I've got these two questions in my homework at my university in Japan, where I learn Russian:
Мне ни к чему с ним окончательно (...).
Как можно со всем коллективом из-за такого пустяка (...)?
(a) рассориться
(b) перессориться
(c) рассориваться
(d) перессориваться
I'm at a loss as to what to choose and why. Could you explain?
P.S. Encouraged by respected members of the forum, I am humbly sharing my own naive thoughts. I beg your pardon if I say anything wrong about your wonderful language.
The questions seem to have two separate dimensions:
пере- vs рас-
perfective aspect vs imperfective aspect
To start with the first dimension, I checked the meanings in Wiktionary (рассориться, перессориться):
рассориться: сильно поссориться
перессориться: поссориться со всеми или между собой
These definitions as they stand seem to suggest that рассориться reflects the depth of the conflict in terms of emotional strength or importance, whilst перессориться points out the width of the conflict in terms of the number of people (or maybe issues) involved.
If my humble impression is true, then the answer to Question 1 is either (a) or (c), whilst the answer to Question 2 is either (b) or (d), because Question 1 seems to be about the depth of the conflict as can be seen from окончательно, whilst Question 2 is about the width of the conflict as can be seen from со всем коллективом.
However, the problem is that I fail to see the same pattern with other verbs having рас- or пере-:
раздать что-то: to give something out (to a group of people)
передать что-то: to pass something (to somebody)
Here the pattern is precisely the opposite: now раз- means dealing with a group people, not пере-.
Looking at other verb pairs, such as разрубить-перерубить, разубедить-переубедить, I got even more confused as I failed to deduce any common denominator.
I am thus unsure whether the definitions given in Wiktionary are complete and accurate, and I seem to be too shallow to see the deep underlying logic behind these prefixes...
Concerning the second dimension (perfective vs imperfective), I checked in Google that ни к чему делать is more than 10 times more common than ни к чему сделать. Using this analogy I am tempted to choose answer (c) to Question 1.
Yet I am at a loss as to what the underlying logic is. Exactly what is wrong, unnatural, or illogical in using ни к чему in conjunction with the perfective aspect of a verb? The perfective aspect means the outcome of a completed action. What is unnatural in saying that it is not useful to have a certain outcome (ни к чему сделать)?
In Question 2 the phrase seems to be rhetoric, but is it supposed to be about the outcome or process? Again, I used Google and found a few results with как можно перессориться and none with как можно перессориваться. This is a hint that answer (b) is correct, but exactly why is it correct?
Summarizing all of the above, I guess that the correct or most naturally sounding variants are 1c and 2b, but I am very unsure and do not fully understand the underlying logic.
Please accept my apologies if I overwhelmed you with my naive and chaotic thoughts.