Systèmes aspectuels en français et en bulgare

Not infrequently, phenomena which should be distinguished are subsumed under aspectual oppositions. Thus, for example, a contrastive study of French and Bulgarian reveals that French does not possess the aspectual opposition, restrictive opposition (imperfective/perfective), characteristic of the Slavic languages. However, the two languages possess two other common aspectual oppositions: 1) phase opposition which contrasts the forms for non-completion with those for completion; 2) the opposition of dynamism based on the opposition imperfect (nondynamic)/aorist (dynamic). The latter opposition may be considered as sub-aspectual in so far as it is an opposition between two temporal forms both of which are characterized by noncompletion.