In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. For example, in English the difference between I swim and I am swimming is a difference of aspect.

Aspect, as discussed here, is a formal property of a language. A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Some languages distinguish a large number of formal aspects (see the list below), while others distinguish none at all. Even languages that do not mark aspect formally, however, can convey such distinctions by the use of adverbs, phrases, serial verb constructions or other means.

Grammatical aspect may have been first dealt with in the work of the Indian linguist Yaska (ca. Yāska (यास्कः(6th-5th centuries BC according to Shukla Georgetown University was a Sanskrit grammarian who preceded Pānini. 7th century BCE), who distinguishes actions that are processes (bhāva), from those where the action is considered as a completed whole (mūrta). This is of course the key distinction between the imperfective and perfective. Yaska applies the same distinction also for between a verb and an action nominal.

Contents 1 Common aspectual distinctions 2 Aspect vs. tense 3 Lexical vs. grammatical aspect 4 Usage of aspects 5 Aspect in English 6 Aspect in Slavic languages 7 Aspect in Finnic languages 8 Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect 9 Examples of various aspects rendered in English 10 Notes 11 Other references 12 See also 13 External links

Common aspectual distinctions

The most fundamental aspectual distinction, represented in many languages, is between perfective aspect and imperfective aspect. In Grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages The imperfective aspect is a Grammatical aspect. It refers to an action that is viewed from a particular viewpoint as ongoing habitual repeated or generally containing internal This is the basic aspectual distinction in the Slavic languages. It semantically corresponds to the distinction between the tenses known respectively as the aorist and imperfect in Greek, the preterite and imperfect in Spanish, the simple past (passé simple) and imperfect in French, and the perfect and imperfect in Latin. The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a Past tense with an Imperfective aspect. This article is about the grammatical term To see the article relating to Eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. This article is about the grammatical term To see the article relating to Eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the Essentially, the perfective aspect refers to a single event conceived as a unit, while the imperfective aspect represents an event in the process of unfolding or a repeated or habitual event. In the past tense, the distinction often coincides with the distinction between the simple past "X-ed", as compared to the progressive "was X-ing". For example, the perfective would translate both verbs in the sentence "He raised his sword and struck the enemy". However, in the sentence "As he was striking the enemy, he was killed by an arrow", the first verb would be rendered by an imperfective and the second by a perfective.

Aspect vs. tense

Aspect is a somewhat difficult concept to grasp for the speakers of most modern Indo-European languages, because they tend to conflate the concept of aspect with the concept of tense. Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs (The two concepts are, however, mostly independent in the modern Slavic languages and other Eastern Indo-European languages, such as Greek. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly ) Although English largely separates tense and aspect formally, its aspects (neutral, progressive, perfect and progressive perfect) do not correspond very closely to the distinction of perfective vs. imperfective that is common in most other languages. Furthermore, the separation of tense and aspect in English is not maintained rigidly. One instance of this is the alternation, in some forms of English, between sentences such as "Have you eaten yet?" and "Did you eat yet?". Another is in the past perfect ("I had eaten"), which sometimes represents the combination of past tense and perfect aspect ("I was full because I had already eaten"), but sometimes simply represents a past action which is anterior to another past action ("A little while after I had eaten, my friend arrived"). (The latter situation is often represented in other languages by a simple perfective tense. Formal Spanish and French use a past anterior tense in cases such as this. )

Interlingua, which was developed and standardized to be grammatically simple, has no aspects. Interlingua is an International auxiliary language (IAL developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA Words can be included in Interlingua in either of two ways through regular derivation using roots and affixes or by establishing their eligibility as international words See also Interlingua This article is an informal outline of the grammar of Interlingua, an International auxiliary language first publicized Its verb tenses are similar to those of English and the Romance languages, but without irregularities. Speakers can use verbs and adverbs to express the meanings of various aspects: Illa continua scriber 'She continues to write', Ille ora arriva, 'He is now arriving', literally 'He now arrives'.

In most dialects of Ancient Greek, aspect is indicated uniquely by tense. For example, the very frequently used aorist tense, though a functional preterite tense in the indicative mood, conveys historic or 'immediate' aspect in the subjunctive and optative. This article is about the grammatical term To see the article relating to Eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. The perfect tense in all moods is used solely as an aspect marker and not, ironically, as a tense, conveying the sense of a resultant state. E. g. ὅραω - I see (present); εἶδον - I saw (aorist); οἶδα - I am in a state of having seen = I know (perfect).

