Towards the aspectual characteristic of the verb byt’

The article deals with the aspectual properties of the Russian verb BYT’ ‘to be’. Two meanings of BYT’ are in focus of attention — locative BYT’ (as in Kreslo bylo na verande) and dynamic BYT’ (as in Nikogda ja ne byl na Bosfore), Ju. D. Apresjan calls it BYT’of movement. Russian dictionaries treat BYT’ as a verb of the imperfective aspect. I present five arguments in favor of the idea that dynamic BYT’ has not only imperfective, but also perfective features and is, thus, biaspectual. The form of the future tense testifies in favor of the fact that dynamic BYT’ has perfective properties: if BYT’ were a purely imperfective verb, its future form would have been BUDU BYT’. Typologically, the future form constructed according to the model of the imperfective aspect is not excluded, so the fact that BYT’ lacks the form of analytic future testifies in favor of the idea that BYT’ behaves morphologically as a perfective verb.