Aspectual pairs in Georgian: some questions

The aim of this article is to discuss the existence in Modern Georgian of a grammatical opposition between Perfective and Imperfective, formally expressed by the presence or absence of preverbs (Slavic-style aspect). In order to speak of aspectual pair, i.e. two morphologically distinct verb forms sharing the same lexical meaning and differing only aspectually, it is important to identify cases of obligatory imperfectivization, when a perfective form is substituted by the corresponding imperfective one according to grammar rules and not because of semantically contrasting content. The analysis of serial context and negative polarity in the Imperative mood allows some previous generalization about the (quasi)grammatical status of this derivational category in Modern Georgian.