Many Sino-Tibetan languages, like Mandarin, are devoid of tense but rich in particles which function as aspect markers.

Lexical vs. grammatical aspect

It is extremely important to distinguish between grammatical aspect, as described here, and lexical aspect. The aktionsart (ʔakˈʦi̯oːnsˌʔaɐ̯t plural aktionsarten) or lexical aspect of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to Lexical aspect is an inherent property of verbs, and is not marked formally in most languages. The distinctions made as part of lexical aspect are different from those of grammatical aspect, usually relating to situation aspect rather than viewpoint aspect. Typical distinctions are between states ("I have"), activities ("I shop") and achievements ("I buy"). These distinctions are often relevant syntactically. For example, states and activities, but not usually achievements, can be used with a prepositional for-phrase describing a time duration: "I had a car for five hours", "I shopped for five hours", but not "*I bought a car for five hours". Lexical or situation aspect is sometimes called Aktionsart, especially by German and Slavic linguists. The aktionsart (ʔakˈʦi̯oːnsˌʔaɐ̯t plural aktionsarten) or lexical aspect of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Slavic studies or Slavistics is the Academic field of Area studies concerned with Slavic areas Slavic languages, literature history Lexical or situation aspect is marked in Athabaskan languages. Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan, Athapaskan, Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes) is the name of a large group of closely

One of the factors in situation aspect is telicity. In Linguistics, telicity is the property of a Verb or Verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense Telicity might be considered a kind of lexical aspect, except that it is typically not a property of a verb in isolation, but rather a property of an entire verb phrase. Achievements and accomplishments have telic situation aspect, while states, activities and semelfactives have atelic situation aspect.

The other factor in situation aspect is duration, which is also a property of a verb phrase. Accomplishments, states, and activities have duration, while achievements and semelfactives do not.

Usage of aspects

In some languages, aspect and time are very clearly separated, making them much more distinct to their speakers. There are a number of languages that mark aspect much more saliently than time. Prominent in this category is Chinese, which differentiates many aspects but relies exclusively on (optional) time-words to pinpoint an action with respect to time. In other language groups, for example in most modern Indo-European languages (except Slavic languages), aspect has become almost entirely conflated, in the tense system, with time. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages

In Russian, aspect is more salient than tense in narrative. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages Russian, like other Slavic languages, uses different lexical entries for the different aspects, whereas other languages mark them morphologically, and still others with auxiliaries (e. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words In Linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, helper verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a Verb functioning g. , English).

Arabic shows a contrast between dynamic and static aspect. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language For example, the concepts 'ride' and 'mount' are shown by forms of the same verb rukūbun, static (rakiba) in the former case and dynamic (yarkabu) in the latter.

Aspect can mark the stage of an action. The inchoative identifies that the action is soon to take place. Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a Verbal category referring to an action soon to take place The inceptive aspect identifies the beginning stage of an action (e. g. Esperanto uses ek-, e. is by far the most widely spoken constructed International auxiliary language in the world g. Mi ekmanĝas, "I am beginning to eat. "). Aspects of stage continue through progressive, pausative, resumptive, cessive, and terminative.

Important qualifications:

