Aorist question

[adder]

Adder, as far as I know all slavic languages (well, I know nothing about Kashubian, Sorbian and other exotic lingos) except BG use past participle + the verb 'to be' to form a past tense.

The -l form is not the past participle. I don't know the term for this but it's different from what the past participle can exactly mean. There is a much more rich palette of participles in West Slavonic languages: adjectival (present: a working man, past: a written letter) and adverbial (present: he talked to me, writing a letter, past: he talked to me, having writtena letter). I don't know how it looks in Bulgarian but it is probably handled much more simply.

What I wrote was the construction of the past tense is formed this way:
the present form of 'to be' + the -l form

Russian doesn't attach 'to be' in any way so the use of personal pronouns is necessary.

'pisał + something'

It's pisałem. '-em' is a shortcut of the verb 'to be' attached to the -l form.

To sum up, this is the formation of the tense that is known as Perfectum. I call this Perfectum because of the way it is formed, not because of the action it involves as it can be both perfective and imperfective which is only aspect.

The next thing is I've read Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian (and Macedonian) still use Simple Past Tenses from Old Slavonic which are Imperfectum and Aoristus. And the usage of these is what I would be interested in.

[zmeiat_joro]

Adder, as far as I know all slavic languages (well, I know nothing about Kashubian, Sorbian and other exotic lingos) except BG use past participle + the verb 'to be' to form a past tense.

The -l form is not the past participle. I don't know the term for this but it's different from what the past participle can exactly mean. There is a much more rich palette of participles in West Slavonic languages: adjectival (present: a working man, past: a written letter) and adverbial (present: he talked to me, writing a letter, past: he talked to me, having writtena letter). I don't know how it looks in Bulgarian but it is probably handled much more simply.

What I wrote was the construction of the past tense is formed this way:
the present form of 'to be' + the -l form

The -l form is used in the formation of numerous Bulgarian tenses and the reported mood(s), but as a participle it's only a past participle; it would be used only for your last example of usage. For the other usages that you listed that it has in West slavonic languages different participles are used in Bulgarian. The first would be a present active participle(работещ човек), the second a past passive participle (написано писмо), and the деепричастие (говореше ми, пишейки писмо). Also in Bulgarian there is an -l form that doesn't exist in the other Slavonic languages, the imperfect (past non-terminative) active participle (the -l form found in the other Slavonic langauges is called aorist (past terminative) active participle) -- минало несвършено деятелно причастие and минало свършено деятелно причастие.

The next thing is I've read Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian (and Macedonian) still use Simple Past Tenses from Old Slavonic which are Imperfectum and Aoristus. And the usage of these is what I would be interested in.

I've been thinking of writing something about Bulgarian tenses, and I think I'll start with these three, which are all absolute past tenses (absolute -- thise which use a single referece point, which is also the present moment). And as I said, I think Serbian only retains one of these two, and in a very high style and archaic too, it's definately dead even in the normal literary language.

[Io]

OK, so now when I have the polish texbook handy...

In the polish language there is one past tense, which is formed by both the complete and incomplete (perfective and imperfective) verbs.

The past tense is formed by the infinitive stem + -ł or -l and the suffixes for person and gender. From historical point of view the PL past tense is compound: it's formed from the past indicative participle + the present form of być (to be).

Past indicative participle which is not used in present-day polish had the following forms: pisał, pisała, pisało; plural: pisali, pisały. These froms remain unchanged in third person singular and plural.
The endings for first and second person singular & plural -(e)m, -(e)ś, -śmy, -ście are forms of 'to be'.

The polish past tense is translated to Bulgarian (depending on the context) with:
english name — literally translation from bulgarian
1. aorist — past perfective
2. imperfect — past imperfective
3. perfect — past undefined
4. past preliminary (sorry, no I idea what this tense is called in english)

Examples:

1. Przeczytałem nowe gazety. — Прочетох новите вестници. — I red the new newspapers.
2. Wracalismy z biblioteki. Padał deszcz. — Връщахме се от библиотеката. Валеше дъжд. — We were on our way back from the library. It was raining.
3. Wczoraj całe popołudnie uczyłem się w bibliotece. — Вчера цял следобед съм учил в библиотеката. — I spent the entire afternoon yesterday studying in the library.
4. Kiedy wychodziliśmy, on już wr?cił. — Когато излизахме той вече се беше върнал. — When we were leaving he had already come back.

The forms of the past indicative participle are also used for the compound future tense.