Aspects of the word in english

Proceeding
from the differences in linguistic signs we claim that word-signs be
subdivided into two principal groups: lexical words and grammatical
words.

Lexical
words
are the linguistic signs which possess denotative
ability. They are denotators of extralingual objects and phenomena,
objec­tive and subjective: a
window, a country, to judge,
etc. Their function consists in nominating or designating the denoted
objects and phenomena. The nominative character of denotative words,
which correlate with notions and have full denotative content, helps
to distinguish

nominative
words
from
non-nominative ones. Lexical
words in contrast to “grammatical words’’are nominative units
which function as lingual nominators of denoted referents.

The
term “notional”, however acceptable it might be, is not probably
exact because, in fact, all words, this way or another, correlate
with notions. But the correlative notions may be different, and the
ways of correlation may differ too. The term seems somewhat
misleading. Grammar resorts to it but interprets it conventionally as
a designation of denotative units only.

Grammatical
words are
also linguistic signs but they possess signi­ficative ability.
They
are
significators of general conceptual notions.

They
do not designate or nominate them as the word “significate”
itself
does.

They
may or may not have reference to objective reality.If they have any,
grammatical words are said to possess certain referential and
reflective ability. The significative character of the main stock of
grammatical words is obvious. This results from their function of
signification, i.e. the representation of general conceptual notions
(ca­tegories) not in the way of nominating but by signifying or
marking them grammatically. Hence, it is the way of lingual
representation and the nature of conceptual referents, significative
generic notions or ca­tegories, that predetermine the specific
lingual function of signi­fication. Nomination and signification
are correlative and distinctive they lie at the basis of
differentiating lexical words from grammatical ones.

Since
grammatical words are devoid of nominative power they can be
characteristically qualified as “function-words”, i. e. words
at­tributed with particular functional design such as to signify
concep­tual categories, to form up language units in their
function and rela­tionships or to provide orientation in speech
situations. The functiona­lity of grammatical words makes it
necessary to regard them together with other grammatical devices of
linguistic means of expression. Both types of words are bilateral
entities having their content and expression sides.

The
notion of ‘grammatical meaning’.

The word
combines in its semantic structure two meanings – lexical and
grammatical. Lexical
meaning
is the individual meaning of the word (e.g. table).
Grammatical
meaning
is the meaning of the whole class or a subclass. For example, the
class of nouns has the grammatical meaning of thingness.
If we take a noun (table)
we may say that it possesses its individual lexical meaning (it
corresponds to a definite piece of furniture) and the grammatical
meaning of thingness
(this is the meaning of the whole class). Besides, the noun ‘table’
has the grammatical meaning of a subclass – countableness.
Any verb combines its individual lexical meaning with the grammatical
meaning of verbiality – the ability to denote actions or states. An
adjective combines its individual lexical meaning with the
grammatical meaning of the whole class of adjectives –
qualitativeness – the ability to denote qualities. Adverbs possess
the grammatical meaning of adverbiality – the ability to denote
quality of qualities.

There are some classes of
words that are devoid of any lexical meaning and possess the
grammatical meaning only. This can be explained by the fact that they
have no referents in the objective reality. All function words belong
to this group – articles, particles, prepositions, etc.

Types of grammatical
meaning.

The
grammatical meaning may be explicit and implicit. The implicit
grammatical
meaning is not expressed formally (e.g. the word table
does
not contain any hints in its form as to it being inanimate). The
explicit
grammatical
meaning is always marked morphologically – it has its marker. In
the word cats
the
grammatical meaning of plurality is shown in the form of the noun;
cat’s
–
here the grammatical meaning of possessiveness is shown by the form
‘s;
is
asked –
shows the explicit grammatical meaning of passiveness.

The
implicit grammatical meaning may be of two types – general and
dependent. The general
grammatical meaning is the meaning of the whole word-class, of a part
of speech (e.g. nouns – the general grammatical meaning of
thingness). The dependent
grammatical meaning is the meaning of a subclass within the same part
of speech. For instance, any verb possesses the dependent grammatical
meaning of transitivity/intransitivity,
terminativeness/non-terminativeness, stativeness/non-stativeness;
nouns have the dependent grammatical meaning of
contableness/uncountableness and animateness/inanimateness. The most
important thing about the dependent grammatical meaning is that it
influences the realization of grammatical categories restricting them
to a subclass. Thus the dependent grammatical meaning of
countableness/uncountableness influences the realization of the
grammatical category of number as the number category is realized
only within the subclass of countable nouns, the grammatical meaning
of animateness/inanimateness influences the realization of the
grammatical category of case, teminativeness/non-terminativeness —
the category of tense, transitivity/intransitivity – the category
of voice.

GRAMMATICAL
MEANING

EXPLICIT
IMPLICIT

GENERAL
DEPENDENT

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Описание презентации по отдельным слайдам:

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  Aspects of Lexical Meaning
  Lecture

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  ASPECTS OF LEXICAL MEANING
  THE DENOTATIONAL ASPECT
  THE CONNOTATIONAL ASPECT
  THE PRAGMATIC ASPECT
  COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS

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  1. THE DENOTATIONAL ASPECT

  The denotational aspect of lexical meaning is the part of lexical meaning which establishes correlation between the name and the object, phenomenon, process or characteristic feature of concrete reality (or thought), which is denoted by the given word.
  e.g. booklet — ‘a small thin book that gives information about something’

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  Through the denotational aspect of meaning the bulk of information is conveyed in the process of communication.
  The denotational aspect of lexical meaning:
  expresses the notional content of a word.
  is the component of the lexical meaning that makes communication possible.

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  2. THE CONNOTATIONAL ASPECT

  The connotational aspect of lexical meaning is the part of meaning which reflects the attitude of the speaker towards what he speaks about. Connotation conveys additional information in the process of communication.

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  Connotation includes:
  The emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features proper to words as linguistic units and forms part of the connotational component of meaning, e.g. daddy as compared to father.
  a hovel – ‘a small house or cottage’ – implies a miserable dwelling place, dirty, in bad repair and in general unpleasant to live in.

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  Evaluation, which may be positive or negative, e.g.
  clique (a small group of people who seem unfriendly to other people) as compared to group (a set of people);
  celebrated (widely known for special achievement in science, art, sport, etc.) as compared to notorious (widely known for criminal act or bad traits of character).

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  Imagery:
  to wade – to walk with an effort (through mud, water or anything that makes progress difficult). The figurative use of the word gives rise to another meaning, which is based on the same image as the first – to wade through a book ;

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  intensity/expressiveness, e.g. to adore – to worship – to love – to like;
  connotation of cause, duration etc.