• Although the perfective is often thought of as representing a "momentary action", this is not strictly correct. It can equally well be used for an action that took time, as long as it is conceived of as a unit, with a clearly defined start and end, such as "Last summer I visited France".
• Grammatical aspect represents a formal distinction encoded in the grammar of a language. Although languages that are described as having imperfective and perfective aspects will agree in most cases in their usage of these aspects, no two languages will agree in every situation. For example:
  • Some languages have additional grammatical aspects. Spanish and Ancient Greek, for example, have a perfect aspect (not the same as the perfective), which refers to a state resulting from a previous action (also described as a previous action with relevance to a particular time, or a previous action viewed from the perspective of a later time). The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the This corresponds (roughly) to the "have X-ed" construction in English, as in "I have recently eaten". Languages that lack this aspect (such as Portuguese, which is closely related to Spanish) often use the past perfective to render the present perfect (compare the roughly synonymous English sentences "Have you eaten yet?" and "Did you eat yet?").
  • In some languages, the formal representation of aspect is optional, and can be omitted when the aspect is clear from context or does not need to be emphasized. This is the case, for example, in Mandarin Chinese, with the perfective suffix le and (especially) the imperfective zhe.
  • For some verbs in some languages, the difference between perfective and imperfective conveys an additional meaning difference; in such cases, the two aspects will typically be translated using separate verbs in English. In Greek, for example, the imperfective sometimes adds the notion of "try to do something" (the so-called conative imperfect); hence the same verb, in the imperfective (present or imperfect tense) and aorist, respectively, is used to convey look and see, search and find, listen and hear. (For example, ηκουομεν ēkouomen "we listened" vs. ηκουσαμεν ēkousamen "we heard". ) Spanish has similar pairs for certain verbs, such as (imperfect and preterite, respectively) sabía "I knew" vs. supe "I found out", podía "I was able to" vs. pude "I succeeded (in doing something)", quería "I wanted to" vs. quise "I tried to", no quería "I did not want to" vs. no quise "I refused (to do something)". Such differences are often highly language-specific.

Aspect in English

According to one prevalent account, the English tense system has only two basic times, present and past. No primitive future tense exists in English; the futurity of an event is expressed through the use of the auxiliary verbs "will" and "shall", by use of a present form, as in "tomorrow we go to Newark", or by some other means. In Linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, helper verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a Verb functioning Shall and will are both Modal verbs in English primarily used to express the future. Shall and will are both Modal verbs in English primarily used to express the future. Present and past, in contrast, can be expressed using direct modifications of the verb, which may be modified further by the progressive aspect (also called the continuous aspect), the perfect aspect (also called the completed aspect), or both. The continuous and progressive aspects are Grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time they are non-habitual imperfective The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the Each tense is named according to its combination of aspects and time. These two aspects are also referred to as BE + ING (for the first) and as HAVE +EN (for the second). Although a little unwieldy, such tags allow us to avoid the suggestion that uses of the aspect BE + ING always have a "progressive" or "continuous" meaning, which they do not.

For the present tense:

• Present Simple (not progressive/continuous, not perfect; simple): "I eat"
• Present Progressive (progressive, not perfect): "I am eating"
• Present Perfect (not progressive, perfect): "I have eaten"
• Present Perfect Progressive (progressive, perfect): "I have been eating"

For the past tense:

• Past Simple (not progressive/continuous, not perfect; simple): "I ate"
• Past Progressive (progressive, not perfect): "I was eating"
• Past Perfect (not progressive, perfect): "I had eaten"
• Past Perfect Progressive (progressive, perfect): "I had been eating"

(Note that, while many elementary discussions of English grammar would classify the Present Perfect as a past tense, from the standpoint of strict linguistics – and that elucidated here – it is clearly a species of the present, as we cannot say of someone now deceased that he "has eaten" or "has been eating"; the present auxiliary implies that he is in some way present (alive), even if the action denoted is completed (perfect) or partially completed (progressive perfect). Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album released in 1968 by Columbia Records. The continuous and progressive aspects are Grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time they are non-habitual imperfective The present perfect tense is a Perfect tense used to express action that has been completed with respect to the present Principal parts A regular English verb has only one principal part, the infinitive or dictionary form (which is identical to the simple present tense for all persons and This article is about the grammatical term To see the article relating to Eschatology and the Book of Revelation, see Preterism. The pluperfect tense (from Latin plus quam perfectum more than perfect also called past perfect in English, is a Perfective )

The uses of these two aspects are quite complex. They may refer to the viewpoint of the speaker:

I was walking down the road when I met Michael Jackson's lawyer. (Speaker viewpoint in middle of action)

I have travelled widely, but I have never been to Moscow. (Speaker viewpoint at end of action)

But they can have other meanings:

You are being stupid now. (You are doing it deliberately)

You are not having chocolate with your sausages! (I forbid it)

I am having lunch with Mike tomorrow. (It is decided)

Another aspect that does survive in English, but that is no longer productive, is the frequentative, which conveys the sense of continuously repeated action; while prominent in Latin, it is omitted from most discussions of English grammar, as it suggests itself only by Scandinavian suffixes no longer heard independently from the words to which they are affixed (e. In Grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word g. , "blabber" for "blab", "chatter" for "chat", "dribble" for "drip", "crackle" for "crack", etc. ).

