Aký je vid existenciálneho slovesa byť
What is the aspect of the existential verb "to be"

Summary/Abstract: Explanatory dictionaries of standard Slovak published since the second half of the 20th century in the entry for the verb to be uniformly state that the verb to be is imperfective and rarely also perfective. The question of the perfectiveness of the verb to be was raised by Štefan Peciar in his 1958 report, one year before the publication of the first volume of Slovník slovenského jazyka, in connection with the drafting of the entry for the word to be for the forthcoming explanatory dictionary. There he notes the rare occurrence of the verb to be as a perfective verb. On the other hand, the representative works – the collective Morphology of the Slovak Language (1966) and Pauliny‘s Slovak Grammar – mark the verb to be as monoaspectual imperfective. Explanatory dictionaries, however, have not taken this opinion into consideration. The author critically points out this inappropriate lexicographical tradition and confirms the monoaspectuality and imperfectiveness of the verb to be in Slovak. He also refers to the same situation in some other North Slavic languages.

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