Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach presents the first detailed comparative analysis of verbal aspect in the Slavic languages. Dickey divides the Slavic languages into two aspectual groups, an eastern and a western group as well as a transitional zone between the two. This book shows the semantic meaning of aspect in these groups, analyzed within the framework of cognitive grammar. Dickey offers the first comparative analysis of Slavic aspect treating more than two languages, and the first book-length cognitive linguistic analysis of Slavic aspect.

Dickey establishes seven parameters of variation in aspectual usage: habituality, the simple denotation of past actions, the historical present, stage directions and other instructions, performatives and other cases of the coincidence of utterance and action, the imperfective in sequences of actions, and the derivation of verbal nouns. These parameters are used as a basis for dividing the Slavic languages into the western group of Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian, the eastern group of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian and the transitional zone of Serbo-Croatian and Polish. Dickey uses concepts from cognitive grammar to construct a semantic analysis of the category of aspect in each group and in the transitional zone. Ultimately, Dickey shows that western aspect centers around the category of totality, whereas eastern aspect centers around a category of temporal definiteness.