Note that the aspectual systems of certain dialects of English, such as Hawaiian Creole English and African-American Vernacular English, are quite different from standard English, and often distinguish aspect at the expense of tense. Hawaii Pidgin English, Hawaii Creole English, HCE, or simply Pidgin, is a Creole language based in part on English African American Vernacular English ( AAVE) – also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular,

Aspect in Slavic languages

In Slavic languages there is only one type of aspectual opposition which forms two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective (in contrast with English which has two aspectual oppositions: perfect vs. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages In Grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages The imperfective aspect is a Grammatical aspect. It refers to an action that is viewed from a particular viewpoint as ongoing habitual repeated or generally containing internal neutral and progressive vs. nonprogressive). The aspectual distinctions exist on the lexical level - there is no unique method to form a perfective verb from a given imperfective one (or conversely).

With a few exceptions each Slavic verb is either perfective or imperfective. Most verbs form strict pairs of one perfective and one imperfective verb with generally the same meaning. However, each Slavic language contains a number of verbs which are bi-aspectual and act as both imperfective and perfective. They are mainly borrowings from non-Slavic languages, but some native verbs also belong to this group. As opposed to them, mono-aspectual verbs are mainly native. There are mono-aspectual imperfective verbs without perfective equivalents (among others, verbs with the meaning 'to be' and 'to have') as well as perfective verbs without imperfective equivalents (for instance, verbs with the meaning 'become . . . ', e. g. 'to become paralyzed', etc. ).

The perfective aspect allows the speaker to describe the action as finished, completed, finished in the natural way. The imperfective aspect does not present the action as finished, but rather as pending or ongoing.

An example is the verb 'to eat' in the Serbo-Croatian language. The Serbo-Croatian language or Croato-Serbian language (cрпскохрватски језик srpskohrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic Diasystem The verb translates either as jesti (imperfective) or pojesti (perfective). Now, both aspects could be used in the same tense of Serbian. For example (omitting, for simplicity, feminine forms like jela):

Serbo-Croatian
Example	Tense	Aspect
Ja sam jeo/ Ja сaм јеo	past	imperfective
Ja sam pojeo/ Ja сaм појеo		perfective
Ja sam bio jeo/ Ja сaм био jeo	pluperfect	imperfective
Ja sam bio pojeo/ Ja сaм био појеo		perfective
Ja ću jesti/ Ja ћy jecти	future	imperfective
Ja ću pojesti/ Ja ћy пojecти		perfective

Ja sam pojeo signals that the action was completed. The Serbo-Croatian language or Croato-Serbian language (cрпскохрватски језик srpskohrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic Diasystem The pluperfect tense (from Latin plus quam perfectum more than perfect also called past perfect in English, is a Perfective Its meaning can be given as "I ate (something) and I finished eating (it)"; or "I ate (something) up".

Ja sam jeo signals that the action took place (at a specified moment, or in the course of one's life, or every day, etc. ); it may mean "I was eating", "I ate" or "I have been eating".

The following examples are from Polish. Polish ( język polski, polszczyzna) is the Official language of Poland.

Imperfective verbs mean:

• actions in progress, just ongoing states and activities, with significant course (in opinion of the speaker);
• activities posing the background for other (perfective) activities, ex. czytałem książkę, gdy zadzwonił telefon 'I was reading the book when the telephone rang';
• simultaneous activities, ex. będę czytać książkę, podczas gdy brat będzie pisać list 'I will be reading the book while brother will be writing the letter';
• durative activities, lasting through some time, e. g. krzyczał 'he was shouting', będzie drgać 'it will be vibrating';
• motions without a strict aim, ex. chodzę 'I am walking here and there';
• multiple (iterative) activities, ex. dopisywać 'to insert many times to the text', będziemy wychodziły 'we will go out (many times)';
• non-resultative activities, only heading towards some purpose: będę pisał list 'I will be writing the letter';
• continuous states, ex. będę stać 'I will be standing'.

