Are different "aspects" of a Polish verb the same lexeme or different lexemes?

Question

Polish verbs have two "aspects", imperfective and perfective, which means you use a different word depending on whether the activity you're describing is ongoing or habitual, or if it's definite or completed.

Sometimes the two aspects are just differentiated by an (arbitrary) prefix:

• "jadłem" I was eating, e.g. "I ate an apple every day last summer" from jeść
• "zjadłem" I ate, e.g. "I ate an apple yesterday" from zjeść

but sometimes the two aspects are completely different words:

• "będę mówił" I will be speaking, e.g. "I will speaking every Tuesday" from mówić
• "powiem" I will speak, e.g. "I will tell you everything" from powiedzić

And for some verbs, verbs of motion, there are two imperfective forms, determinate and indeterminate:

• "płynąć" e.g. "to swim to Cambodia" (determinate imperfect)
• "pływać" e.g. "to swim around in the pool" (indeterminate imperfect)
• "popływać" e.g. "to swim for an hour this afternoon" (perfect)

My question is: are mówić and powiedzić the same lexeme? Abstractly, they're considered to have the same meaning, having to do with speaking. Are płynąć, pływać and popływać the same lexeme? The extreme case is "to go", where iść, chodzić, and pójść are the three forms--do they represent the same lexeme?

And if "lexeme" isn't what the sets represent, what's the right word for it?

Answer 1

Let's make following assumptions :

• Lexeme is a group of inflectional forms connected by the core semantics, the most primitive meaning that points the recipient to a vague semantic cloud
• Perfective or imperfective aspect is a grammatical category on the same level as number, gender, tense, case etc.

On that basis, I would say that the group of "mówić" and "powiedzieć" and any inflectional form derived from these infinitives ( as: "powiedziałem,mówił,mówiąc,powiedziawszy,powiedzieli" etc.) is in fact the same lexeme. You could even add "przemówić" here and all its forms.

Even though suppletion occurs here it still retains the same basic meaning "to speak", which consitutes a lexeme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexeme

A lexeme (...) is a unit of lexical meaning that exists regardless of the number of inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain.

The last thing to add, if you would try to answer that question on the basis of sheer native speakers' perception of language, I would be quite suprised if any Pole considered "powiedzieć" and "mówić" separate in any different way than "zjeść" and "jeść". And I am stating that as a native Polish speaker :)

Answer 2

They are not considered one lexeme. The aspect is just an inherent feature of Polish (Slavic) verbs.

In Old Polish, the situation was more complicated as most verbs, e.g., wiedzieć, had two simple past tense forms: aorist (wiedziech - perfective) and imperfect (wiedzieach - imperfective). This is how the aspect emerged in Slavic languages but the system was later reorganized, prefixes began to be used to express aspect etc.

Answer 3

I don't know what a lexeme is, but if you can construct examples where one form is used as grammatical antecedent for pronominalizing or deleting another, this could show they are the same in some respect. For instance, in "She was swimming, it looked like fun, and so I decided to, also", "swimming" licenses the deletion of "swim".