7.6 – Activities that Lack a Natural Completion
Not every activity leads toward a natural completion. This lesson will deal with goal-less activities.
Goal-less Activities |
Describe activities that lack an inherent completion / goal state:
|
These activities lack an inherent goal state. As opposed to writing an e-mail, building a house, or doing the laundry, there is no natural goal that these lead to (such as a written e-mail, built house, clean laundry). In other words there is no completed act to speak of.
If they do have a perfective partner, then it typically means to do some limited amount of the activity, e.g. proběhnout se / zaběhat si – ‘to have a run, go for a run’, however, learning to use these only important once you’ve advanced a bit in Czech. |
Imperfective |
Definition |
Related Perfective |
Definition |
běhat (-á-) |
to run[1] |
proběhnout se / zaběhat si |
to go for a run
|
cvičit (-í-) |
to exercise |
zacvičit si |
to exercise a bit |
jezdit na kole |
to ride a bike |
projet se / zajezdit si |
to go for a ride |
hrát |
to play |
zahrát |
to play some |
lyžovat (-e-) |
to ski |
zalyžovat si |
to ski a bit |
myslet (-í-) (na ACC) |
to think (about) |
pomyslet (si) |
to think about, consider something |
plavat (-e-) |
to swim |
zaplavat si |
to have swim |
pracovat (-e-) |
to work |
— |
— |
spát |
to sleep |
vyspat se |
to sleep enough |
sportovat (-e-) |
to play sports |
zasportovat si |
to play a bit of sports, engage in a bit of sports |
tančit |
to dance |
zatančit si |
to have a dance, dance a bit |
Images used in this document come from these sources.
[1] note that there is also a related perfective uběhnout, as in uběhnout maraton ‘to run a marathon’.