Perfective verbs mean past or future, but not present activities – an activity which is happening now cannot be ended, so it cannot be perfective. Perfective verbs mean:

• states and activities which were ended (even if a second ago) or which will be ended, with insignificant course, short or treated as a whole by the speaker, ex. krzyknął 'he shouted', drgnie 'it will stir';
• single-time activities, ex. dopisać 'to insert to the text', wyszedł 'he has gone out';
• actions whose goals have already been achieved, even if with difficulty, ex. przeczytałem 'I have read', doczytała się 'she finished reading and found what she had sought';
• reasons for the state, ex. pokochała 'she came to love', zrozumiesz 'you (sg. ) will understand', poznamy 'we will get to know';
• the beginning of the activity or the state, ex. wstanę 'I will stand up' (and I will stand), zaczerwienił się 'he reddened';
• the end of the activity or the state, ex. dośpiewaj 'sing until the end';
• activities executed in many places, on many objects or by many subjects at the same time, ex. powynosił 'he carried out (many things)', popękają 'they will break out in many places', poucinać 'to cut off many items';
• actions or states which last some time, ex. postoję 'I will stand for a little time', pobył 'he was (there) for some time'.

Most simple Polish verbs are imperfective (the same in other Slavic languages), ex. iść 'to walk, to go', nieść 'to carry', pisać 'to write'. But there are also few simple perfective verbs, ex. dać 'to give', siąść 'to sit down'. There exist many perfective verbs with suffixes and without prefixes, ex. krzyknąć 'to shout', kupić 'to buy' (cf. the imperfective kupować with a different suffix).

Numerous perfective verbs are formed from simple imperfectives by prefixation. To create the perfective counterpart, verbs use various prefixes without any clear rules. An affix is a Morpheme that is attached to a stem to form a word The actual prefix can even depend on a dialect or special meaning, ex. the perfective counterpart to malować is pomalować when it means 'to paint a wall', or namalować when it means 'to paint a picture'.

Besides the strict perfective equivalent, a number of other prefixed verbs may be formed from a given simple imperfective verb. They all have similar but distinct meaning. And they form, as a rule, their own imperfective equivalents by means of suffixation (attaching suffixes) or stem alternation. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word Example:

• prać 'to wash / clean clothes with water and soap / washing powder' is a simple imperfective verb;
• uprać is its perfective counterpart while doprać, przeprać, oprać are other derived perfective verbs with a little different meanings;
• dopierać, przepierać, opierać are secondary imperfective verbs which are counterparts for doprać, przeprać, oprać respectively; *upierać does not exist because the basic verb prać is the imperfective counterpart of uprać.

There is a number of verbs which form their aspectual counterparts by simultaneous prefixation and suffixation or by suppletion, ex. (the first one is imperfective) stawiać - postawić 'to set up', brać - wziąć 'to take', widzieć - zobaczyć 'to see'.

Special imperfective verbs are those which express aimless motions. They are mono-aspectual, i. e. they have no perfective equivalents. They are formed from other imperfective verbs by stem alternations or suppletion, ex. nosić 'to carry around' (from nieść), chodzić 'to walk around, to go around' (from iść 'to go, to walk'). However, when such a verb gets an aim anyway, it becomes iterative: chodzić do szkoły 'to go to school'.

Other iteratives build another group of mono-aspectual imperfective verbs. They are formed from other imperfective verbs, including the previous group: chadzać 'to walk around usually (from chodzić), jadać 'to eat usually' (from jeść 'to eat'). Both groups are not too numerous: most Polish verbs cannot form iterative counterparts.

Perfective verbs which express activities executed in many places, on many objects or by many subjects at the same time, and those which express actions or states which last some time, have no imperfective counterparts. They are formed with the prefix po- (which can have other functions as well).

States and activities which last for some time can be expressed by means of both imperfective and perfective verbs: cały dzień leżał w łóżku 'he was in bed all day long' (literally: 'he lay in bed') means nearly the same as cały dzień przeleżał w łóżku. The difference is mainly stylistic: imperfective is neutral here, while using perfective causes stronger tone of the statement.

