ON THE MARKEDNESS OF RUSSIAN ASPECTUAL FORMS IN SUBJUNCTIVE

 The semantic load of Russian aspectual forms in the indicative and in the imperative mood is distributed differently: while in the indicative the imperfective is considered to be an unmarked default form, in the imperative it acquires a range of extra semantic nuances, being more categorical, expressing that the action required should happen soon and may not be postponed, and signaling that the action is expected in a given situation or was discussed before. The aspectual characteristics of Russian verbs in the subjunctive depend on several factors and other verb categories. The article discusses one of those categories, namely, the Aktionsart of verbs. The nature of the hypothetical action has an impact on its verbal presentation in terms of its telicity. Thus, verbs of motion or change of state tend to be used in the perfective form, verbs of localization do not show any preference, whereas verbs of existence or state prefer the imperfective forms. These preferences are manifested not only in the percentage of certain forms but also by their semantic homogeneity and by the percentage of the most frequent verbs in the resulting sample. Numerous semantic shifts, and their use in non-prototypical meanings and in unnatural contexts are also characteristics of the non-preferred use of aspectual forms. The grade of aspectual preferences differs for semantic classes depending on their frequency and on the number of verbs in each class.