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  Thus, a meaning can have two or more connotational components.
  The given examples present only a few: emotive, evaluative connotations, and also connotations of duration and of cause.

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  3. Examples of different types of Connotation
  I. The connotation of degree or intensity
  to surprise — to astonish — to amaze — to astound;
  to satisfy — to please — to content — to gratify — to delight — to exalt;
  to shout — to yell — to bellow — to roar; to like — to admire — to love — to adore — to worship

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  II. Connotation of duration
  to stare — to glare — to gaze — to glance — to peep — to peer;
  to flash (brief) — to blaze (lasting);
  to shudder (brief) — to shiver (lasting);
  to say (brief) — to speak, to talk (lasting).

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  III. Emotive connotations
  to stare — to glare — to gaze;
  alone — single — lonely — solitary;
  to tremble — to shiver — to shudder — to shake;
  to love — to admire — to adore — to worship;
  angry — furious — enraged;
  fear — terror — horror.

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  IV. The evaluative connotation
  well-known — famous — notorious — celebrated;
  to produce — to create — to manufacture — to fabricate;
  to sparkle — to glitter;
  A.His (her) eyes sparkled with amusement, merriment, good humour, high spirits, happiness, etc. (positive emotions).
  B.His (her) eyes glittered with anger, rage, hatred,
  malice, etc. (negative emotions).

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  V. Causative connotation
  to sparkle — to glitter;

  to shiver — to shudder;

  to blush — to redden.

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  VI. Connotation of Manner
  to stroll — to stride — to trot — to pace — to swagger — to stagger — to stumble;
  to peep — to peer;
  to like — to admire — to love — to adore — to worship.

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  VII. The connotation of attendant circumstances
  One peeps at smb./smth. through a hole, crack or opening, from behind a screen, a half-closed door, a newspaper, a fan, a curtain, etc. It seems as if a whole set of scenery were built within the word’s meaning. It is not quite so, because «the set of scenery» is actually built in the context, but, as with all regular contexts, it is intimately reflected in the word’s semantic structure.

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  One peers at smb./smth. in darkness, through the fog, through dimmed glasses or windows, from a great distance; a short-sighted person may also peer at things. So, in the semantic structure of to peer are encoded circumstances preventing one from seeing clearly.

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  VII. Connotation of attendant features
  Pretty – handsome – beautiful;
  special types of human beauty:
  beautiful is mostly associated with classical features and a perfect figure;
  handsome with a tall stature, a certain robustness and fine proportions,
  pretty with small delicate features and a fresh complexion.

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  IX. Stylistic connotations
  (Meal). Snack, bite (coll.), snap (dial.), repast, refreshment, feast (formal).
  These synonyms, besides stylistic connotations, have connotations of attendant features.
  Snack, bite, snap all denote a frugal meal taken in a hurry; refreshment is also a light meal; feast is a rich or abundant meal.
  (Girl). Girlie (coll.), lass, lassie (dial.), bird, birdie, jane, fluff, skirt (sl.), maiden (poet.), damsel (arch.).

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  Anecdote
  J a n e: Would you be insulted if that good-looking stranger offered you some champagne?
  J o a n: Yes, but I’d probably swallow the insult.

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  3. THE PRAGMATIC ASPECT
  The pragmatic aspect is the part of lexical meaning that conveys information on the situation of communication. Like the connotational aspect, the pragmatic aspect falls into four closely linked together subsections.

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  1. Information on the ‘time and space’ relationship of the participants

  Some information which specifies different parameters of communication may be conveyed not only with the help of grammatical means (tense forms, personal pronouns, etc), but through the meaning of the word.
  E.g. come and go can indicate the location of the speaker who is usually taken as the zero point in the description of the situation of communication

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  The time element is fixed indirectly. Indirect reference to time implies that the frequency of occurrence of words may change with time and in extreme cases words may be out of use or become obsolete.
  E.g.the word behold – ‘take notice, see (smth unusual)’ as well as the noun beholder – ‘spectator’ are out of use now but were widely used in the 17th century.

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  2. Information on the participants and the given language community;

  The language used may be indicative of the social status of a person, his education, profession, etc.
  The pragmatic aspect of the word may convey information about the social system of the given language community, its ideology, religion, system of norms and customs.
  a) They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with the loot.
  b) After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the money.

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  3. Information on the tenor of discourse

  The tenors of discourse reflect how the addresser (the speaker or the writer) interacts with the addressee (the listener or reader).
  Tenors are based on social or family roles of the participants of communication.
  1. Don’t interrupt when your mother is speaking (family roles).
  2. There is an awful man in the front row, who butts in whenever you pause (social roles).

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  4. Information on the register of communication

  The conditions of communication form another important group of factors. The register defines the general type of the situation of communication grading the situations in formality. Three main types of the situations of communication: formal, neutral and informal.
  I’m sorry if upset you, dear. I certainly didn’t mean to (informal).
  There are certain qualities in his works that I greatly admire (formal).
  Who is the girl I saw you with yesterday? (neutral).

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  LEXICAL MEANING
  Denotational Connotational Pragmatic aspect aspect aspect

  Emotive charge
  Evaluation
  Imagery
  Intensity
  Connotation
  Information on the
  ‘time and space’
  Information on the participants and
  the givenlanguage community
  Information on the tenor of discourse
  Information on the register of communication

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  IV. Componential analysis = semantic decomposition

  rests upon the thesis that the sense of every lexeme can be analyzed in terms of a set of more general sense components or semantic features, some or all of which will be common to several different lexemes in the vocabulary.

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  Componential analysis
  attempts to treat components according to ‘binary’ opposition:
  male/ female,
  animate/ inanimate,
  adult/ non-adult,
  human/ non-human.
  The sense of man might be held to combine the concepts (male, adult, human).
  The sense of woman might be held to differ from man in that it combines (female (not male), adult, human).

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  Componential analysis allows us to group entities into natural classes.
  man and boy (human, male),
  man and woman (human, adult).
  There are certain verbs, such as marry, argue, that are found with subjects that are [+human]. Moreover, within the English pronoun system, he is used to refer to [human] entities that are [+male] while she is used for [human] entities that are [not male].

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  Componential analysis of the word ‘bachelor’
  According to the dictionary it has 4 meanings:

  a man who has never married (холостяк);
  a young knight (рыцарь);
  someone with a first degree (бакалавр);
  a young male unmated fur seal (морской котик) during the mating season.