Aspect in Slavic is a superior category in relation to tense or mood. Particularly, some verbal forms (like infinitive) cannot distinguish tense but they still distinguish aspect. Here is the list of Polish verb forms which can be formed by both imperfective and perfective verbs (such a list is similar in other Slavic languages). The example is an imperfective and a perfective Polish verb with the meaning 'to write'. All personal forms are given in third person, masculine singular:

• infinitive: pisać - napisać;
• passive participle: pisany - napisany;
• gerund: pisanie - napisanie;
• past impersonal form: pisano - napisano;
• past impersonal form in subjunctive: pisano by - napisano by;
• past tense: pisał - napisał;
• future tense: będzie pisać / będzie pisał - napisze;
• conditional, first form: pisałby - napisałby;
• conditional, second form: byłby pisał - byłby napisał;
• imperative: pisz - napisz.

The following may be formed only if the verb is imperfective:

• contemporary adverbial participle – pisząc;
• active participle – piszący;
• present tense – pisze.

One form may be created only if the verb is perfective, namely:

• anterior adverbial participle – napisawszy.

Aspect in Finnic languages

Finnish and Estonian, among others, have a grammatical aspect contrast of telicity between telic and atelic. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Estonian (; ˈeːsti ˈkeːl is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1 In Linguistics, telicity is the property of a Verb or Verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense Telic sentences signal that the intended goal of an action is achieved. Atelic sentences do not signal whether any such goal has been achieved. The aspect is indicated by the case of the object: accusative is telic and partitive is atelic. This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have Declension. The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive The partitive can refer to several things Partitive case partitive meaning of noun phrases The partitive refers to the selection of For example, the (implicit) purpose of shooting is to kill, such that:

• Ammuin karhun -- "I shot the bear (succeeded; it is done)"; i. e. , "I shot the bear dead".
• Ammuin karhua -- "I shot at the bear"; i. e. , "I shot the bear (and I am not telling if it died)".

Sometimes, corresponding telic and atelic forms have as little to do with each other semantically as "take" has with "take off". For example, naida means "to marry" when telic, but "to have sex with" when atelic.

Also, derivational suffixes exist for various aspects. Examples:

• -ahta- "do suddenly by itself" as in ammahtaa "to shoot up" from ampua "to shoot"
• -ele- "repeatedly" as in ammuskella "to go shooting around"

There are derivational suffixes for verbs, which carry frequentative, momentane, causative, and inchoative aspect meanings; also, pairs of verbs differing only in transitivity exist. In Grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action In Finnish grammar, the momentane is a Verb aspect indicating that an occurrence is sudden and short-lived A causative form in Linguistics, is an expression of an agent causing or forcing a patient to perform an action (or to be in a certain condition Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a Verbal category referring to an action soon to take place

Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect

The terms perfective and perfect are used in an unfortunate and highly confusing fashion in different writings about linguistics. Traditional Greek grammar uses the term "perfect" to refer to a grammatical tense encoding what is variously described as a past action with present relevance or a present state resulting from a past action. (For example, "I have gone to the cinema" implies both that I went to the cinema and that I am now in the cinema. ) The perfect is opposed to the aorist, describing a simple past action, and the imperfect, describing an ongoing past action. The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a Past tense with an Imperfective aspect. From this, the aspectual nature of the perfect tense was generalized into the perfect aspect, describing a previously completed action with relevance to a particular time. The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the Accordingly, English grammar speaks of the present perfect ("I have gone"), the past perfect or pluperfect ("I had gone"), and the future perfect ("I will have gone"). The present perfect tense is a Perfect tense used to express action that has been completed with respect to the present The pluperfect tense (from Latin plus quam perfectum more than perfect also called past perfect in English, is a Perfective The pluperfect tense (from Latin plus quam perfectum more than perfect also called past perfect in English, is a Perfective

Latin, however, lacks a distinction between aorist and perfect, and for morphological reasons the single tense representing the combination of both meanings is called the "perfect". The two-way distinction here between imperfect and perfect is carried over into the terminology of various modern languages, such as the Slavic languages and the Romance languages, where a distinction between "imperfective" and "perfective" aspect corresponds to a distinction between an event viewed as ongoing or with internal structure and an event viewed as a simple whole. The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all That is, what is called "perfective" is similar to the aspectual nature of the original Greek aorist, not the Greek perfect.

