The Use of Aorist Forms in Imperfect Contexts: Evidence from a Survey-Based Study

This article presents a qualitative data analysis of survey conducted in 2025 with 1618 Bulgarian native speakers. The study tests the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, contemporary Bulgarian usage a tendency to mix aorist and imperfect tenses. Focus is placed on the substitution of indicative imperfect forms with aorist counterparts in contexts involving primary underived imperfective verbs. Quantitative results support the view that this is not a matter of isolated deviations, but rather a consistent tendency: although respondents more frequently selected the imperfect (median: 78.73%), in some cases the proportion of aorist forms exceeds 30%. The discussion outlines key patterns observed in such substitutions, with particular attention to factors that appear to trigger the phenomenon.