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  Bachelor

  Noun

  (Human) (Animal)

  (Male) [who has the first of (Male)
  lowest academic degree]

  [who has [young knight serving [young fur seal when
  never married] under the standard of without a mate during
  another knight] the breeding time]

   [who has never [young knight serving [young fur seal when
  married] under the standard of without a mate during
  another knight] the breeding time]

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  The old bachelor finally died.
  ‘Bachelor’ is not the fur seal (they are young).
  (young) => is a marker not the distinguisher.
  Theoretically there is no limit to the number of markers.
  Markers refer to the features which the lexeme has in common with other lexical items,
  a distinguisher differentiates it from all other items.
  Distinguishers can be regarded as providing a denotational distinction, while semantic markers represent conceptual components of the meaning of lexical items.

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  Componential analysis
  gives its most important results in the study of verb meaning, it is an attractive way of handling semantic relations. It is currently combined with other linguistic procedures used for the investigation of meaning.

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  References:
  Зыкова И.В. Практический курс английской лексикологии. М.: Академия, 2006. – С.- 18-21.
  Гинзбург Р.З. Лексикология английского языка. М.: Высшая школа, 1979. – С.- 20-22.
  Бабич Н.Г. Лексикология английского языка. Екатеринбург-Москва. 2006. – С.- 61- 62.
  Антрушина Г.Б., Афанасьева О.В., Морозова Н.Н. Лексикология английского языка. М.; Дрофа, 2006. С. — 136-142.

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Word Meaning Lecture # 6 Grigoryeva M.

Word Meaning Approaches to word meaning Meaning and Notion (понятие) Types of word meaning Types of morpheme meaning Motivation

Each word has two aspects: the outer aspect ( its sound form) cat the inner aspect (its meaning) long-legged, fury animal with sharp teeth and claws

Sound and meaning do not always constitute a constant unit even in the same language EX a temple a part of a human head a large church

Semantics (Semasiology) Is a branch of lexicology which studies the meaning of words and word equivalents

Approaches to Word Meaning The Referential (analytical) approach The Functional (contextual) approach Operational (information-oriented) approach

The Referential (analytical) approach formulates the essence of meaning by establishing the interdependence between words and things or concepts they denote distinguishes between three components closely connected with meaning: the sound-form of the linguistic sign, the concept the actual referent

Basic Triangle concept – flower concept (thought, reference) – the thought of the object that singles out its essential features referent – object denoted by the word, part of reality sound-form (symbol, sign) – linguistic sign sound-form [rәuz] referent

In what way does meaning correlate with each element of the triangle ? • In what relation does meaning stand to each of them? •

Meaning and Sound-form are not identical different EX. dove — [dΛv] English [golub’] Russian [taube] German sound-forms BUT the same meaning

Meaning and Sound-form nearly identical sound-forms have different meanings in different languages EX. [kot] Russian – a male cat [kot] English – a small bed for a child identical sound-forms have different meanings (‘homonyms) EX. knight [nait]

Meaning and Sound-form even considerable changes in sound-form do not affect the meaning EX Old English lufian [luvian] – love [l Λ v]

Meaning and Concept concept is a category of human cognition concept is abstract and reflects the most common and typical features of different objects and phenomena in the world meanings of words are different in different languages

Meaning and Concept identical concepts may have different semantic structures in different languages EX. concept “a building for human habitation” – English Russian HOUSE ДОМ + in Russian ДОМ “fixed residence of family or household” In English HOME

Meaning and Referent one and the same object (referent) may be denoted by more than one word of a different meaning cat pussy animal tiger

Meaning is not identical with any of the three points of the triangle – the sound form, the concept the referent BUT is closely connected with them.

Functional Approach studies the functions of a word in speech meaning of a word is studied through relations of it with other linguistic units EX. to move (we move, move a chair) movement (movement of smth, slow movement) The distriution ( the position of the word in relation to others) of the verb to move and a noun movement is different as they belong to different classes of words and their meanings are different

Operational approach is centered on defining meaning through its role in the process of communication EX John came at 6 Beside the direct meaning the sentence may imply that: He was late He failed to keep his promise He was punctual as usual He came but he didn’t want to The implication depends on the concrete situation

Lexical Meaning and Notion denotes the Lexical meaning is reflection in the realization of a mind of real objects notion by means of a definite language system Notion is a unit of Word is a language thinking unit

Lexical Meaning and Notions are Meanings are internationally limited especially with the nations of the same EX GO (E) —- ИДТИ(R) cultural level “To move” BUT !!! To GO by bus (E) ЕХАТЬ (R) EX Man -мужчина, человек Она – хороший человек (R) She is a good person (E)

Types of Meaning Types grammatical meaning of meaning lexico-grammatical meaning lexical meaning denotational connotational

Grammatical Meaning component of meaning recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words EX. girls, winters, toys, tables – grammatical meaning of plurality asked, thought, walked – meaning of past tense

Lexico-grammatical meaning (part –of- speech meaning) is revealed in the classification of lexical items into: major word classes (N, V, Adj, Adv) minor ones (artc, prep, conj) words of one lexico-grammatical class have the same paradigm

Lexical Meaning is the meaning proper to the given linguistic unit in all its forms and distributions EX. Go – goes — went lexical meaning – process of movement

PRACTICE Group the words into 3 column according to the grammatical, lexical or part-of –speech meaning • • Boy’s, nearest, at, beautiful, think, man, drift, wrote, tremendous, ship’s, the most beautiful, table, near, for, went, friend’s, handsome, thinking, boy, nearer, thought, boys, lamp, go, during.

• Grammatical 1. The case of nouns: boy’s, ship’s, friend’s 2. The degree of comparison of adj: nearest, the most beautiful 3. The tense of verbs: wrote, went, thought • Lexical 1. Think, thinking, thought 2. Went, go 3. Boy’s, boys 4. Nearest, nearer 5. At, for, during (“time”) 6. Beautiful, the most beautiful • Part-of-speech Nouns—verbs—adj—-prep

Aspects of Lexical meaning The denotational aspect The connotational aspect The pragmatic aspect

Denotational Meaning “denote” – to be a sign of, stand as a symbol for” establishes the correlation between the name and the object makes communication possible EX booklet “a small thin book that gives info about smth”

PRACTICE Explain denotational meaning • • A lion-hunter To have a heart like a lion To feel like a lion To roar like a lion To be thrown to the lions The lion’s share To put your head in lion’s mouth

PRACTICE • A lion-hunter A host that seeks out celebrities to impress guests • To have a heart like a lion To have great courage • To feel like a lion To be in the best of health • To roar like a lion To shout very loudly • To be thrown to the lions To be criticized strongly or treated badly • The lion’s share Much more than one’s share • To put your head in lion’s mouth

Connotational Meaning reflects the attitude of the speaker towards what he speaks about it is optional – a word either has it or not Connotation gives additional information and includes: The emotive charge EX Daddy (for father) Intensity EX to adore (for to love) Imagery EX to wade through a book “ to walk with an effort”

PRACTICE Give possible interpretation of the sentences • She failed to buy it and felt a strange pang. • Don’t be afraid of that woman! It’s just barking! • He got up from his chair moving slowly, like an old man. • The girl went to her father and pulled his sleeve. • He was longing to begin to be generous. • She was a woman with shiny red hands and workswollen finger knuckles.

PRACTICE Give possible interpretation of the sentences • She failed to buy it and felt a strange pang. (pain—dissatisfaction that makes her suffer) • Don’t be afraid of that woman! It’s just barking! (make loud sharp sound—-the behavior that implies that the person is frightened) • He got up from his chair moving slowly, like an old man. (to go at slow speed—was suffering or was ill) • The girl went to her father and pulled his sleeve. (to move smth towards oneself— to try to attract smb’s attention) • He was longing to begin to be generous. (to start doing— hadn’t been generous before) • She was a woman with shiny red hands and work-swollen finger knuckles. (colour— a labourer involved into physical work , constant contact with water)

The pragmatic aspect of lexical meaning the situation in which the word is uttered, the social circumstances (formal, informal, etc. ), social relationships between the interlocutors (polite, rough, etc. ), the type and purpose of communication (poetic, official, etc. ) EX horse (neutral) steed (poetic) nag (slang) gee-gee (baby language)

PRACTICE State what image underline the meaning • I heard what she said but it didn’t sink into my mind. • You should be ashamed of yourself, crawling to the director like that. • They seized on the idea. • Bill, chasing some skirt again? • I saw him dive into a small pub. • Why are you trying to pin the blame on me? • He only married her for her dough.

PRACTICE State what image underline the meaning • I heard what she said but it didn’t sink into my mind. • (to understand completely) • You should be ashamed of yourself, crawling to the director like that. (to behave humbly in order to win favour) • They seized on the idea. (to be eager to take and use) • Bill, chasing some skirt again? (a girl) • I saw him dive into a small pub. (to enter suddenly) • Why are you trying to pin the blame on me? (to blame smb unfairly) • He only married her for her dough. (money)

Types of Morpheme Meaning lexical differential functional distributional

Lexical Meaning in Morphemes root-morphemes that are homonymous to words possess lexical meaning EX. boy – boyhood – boyish affixes have lexical meaning of a more generalized character EX. –er “agent, doer of an action”

Lexical Meaning in Morphemes has denotational and connotational components EX. –ly, -like, -ish – denotational meaning of similiarity womanly , womanish connotational component – -ly (positive evaluation), -ish (deragotary) женственный женоподобный

Differential Meaning a semantic component that serves to distinguish one word from all others containing identical morphemes EX. cranberry, blackberry, gooseberry

Functional Meaning found only in derivational affixes a semantic component which serves to refer the word to the certain part of speech EX. just, adj. – justice, n.

Distributional Meaning the meaning of the order and the arrangement of morphemes making up the word found in words containing more than one morpheme different arrangement of the same morphemes would make the word meaningless EX. sing- + -er =singer, -er + sing- = ?

Motivation denotes the relationship between the phonetic or morphemic composition and structural pattern of the word on the one hand, and its meaning on the other can be phonetical morphological semantic

Phonetical Motivation when there is a certain similarity between the sounds that make up the word and those produced by animals, objects, etc. EX. sizzle, boom, splash, cuckoo

Morphological Motivation when there is a direct connection between the structure of a word and its meaning EX. finger-ring – ring-finger, A direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes EX think –rethink “thinking again”

Semantic Motivation based on co-existence of direct and figurative meanings of the same word EX a watchdog – ”a dog kept for watching property” a watchdog – “a watchful human guardian” (semantic motivation)

• PRACTICE

Analyze the meaning of the words. Define the type of motivation a) morphologically motivated b) semantically motivated • Driver • Leg • Horse • Wall • Hand-made • Careless • piggish

Analyze the meaning of the words. Define the type of motivation a) morphologically motivated b) semantically motivated • Driver Someone who drives a vehicle morphologically motivated • Leg The part of a piece of furniture such as a table semantically motivated • Horse A piece of equipment shaped like a box, used in gymnastics semantically motivated

• Wall Emotions or behavior preventing people from feeling close semantically motivated • Hand-made Made by hand, not machine morphologically motivated • Careless Not taking enough care morphologically motivated • Piggish Selfish semantically motivated

what she said but it didn’t sink in my mind “do down to the bottom” ‘to be accepted by mind” semantic motivation I heard Why are you trying to pin the blame on me? “fasten smth somewhere using a pin” – ”to blame smb” semantic motivation I was following the man when he dived into a pub. “jump into deep water” – ”to enter into suddenly” semantic motivation You should be ashamed of yourself, crawling to the director like that “to move along on hands and knees close to the ground” – “to behave very humbly in order to win favor” semantic motivation

In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during («I helped him»). Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or repetitively as time flows («I was helping him»; «I used to help people»).

Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish states and ongoing actions (continuous and progressive aspects) from repetitive actions (habitual aspect).

Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation between the time of the event and the time of reference. This is the case with the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to (but has continuing relevance at) the time of reference: «I have eaten»; «I had eaten»; «I will have eaten».^[1]

Different languages make different grammatical aspectual distinctions; some (such as Standard German; see below) do not make any. The marking of aspect is often conflated with the marking of tense and mood (see tense–aspect–mood). Aspectual distinctions may be restricted to certain tenses: in Latin and the Romance languages, for example, the perfective–imperfective distinction is marked in the past tense, by the division between preterites and imperfects. Explicit consideration of aspect as a category first arose out of study of the Slavic languages; here verbs often occur in pairs, with two related verbs being used respectively for imperfective and perfective meanings.

The concept of grammatical aspect should not be confused with perfect and imperfect verb forms; the meanings of the latter terms are somewhat different, and in some languages, the common names used for verb forms may not follow the actual aspects precisely.

Basic concept[edit]

History[edit]

The Indian linguist Yaska (c. 7th century BCE) dealt with grammatical aspect, distinguishing actions that are processes (bhāva), from those where the action is considered as a completed whole (mūrta). This is the key distinction between the imperfective and perfective. Yaska also applied this distinction to a verb versus an action nominal.^{[citation needed]}

Grammarians of the Greek and Latin languages also showed an interest in aspect, but the idea did not enter into the modern Western grammatical tradition until the 19th century via the study of the grammar of the Slavic languages. The earliest use of the term recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1853.^[2]

Modern usage[edit]

Aspect is often confused with the closely related concept of tense, because they both convey information about time. While tense relates the time of referent to some other time, commonly the speech event, aspect conveys other temporal information, such as duration, completion, or frequency, as it relates to the time of action. Thus tense refers to temporally when while aspect refers to temporally how. Aspect can be said to describe the texture of the time in which a situation occurs, such as a single point of time, a continuous range of time, a sequence of discrete points in time, etc., whereas tense indicates its location in time.

For example, consider the following sentences: «I eat», «I am eating», «I have eaten», and «I have been eating». All are in the present tense, indicated by the present-tense verb of each sentence (eat, am, and have). Yet since they differ in aspect each conveys different information or points of view as to how the action pertains to the present.

Grammatical aspect is a formal property of a language, distinguished through overt inflection, derivational affixes, or independent words that serve as grammatically required markers of those aspects. For example, the Kʼicheʼ language spoken in Guatemala has the inflectional prefixes k— and x— to mark incompletive and completive aspect;^[3][4] Mandarin Chinese has the aspect markers —le 了, —zhe 着, zài— 在, and —guò 过 to mark the perfective, durative stative, durative progressive, and experiential aspects,^[5] and also marks aspect with adverbs;^[6] and English marks the continuous aspect with the verb to be coupled with present participle and the perfect with the verb to have coupled with past participle. Even languages that do not mark aspect morphologically or through auxiliary verbs, however, can convey such distinctions by the use of adverbs or other syntactic constructions.^[7]

Grammatical aspect is distinguished from lexical aspect or Aktionsart, which is an inherent feature of verbs or verb phrases and is determined by the nature of the situation that the verb describes.

Common aspectual distinctions[edit]

The most fundamental aspectual distinction, represented in many languages, is between perfective aspect and imperfective aspect. This is the basic aspectual distinction in the Slavic languages.

It semantically corresponds to the distinction between the morphological forms 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 (from the Latin perfectus, meaning «completed»).

Language	Perfective Aspect	Imperfective Aspect
Latin	Perfect	Imperfect
Spanish	Preterite
French	Passé simple
Greek	Aorist
Portuguese	Preterite perfect

Essentially, the perfective aspect looks at an event as a complete action, while the imperfective aspect views an event as the process of unfolding or a repeated or habitual event (thus corresponding to the progressive/continuous aspect for events of short-term duration and to habitual aspect for longer terms).

For events of short durations in the past, the distinction often coincides with the distinction in the English language between the simple past «X-ed,» as compared to the progressive «was X-ing». Compare «I wrote the letters this morning» (i.e. finished writing the letters: an action completed) and «I was writing the letters this morning» (the letters may still be unfinished).

In describing longer time periods, English needs context to maintain the distinction between the habitual («I called him often in the past» – a habit that has no point of completion) and perfective («I called him once» – an action completed), although the construct «used to» marks both habitual aspect and past tense and can be used if the aspectual distinction otherwise is not clear.

Sometimes, English has a lexical distinction where other languages may use the distinction in grammatical aspect. For example, the English verbs «to know» (the state of knowing) and «to find out» (knowing viewed as a «completed action») correspond to the imperfect and perfect forms of the equivalent verbs in French and Spanish, savoir and saber. This is also true when the sense of verb «to know» is «to know somebody», in this case opposed in aspect to the verb «to meet» (or even to the construction «to get to know»). These correspond to imperfect and perfect forms of conocer in Spanish, and connaître in French. In German, on the other hand, the distinction is also lexical (as in English) through verbs kennen and kennenlernen, although the semantic relation between both forms is much more straightforward since kennen means «to know» and lernen means «to learn».

Aspect vs. tense[edit]

The Germanic languages combine the concept of aspect with the concept of tense. Although English largely separates tense and aspect formally, its aspects (neutral, progressive, perfect, progressive perfect, and [in the past tense] habitual) do not correspond very closely to the distinction of perfective vs. imperfective that is found in most languages with aspect. 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?» and «Did you eat?».

In European languages, rather than locating an event time, the way tense does, aspect describes «the internal temporal constituency of a situation», or in other words, aspect is a way «of conceiving the flow of the process itself».^[8] English aspectual distinctions in the past tense include «I went, I used to go, I was going, I had gone»; in the present tense «I lose, I am losing, I have lost, I have been losing, I am going to lose»; and with the future modal «I will see, I will be seeing, I will have seen, I am going to see». What distinguishes these aspects within each tense is not (necessarily) when the event occurs, but how the time in which it occurs is viewed: as complete, ongoing, consequential, planned, etc.

In most dialects of Ancient Greek, aspect is indicated uniquely by verbal morphology. For example, the very frequently used aorist, though a functional preterite in the indicative mood, conveys historic or ‘immediate’ aspect in the subjunctive and optative. The perfect in all moods is used as an aspectual marker, conveying the sense of a resultant state. E.g. ὁράω – I see (present); εἶδον – I saw (aorist); οἶδα – I am in a state of having seen = I know (perfect).

Also Turkish has a same/similar aspect such as «Görmüş bulunuyorum/durumdayım», where «görmüş» means «having seen» and «bulunuyorum/durumdayım» means «I am in the state».

In many Sino-Tibetan languages, such as Mandarin, verbs lack grammatical markers of tense, but are rich in aspect (Heine, Kuteva 2010^{[full citation needed]}, p. 10). Markers of aspect are attached to verbs to indicate aspect. Event time is inferred through use of these aspectual markers, along with optional inclusion of adverbs.^[9]

Lexical vs. grammatical aspect[edit]

There is a distinction between grammatical aspect, as described here, and lexical aspect. Other terms for the contrast lexical vs. grammatical include: situation vs. viewpoint and inner vs. outer.^[10][11] Lexical aspect, also known as Aktionsart, is an inherent property of a verb or verb-complement phrase, and is not marked formally. The distinctions made as part of lexical aspect are different from those of grammatical aspect. Typical distinctions are between states («I owned»), activities («I shopped»), accomplishments («I painted a picture»), achievements («I bought»), and punctual, or semelfactive, events («I sneezed»). These distinctions are often relevant syntactically. For example, states and activities, but not usually achievements, can be used in English 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 aspect is sometimes called Aktionsart, especially by German and Slavic linguists. Lexical or situation aspect is marked in Athabaskan languages.

One of the factors in situation aspect is telicity. 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, accomplishments and semelfactives have telic situation aspect, while states and activities 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.

Indicating aspect[edit]

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 are Chinese and American Sign Language, which both differentiate many aspects but rely exclusively on optional time-indicating terms to pinpoint an action with respect to time. In other language groups, for example in most modern Indo-European languages (except Slavic languages and some Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi^[12]), aspect has become almost entirely conflated, in the verbal morphological system, with time.

In Russian, aspect is more salient than tense in narrative. 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.g., English).

In Hindi, the aspect marker is overtly separated from the tense/mood marker. Periphrastic Hindi verb forms consist of two elements. The first of these two elements is the aspect marker and the second element (the copula) is the common tense/mood marker.

In literary Arabic (الْفُصْحَى al-fuṣḥā) the verb has two aspect-tenses: perfective (past), and imperfective (non-past). There is some disagreement among grammarians whether to view the distinction as a distinction in aspect, or tense, or both. The past verb (الْفِعْل الْمَاضِي al-fiʿl al-māḍī) denotes an event (حَدَث ḥadaṯ) completed in the past, but it says nothing about the relation of this past event to present status. For example, وَصَلَ waṣala, «arrived», indicates that arrival occurred in the past without saying anything about the present status of the arriver – maybe they stuck around, maybe they turned around and left, etc. – nor about the aspect of the past event except insofar as completeness can be considered aspectual. This past verb is clearly similar if not identical to the Greek aorist, which is considered a tense but is more of an aspect marker. In the Arabic, aorist aspect is the logical consequence of past tense. By contrast, the «Verb of Similarity» (الْفِعْل الْمُضَارِع al-fiʿl al-muḍāriʿ), so called because of its resemblance to the active participial noun, is considered to denote an event in the present or future without committing to a specific aspectual sense beyond the incompleteness implied by the tense: يَضْرِبُ (yaḍribu, he strikes/is striking/will strike/etc.). Those are the only two «tenses» in Arabic (not counting أَمْر amr, command or imperative, which is traditionally considered as denoting future events.) To explicitly mark aspect, Arabic uses a variety of lexical and syntactic devices.

Contemporary Arabic dialects are another matter. One major change from al-fuṣḥā is the use of a prefix particle (بِ bi in Egyptian and Levantine dialects—though it may have a slightly different range of functions in each dialect) to explicitly mark progressive, continuous, or habitual aspect: بيكتب, bi-yiktib, he is now writing, writes all the time, etc.

Aspect can mark the stage of an action. The prospective aspect is a combination of tense and aspect that indicates the action is in preparation to take place. The inceptive aspect identifies the beginning stage of an action (e.g. Esperanto uses ek-, e.g. Mi ekmanĝas, «I am beginning to eat».) and inchoative and ingressive aspects identify a change of state (The flowers started blooming) or the start of an action (He started running). 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 agree in most cases in their use of these aspects, they may not agree in every situation. For example:
  • Some languages have additional grammatical aspects. Spanish and Ancient Greek, for example, have a perfect (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). 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 are typically 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) and aorist, respectively, is used to convey look and see, search and find, listen and hear. (For example, ἠκούομεν (ēkouomen, «we listened») vs. ἠκούσαμεν (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»), and no quería («I did not want to») vs. no quise («I refused (to do something)»). Such differences are often highly language-specific.

By language[edit]

Germanic languages[edit]

English[edit]

The English tense–aspect system has two morphologically distinct tenses, past and non-past, the latter of which is also known as the present-future or, more commonly and less formally, simply the present. No marker of a distinct future tense exists on the verb in English; the futurity of an event may be expressed through the use of the auxiliary verbs «will» and «shall», by a non-past form plus an adverb, as in «tomorrow we go to New York City», or by some other means. Past is distinguished from non-past, in contrast, with internal modifications of the verb. These two tenses may be modified further for progressive aspect (also called continuous aspect), for the perfect, or for both. These two aspectual forms are also referred to as BE +ING^[13] and HAVE +EN,^[14] respectively, which avoids what may be unfamiliar terminology.

Aspects of the present tense:

• Present simple (not progressive, not perfect): «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»

(While many elementary discussions of English grammar classify the present perfect as a past tense, it relates the action to the present time. One cannot say of someone now deceased that they «have eaten» or «have been eating». The present auxiliary implies that they are in some way present (alive), even when the action denoted is completed (perfect) or partially completed (progressive perfect).)

Aspects of the past tense:

• Past simple (not progressive, not perfect): «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»

Aspects can also be marked on non-finite forms of the verb: «(to) be eating» (infinitive with progressive aspect), «(to) have eaten» (infinitive with perfect aspect), «having eaten» (present participle or gerund with perfect aspect), etc. The perfect infinitive can further be governed by modal verbs to express various meanings, mostly combining modality with past reference: «I should have eaten» etc. In particular, the modals will and shall and their subjunctive forms would and should are used to combine future or hypothetical reference with aspectual meaning:

• Simple future, simple conditional: «I will eat», «I would eat»
• Future progressive, conditional progressive: «I will be eating», «I would be eating»
• Future perfect, conditional perfect: «I will have eaten», «I would have eaten»
• Future perfect progressive, conditional perfect progressive: «I will have been eating», «I would have been eating»

The uses of the progressive and perfect 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 traveled widely, but I have never been to Moscow. (Speaker viewpoint at end of action)

But they can have other illocutionary forces or additional modal components:

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)

English expresses some other aspectual distinctions with other constructions. Used to + VERB is a past habitual, as in «I used to go to school,» and going to / gonna + VERB is a prospective, a future situation highlighting current intention or expectation, as in «I’m going to go to school next year.»

African American Vernacular English[edit]

The aspectual systems of certain dialects of English, such as African-American Vernacular English (see for example habitual be), and of creoles based on English vocabulary, such as Hawaiian Creole English, are quite different from those of standard English, and often reflect a more elaborate paradigm of aspectual distinctions (often at the expense of tense).^[15] The following table, appearing originally in Green (2002)^[16] shows the possible aspectual distinctions in AAVE in their prototypical, negative and stressed/emphatic affirmative forms:

Aspectual Marking in AAVE

Aspect/Tense	Prototypical	Stressed / Emphatic Affirmative	Negative
Habitual	‘be eating’ (see Habitual be)	‘DO be eating’	‘don(‘t) be eating’
Remote Past	‘BIN eating’ (see [17])	‘HAVE BIN eating’	‘ain(‘t)/haven’t BIN eating’
Remote Past Completive	‘BIN ate’	‘HAD BIN ate’	‘ain(‘t)/haven’t BIN ate’
Remote Past Perfect	‘had BIN ate’	‘HAD BIN ate’	‘hadn’t BIN ate’
Resultant State	‘dən ate’	‘HAVE dən ate’	‘ain(‘t) dən ate’
Past Perfect Resultant State	‘had dən ate’	‘HAD dən ate’	‘hadn’t dən ate’
Modal Resultant State	‘should’a dən ate’	—	—
Remote Past Resultant State	‘BIN dən ate’	‘HAVE BIN dən ate’	‘ain(‘t)/haven’t BIN dən ate’
Remote Past Perfect Resultant State	‘had BIN dən ate’	—	—
Future Resultant State/Conditional	‘ ‘a be dən ate’	‘WILL be dən ate’	‘won’t be dən ate’
Modal Resultant State	‘might/may be dən ate’	‘MIGHT/MAY be dən ate’	‘might/may not be dən ate’

German vernacular and colloquial[edit]

Although Standard German does not have aspects, many Upper German languages, all West Central German languages, and some more vernacular German languages do make one aspectual distinction, and so do the colloquial languages of many regions, the so-called German regiolects. While officially discouraged in schools and seen as ‘bad language’, local English teachers like the distinction, because it corresponds well with the English continuous form. It is formed by the conjugated auxiliary verb sein («to be») followed by the preposition «am» and the infinitive, or the nominalized verb. The latter two are phonetically indistinguishable; in writing, capitalization differs: «Ich war am essen» vs. «Ich war am Essen» (I was eating, compared to the Standard German approximation: «Ich war beim Essen»); yet these forms are not standardized and thus are relatively infrequently written down or printed, even in quotations or direct speech.

In the Tyrolean and other Bavarian regiolect the prefix *da can be found, which form perfective aspects. «I hu’s gleant» (Ich habe es gelernt = I learnt it) vs. «I hu’s daleant» (*Ich habe es DAlernt = I succeeded in learning).

Dutch[edit]

In Dutch (a West Germanic language), two types of continuous form are used. Both types are considered Standard Dutch.

The first type is very similar to the non-standard German type. It is formed by the conjugated auxiliary verb zijn («to be»), followed by aan het and the gerund (which in Dutch matches the infinitive). For example:

• Present progressive: Ik ben aan het werken («I am working»)
• Past progressive: Ik was aan het werken («I was working»)
• Future progressive: Ik zal aan het werken zijn («I will be working»)

The second type is formed by one of the conjugated auxiliary verbs liggen («to lie»), zitten («to sit»), hangen («to hang»), staan («to stand») or lopen («to walk»), followed by the preposition te and the infinitive. The conjugated verbs indicate the stance of the subject performing or undergoing the action.

• Present progressive: Ik zit te eten («I am eating [while sitting]»), De was hangt te drogen («The laundry is drying [while hanging]»)
• Past progressive: Ik lag te lezen («I was reading [while lying]»), Ik stond te kijken («I was watching [while standing]»)
• Future progressive: Ik zal zitten te werken («I will be working [while sitting]»)

Sometimes the meaning of the auxiliary verb is diminished to ‘being engaged in’. Take for instance these examples:

• De leraar zit steeds te zeggen dat we moeten luisteren («The teacher keeps telling us to listen»)
• Iedereen loopt te beweren dat het goed was («Everyone keeps on saying that it was good»)
• Zit niet zo te zeuren («Stop whining»)

In these cases, there is generally an undertone of irritation.

Slavic languages[edit]

The Slavic languages make a clear distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects; it was in relation to these languages that the modern concept of aspect originally developed.

In Slavic languages, a given verb is, in itself, either perfective or imperfective. Consequently, each language contains many pairs of verbs, corresponding to each other in meaning, except that one expresses perfective aspect and the other imperfective. (This may be considered a form of lexical aspect.) Perfective verbs are commonly formed from imperfective ones by the addition of a prefix, or else the imperfective verb is formed from the perfective one by modification of the stem or ending. Suppletion also plays a small role. Perfective verbs cannot generally be used with the meaning of a present tense – their present-tense forms in fact have future reference. An example of such a pair of verbs, from Polish, is given below:

• Infinitive (and dictionary form): pisać («to write», imperfective); napisać («to write», perfective)
• Present/simple future tense: pisze («writes»); napisze («will write», perfective)
• Compound future tense (imperfective only): będzie pisać («will write, will be writing»)
• Past tense: pisał («was writing, used to write, wrote», imperfective); napisał («wrote», perfective)

In at least the East Slavic and West Slavic languages, there is a three-way aspect differentiation for verbs of motion with the determinate imperfective, indeterminate imperfective, and perfective. The two forms of imperfective can be used in all three tenses (past, present, and future), but the perfective can only be used with past and future. The indeterminate imperfective expresses habitual aspect (or motion in no single direction), while the determinate imperfective expresses progressive aspect. The difference corresponds closely to that between the English «I (regularly) go to school» and «I am going to school (now)». The three-way difference is given below for the Russian basic (unprefixed) verbs of motion.

When prefixes are attached to Russian verbs of motion they become more or less normal imperfective/perfective pairs, with the indeterminate imperfective becoming the prefixed imperfective and the determinate imperfective becoming the prefixed perfective. For example, prefix при- pri- + indeterminate ходи́ть khodít‘ = приходи́ть prikhodít‘ (to arrive (on foot), impf.); and prefix при- pri- + determinate идти́ idtí = прийти prijtí (to arrive (on foot), pf.).

Russian verbs of motion
Imperfective	Perfective	Translation
Indeterminate	Determinate
ходи́ть khodít‘	идти́ idtí	пойти́ pojtí	to go by foot (walk)
е́здить jézdit‘	е́хать jékhat‘	пое́хать pojékhat‘	to go by transport (drive, train, bus, etc.)
бе́гать bégat‘	бежа́ть bezhát‘	побежа́ть pobezhát‘	to run
броди́ть brodít‘	брести́ brestí	побрести́ pobrestí	to stroll, to wander
гоня́ть gonját‘	гнать gnat‘	погна́ть pognát‘	to chase, to drive (cattle, etc.)
ла́зить lázit‘	лезть lezt‘	поле́зть polézt‘	to climb
лета́ть letát‘	лете́ть letét‘	полете́ть poletét‘	to fly
пла́вать plávat‘	плыть plyt‘	поплы́ть poplýt‘	to swim, to sail
по́лзать pólzat‘	ползти́ polztí	поползти́ popolztí	to crawl
вози́ть vozít‘	везти́ veztí	повезти́ poveztí	to carry (by vehicle)
носи́ть nosít‘	нести́ nestí	понести́ ponestí	to carry, to wear
води́ть vodít‘	вести́ vestí	повести́ povestí	to lead, to accompany, to drive (a car)
таска́ть taskát‘	тащи́ть tashchít‘	потащи́ть potashchít‘	to drag, to pull
ката́ть katát‘	кати́ть katít‘	покати́ть pokatít‘	to roll

Romance languages[edit]

Modern Romance languages merge the concepts of aspect and tense but consistently distinguish perfective and imperfective aspects in the past tense. This derives directly from the way the Latin language used to render both aspects and consecutio temporum.