Many linguists have tried to maintain this terminology. The web site of SIL International, for example, describes the "perfective aspect" as "an aspect that expresses a temporal view of an event or state as a simple whole, apart from the consideration of the internal structure of the time in which it occurs". SIL International (the official name of what was originally the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is a worldwide U ^[1] This has led other linguists to categorize the three-way aspectual distinction visible in Greek, English, Spanish and various other languages as a distinction between "imperfective", "perfective" and "perfect". Not surprisingly, the latter two are constantly confused, and "perfective" is often taken to be synonymous with "perfect".

Examples of various aspects rendered in English

• Perfective (aorist, simple; see above): 'I struck the bell. In Grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages ' (single action)
• Perfect (sometimes confusingly called "perfective"; see above): 'I have arrived at the cinema. The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the ' (hence, I am now in the cinema)
• Progressive (continuous): 'I am eating. The continuous and progressive aspects are Grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time they are non-habitual imperfective The continuous and progressive aspects are Grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time they are non-habitual imperfective ' (action is in progress)
• Habitual: 'I walk home from work. ' (every day)

'I would walk [OR: used to walk] home from work. ' (past habit)

• Imperfective (either progressive or habitual): 'I am walking to work' (progressive) or 'I walk to work every day' (habitual). The imperfective aspect is a Grammatical aspect. It refers to an action that is viewed from a particular viewpoint as ongoing habitual repeated or generally containing internal
• Prospective: 'I am about to eat' OR: 'I am going to eat. "
• Recent Perfect or After Perfect: 'I just ate' OR: 'I am after eating. " (Hiberno-English)
• Inceptive: 'I am beginning to eat. Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a Verbal category referring to an action soon to take place '
• Inchoative (not clearly distinguished from prospective): 'The apples are about to ripen. Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a Verbal category referring to an action soon to take place '
• Continuative: 'I am still eating. '
• Terminative: 'I am finishing my meal. '
• Conative: 'I am trying to eat. '
• Cessative: 'I am quitting smoking. '
• defective : 'I almost fell. '
• Pausative: 'I stopped working for a while. '
• Resumptive: 'I resumed sleeping. '
• Punctual: 'I slept. '
• Durative: 'I slept for an hour. '
• Delimitative: 'I slept for a while. '
• Protractive: 'The argument went on and on. '
• Iterative: 'I read the same books again and again. '
• Frequentative: 'It sparkled', contrasted with 'It sparked'. In Grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action Or, 'I run around', vs. 'I run'.
• Experiential: 'I have gone to school many times. '
• Intentional: 'I listened carefully. '
• Accidental: 'I knocked over the chair. '
• Generic: 'Mangoes grow on trees. The generic mood, in Linguistics, is a mood used to make generalized comments about a class of thing '
• Intensive: 'It glared. In grammar an intensive form of a word is one which denotes stronger or more forceful action as compared with the root on which the intensive is built '
• Moderative: 'It shone. '
• Attenuative: 'It glimmered. '
• Semelfactive (momentane): 'The mouse squeaked once. In Finnish grammar, the momentane is a Verb aspect indicating that an occurrence is sudden and short-lived ' (contrasted to 'The mouse squeaked/was squeaking. ')

Notes

Other references

• Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (ISBN 0-415-20319-8), by Hadumod Bussmann, edited by Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi, Routledge, London 1996. Year 1996 ( MCMXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar) Translation of German Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1990. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Stuttgart (ˈʃtʊtgaɐ̯t is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. Year 1990 ( MCMXC) was a Common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar)
• Smith, Carlota. The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997.
• Morfofonologian harjoituksia, Lauri Carlson

See also

• Aktionsart
• Ancient Greek grammar: Dependence of moods and tenses
• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammatical tense
• Grammatical mood

External links

• Robert Binnick annotated tense/aspect bibliography (around 9000 entries)
• Anna Katarzyna Młynarczyk: Aspectual Pairing in Polish, a pdf version of the book
• Grammar Tutorials - a column overview of the English tenses
• Greek tenses

The aktionsart (ʔakˈʦi̯oːnsˌʔaɐ̯t plural aktionsarten) or lexical aspect of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to Ancient Greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of Proto-Indo-European morphology In Linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a Verb, Noun or Adjective from its Principal parts by Inflection Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive Verb forms that are used to signal modality.

---

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic