The classic Russian example dom postroen , which can be transposed into other Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Polish, Czech or Serbo-Croatian), will allow us to show how the distribution of the participial form is partly governed by the opposition between a stative situation and a dynamic situation and partly by the notion of completion, which is conveyed exclusively by the perfective form:
Russian
(16a) Dom postroen iz kirpiča
house.NOM built.PF.PPP.SG.M of brick.GEN
«The house is made of brick».
(16b) Dom *(do six por) postroen iz kirpiča
house.NOM (until now) built.PF.PPP.SG.M of brick.GEN
Lit.«The house is still built of brick».
(16c) Bol'šinstvo domov do six por postroe-n-o
most house.GEN.PL until.now built.PF-PPP-SG.NEUTER
iz kirpiča
of brick.GEN
«Most houses are still made of bricks».
(16d) Dom postroen v prošlom godu
house built.PF.PPP.SG.M in past year
«The house was built last year».
In spite of the form postroen «built», which one can consider resultative because of its derivational history, (16a) denotes a permanent state through the specification of a property attributed to the entity (iz kirpiča «of brick»). The construction therefore enters into the adjectival paradigm as confirmed by the adverbials of duration test in (16b). To explain the grammaticality of (16b), following Knjazev [1988: 351] advances the argument that adverbials of duration are incompatible with resultatives denoting irreversible states, but that these adverbials may appear with resultatives «under special conditions» as for example in (16c) where the subject would be plural. Let us note however that the grammaticality of (16c) evidences the interesting problem of the interaction between quantification and aspect which deserves more study. The comparison between (16a) and (16d) shows that the occurrence of the temporal expression allows one to retrieve the event which is at the origin of the resultative state: (16b) is the expression of an actional perfect passive [Maslov 1988: 66].
As mentioned earlier on the subject of Polish, the «be» — passive may be constructed with an imperfective participle; if the verb has an imperfective derivative, two constructions are possible:
Bulgarian
(17a) Trevata e/ beše okosena *(mnogo păti)
grass.the is/was mow.PF.PPP.SG.F (many times)
(ot studentite)
(by students.the)
«The grass was mowed» (by the students).
(17b) Trevata e/ beše kosena ( mnogo păti)
grass.the is/was mow.IMPF.PPP.SG.F (many times)
(ot studentite)
(by students.the)
«The grass has been mowed» (many times) (by the students).
(17c) Trevata e/beše okosjavana mnogo
grass.the is/was mow.IMPF.PPP.DERIVATE.SG.F many
păti/vsjaka godina (ot studentite)
times/every year (by students.the)
«The grass is/was mowed many times/every year (by the students)».
In (17a) the meaning is clealy that of a resultative state having its origin in a completed event. As opposed to (17a), in (17b) the resultative state has its origins in an interrupted event; the process is thereby highlighted and means «has been mowed (by someone)» or «has been mowed (by someone)»; Maslov terms this «actional passive present» and «actional passive perfect» respectively. However, according to the tense of the auxiliary and the discourse context, the resultative state may be related to past or future situations.
(18) Ništo za otbeljazvane, osven ednapodrobnost, kojato săšto ne eosobeno ljubopitna: sleden săm. Ne tvărde
follow.IMPF.PPP.SG.M am
nastojčivo i ne osobeno grubo, no săm sleden(B. Rajnov).
am follow.IMPF.PPP.SG.M
«Nothing to report except one detail which is not particularly strange: I'm being followed. Not really regularly, nor brutally, but I'm being followed».
(19) A xlabăt beše pečen<…> po starwhereas bread.the was cook.IMPF.PPP.SG.M according old bălgarski običaj
Bulgarian tradition
«Whereas the bread was baked <…> following some old Bulgarian tradition».
(20) Toj znaeše, če osemdeset dekaraniv<…> bjaxa
he knew that eighty acres fields were
kupuvaniobsto, no slučajnov prodavatelnija
buy.IMPF.PPP.PL in.common but by.chance in of.sale
akt bjaxa pisanisamo na imeto na Valčana.
act were write.IMPF.PPP.PL only at name.the of Valchana
«He knew that eighty acres of field <…> had been bought in common, but that, by pure chance, in the sale document, they had been registered under the sole name of Valchan».
With some merely interrupted processes, the construction becomes compatible with adverbs such as mnogo păti «many times» or često «often». The adverbial form is thus incidental to the event and leads to an iterative interpretation. In other words, in the iterative sense, the event is presented as an open class of events in which neither a first nor a last occurrence may be isolated and the resultative state refers to the general result of all these occurrences.
Going back to example (17c), the participle is derived from a secondary imperfective verbal base, and such forms demand an iterative context; the construction thereby denotes a resultative state which originates from an event presented as a closed class of events which has a first and a last occurrence, even though their number is not always specified.
Due to the verb prefix, each event included in the series is analysed as a completed process. The following two examples make apparent the opposition between this meaning (17a) and that of a resultative state (17b):
(21a) <…>ot dva i polovina veka knjažeskijat dom be
of two and half century of.prince.the house was
opožarjavanmnogo păăti
burn.IMPF.PPP.SG.M several times
«<…> over two and a half centuries the princely residence has been set on fire several times».
(21b) <…> knjažeskijat dom be opožaren predi dva i
of.prince.the house was bum.PF.PPP.PL before two and
polovina veka *mnogo păti
half century several times
«<…> two and a half centuries ago the princely residence was set on fire».
The other Slavic languages have apparently not developped such a mechanism. Yu. Maslov [1988: 79] points out a few scarce examples such as the following in Polish which does not seem to belong to a paradigm as do those in Bulgarian:
(22) Wqgiel jest wydobywa-n-y
coal is mine.IMPF-PPP-SG.M
«Coal is (being) mined»
Descriptions of Serbo-Croatian show the first two variations pointed out for Bulgarian: (23a) and (24a) refer to the resultative state of an accomplished and completed process; (23b) and (24b) refer to the resultative state of processes which is a simply accomplished, apparently barring iteration:
(23a) Travaje/bila pokošena( *seljakom)
grass is/was cut.PF.PPP.SG.F (peasant.INSTR)
«The grass has been cut».
(23b) Trava je košena jutros (*seljakom)
grass is cutlMPF.PPP.SG.F morning (peasant.INSTR)
«The grass is cut in the morning (by the peasants)».
(24a) Kuća je gradena dva mjeseca (*ljudimi)
house is build.IMPF.PPP.SG.F two months
«The building of the house lasted two months».
(24b) Kuća je/bila sagradena za dva mjeseca( *ljudimi)
house is/was build.PF.PPP.SG.F for two months
«The house was built in two months».