The Functions of the Perfective Present/Imperfect and the Imperfective Perfect in the Molise Slavic Micro-Language

This paper deals with the functions of Molise-Slavic verb forms expressing “contradictory” combinations of aspect grammemes: the perfective present, the perfective imperfect, and the imperfective perfect. In spite of its “total language contact” situation with all its speakers being bilingual, Molise Slavic in Southern Italy has retained, in principal, its original Slavic aspect oppositions, both the inflectional one (imperfect : perfect) and the derivational one (imperfective : perfective), freely combining with each other. Nevertheless, a reorganization of the inflectional category has occurred, following the regional Romance model (in losing the aorist but not the imperfect), and nowadays there is a certain dominance of the inflectional opposition over the derivational one. The non-contradictory combinations of the imperfect (and the present) with the imperfective aspect, as well as the combination of the perfect with the perfective aspect, continue to express aspectual oppositions in non-iterative situations. In this paper we show that the contradictory combinations have not been lost either. In spite of the pressure coming from the unmarked, non-contradictory forms, they still have functions of their own, especially in the field of aspectual oppositions in iterative, habitual, or distributive situations, but also in some other fields