Category:Macedonian iterative verbs

Morphologically, they are imperfective verbs derived from perfective verbs which are themselves derived from a primary imperfective verb, for example ("to burn", primary imperfective) >  (perfective) >  (iterative). Although they are imperfective, they retain the telicity of the perfective verb. Thus, they are used in contexts where the meaning is telic, but an imperfective form is grammatically required, including iterative (or habitual or gnomic) contexts, where there is a series of sub-events which are individually perfective in that they attain their telos, but which comprise a global event which is not itself perfective.

Additionally, they are used in narrative and descriptive utterances, where perfective actions are being recounted, possibly ones which were actually completed in the past, but expressed as imperfective forms so as to create an impression that they are ongoing, possibly with a dramatic effect, and so to involve the reader or hearer to a greater extent. Finally, these secondary imperfective verbs are used in irrealis contexts, be they iterative or not, where the telos is conceptualized, excluding the primary imperfective, but cannot be asserted, excluding the perfective.

Unlike primary imperfective verbs, iterative verbs cannot be used in contexts where the time of the event overlaps with the temporal reference point, i.e. where a progressive tense would be used in English.

It should be noted that not all secondary imperfective verbs are iterative. Sometimes, they are functionally equivalent to the primary imperfectives, e.g. in the case of ("to encourage") >  >. In other cases, the meaning changes along the derivational chain, such that the secondary imperfective is the main aspectual pair of the perfective verb and is semantically distinct from the primary imperfective, e.g. in the case of ("to dig", imperfective) >  ("to unearth", perfective) >  ("to unearth", imperfective). Here, and  are a genuine aspectual pair with the meaning "to unearth", whereas the underlying  has a distinct meaning and is therefore not aspectually related to either of them. Consequently, is neither equivalent to  nor its iterative counterpart.

Macedonian iterative verbs should not be confused with Macedonian frequentative verbs.