Tempo e aspetto nei preteriti dello Skazanie o Drakule voevode

The purpose of the present contribution is to analyse the use of the past tenses of the indicative mood in the Old Russian Skazanie o Drakule voevode (end of XV century). The subject of my analysis is the relationship between the categories of aspect and tense in the aorist, imperfect and perfect tenses found in the text. The aorist forms concern mostly prefixed verbs without imperfective thematic suffix. The imperfect forms concern mainly verbs whose theme is ‘primary’, unprefixed, ‘bi-aspectual’, or prefixed suffixed verbs. Finally the perfect forms present more ‘tense-aspect’ meanings, depending on whether the copula is expressed or omitted, on whether the verbal theme is prefixed or unprefixed. Besides, a particular aspectual value, obscefakticeskoe ‘generic-factual’, of certain perfect forms can be noticed: the forms of the unprefixed verbs (with or without copula) either of the imperfective or of the ‘bi-aspectual’ kind, and the forms of the perfective prefixed verbs (without copula), which in the text have an ‘aoristic’ value. In this particular aspectual value of the perfect we can see the premises of its evolution towards the modern form of the past tense in the context of the binary opposition PF:IPF.