Italian[edit]

Italian language example using the verb mangiare («to eat»):

Mood: indicativo (indicative)
Tense	Italian	English	Explanation
Presente (Present)	io mangio	«I eat», «I’m eating»	merges habitual and continuous aspects, among others
Passato prossimo (Recent past)	io ho mangiato	«I ate», «I have eaten»	merges perfective and perfect
Imperfetto (Imperfect)	io mangiavo	«I was eating», «I usually ate»	merges habitual and progressive aspects
Trapassato prossimo (Recent pluperfect)	io avevo mangiato	«I had eaten»	tense, not ordinarily marked for aspect
Passato remoto (Far past)	io mangiai	«I ate»	perfective aspect
Trapassato remoto (Far pluperfect)	io ebbi mangiato	«I had eaten»	tense
Futuro semplice (Simple future)	io mangerò	«I shall eat»	tense
Futuro anteriore (Future perfect)	io avrò mangiato	«I shall have eaten»	future tense and perfect tense/aspect

The imperfetto/trapassato prossimo contrasts with the passato remoto/trapassato remoto in that imperfetto renders an imperfective (continuous) past while passato remoto expresses an aorist (punctual/historical) past.

Other aspects in Italian are rendered with other periphrases, like prospective (io sto per mangiare «I’m about to eat», io starò per mangiare «I shall be about to eat»), or continuous/progressive (io sto mangiando «I’m eating», io starò mangiando «I shall be eating»).

Indo-Aryan languages[edit]

Hindi[edit]

Hindi has three aspects, habitual aspect, perfective aspect and the progressive aspect. Each of these three aspects are formed from their participles. The aspects of Hindi when conjugated into their personal forms can be put into five grammatical moods: indicative, presumptive, subjunctive, contrafactual, and imperative. In Hindi, the aspect marker is overtly separated from the tense/mood marker. Periphrastic Hindi verb forms consist of two elements. The first of these two elements is the aspect marker. The second element (the copula) is the common tense/mood marker.^[12]

There are a couple of verbs which can be used as the copula to the aspectual participles: होना (honā) [to be, happen], रहना (rêhnā) [to stay, remain], आना (ānā) [to come], and जाना (jānā) [to go]. Each of these copulas provide a unique nuance to the aspect. The default (unmarked) copula is होना (honā) [to be]. These copulas can themselves be conjugated into an aspectual participle and used with another copula, hence forming subaspects. (Seeː Hindi verbs)^[12][18]

Simple Aspect	Perfective Aspect	Habitual Aspect	Progressive Aspect	Translation
होना honā	हुआ होना huā honā	हुआ रहना huā rêhnā	हुआ जाना huā jānā	होता होना hotā honā	होता रहना hotā rêhnā	होता आना hotā ānā	होता जाना hotā jānā	हो रहा होना ho rahā honā	हो रहा रहना ho rahā rêhnā	to happen
करना karnā	किया होना kiyā honā	किया रहना kiyā rêhnā	किया जाना kiyā jānā	करता होना kartā honā	करता रहना kartā rêhnā	करता आना kartā ānā	करता जाना kartā jānā	कर रहा होना kar rahā honā	कर रहा रहना kar rahā rêhnā	to do
मरना marnā	मरा होना marā honā	मरा रहना marā rêhnā	मरा जाना marā jānā	मरता होना martā honā	मरता रहना martā rêhnā	मरता आना martā ānā	मरता जाना martā jānā	मर रहा होना mar rahā honā	मर रहा रहना mar rahā rêhnā	to die

Finnic languages[edit]

Finnish and Estonian, among others, have a grammatical aspect contrast of telicity between telic and atelic. 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. 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. the bear may have survived.

In rare cases corresponding telic and atelic forms can be unrelated by meaning.

Derivational suffixes exist for various aspects. Examples:

• -ahta- («once»), as in huudahtaa («to yell once») (used for emotive verbs like «laugh», «smile», «growl», «bark»; is not used for verbs like «shoot», «say», «drink»)
• -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.

Austronesian languages[edit]

Reo Rapa[edit]

The Rapa language (Reo Rapa) is a mixed language that grew out of Tahitian and Old Rapa among monolingual inhabitants of Rapa Iti. Old Rapa words are still used for grammar and sentence structure, but most common words were replaced by Tahitian words.^[19] Rapa is similar to English as they both have specific tense words such as did or do.

• Past negative: ki’ere /kiʔere/ ^[20]

• Non-past negative (Regular negative) kāre /kaːre/ ^[20]

Hawaiian[edit]

The Hawaiian language conveys aspect as follows:^[21][22][23]

• The unmarked verb, frequently used, can indicate habitual aspect or perfective aspect in the past.
• ke + verb + nei is frequently used and conveys the progressive aspect in the present.
• e + verb + ana conveys the progressive aspect in any tense.
• ua + verb conveys the perfective aspect but is frequently omitted.

Wuvulu[edit]

Wuvulu language is a minority language in Pacific. The Wuvulu verbal aspect is hard to organize because of its number of morpheme combinations and the interaction of semantics between morphemes.^[24] Perfective, imperfective negation, simultaneous and habitual are four aspects markers in Wuvulu language.

• Perfective: The perfective marker -li indicates the action is done before other action.

^[24]

• Imperfect negation: The marker ta- indicates the action has not done and also doesn’t show anything about the action will be done in the future.

^[25]

• Simultaneous: The marker fi indicates the two actions are done at the same time or one action occurs while other action is in progress.

• Habitual: The marker fane- can indicate a habitual activity, which means «keep doing something» in English. Example:

Tokelauan[edit]

There are three types of aspects one must consider when analyzing the Tokelauan language: inherent aspect, situation aspect, and viewpoint aspect.^[20]

The inherent aspect describes the purpose of a verb and what separates verbs from one another. According to Vendler, inherent aspect can be categorized into four different types: activities, achievements, accomplishments, and states. Simple activities include verbs such as pull, jump, and punch. Some achievements are continue and win. Drive-a-car is an accomplishment while hate is an example of a state. Another way to recognize a state inherent aspect is to note whether or not it changes. For example, if someone were to hate vegetables because they are allergic, this state of hate is unchanging and thus, a state inherent aspect. On the other hand, an achievement, unlike a state, only lasts for a short amount of time. Achievement is the highpoint of an action.^[20]

Another type of aspect is situation aspect. Situation aspect is described to be what one is experiencing in his or her life through that circumstance. Therefore, it is his or her understanding of the situation. Situation aspect are abstract terms that are not physically tangible. They are also used based upon one’s point of view. For example, a professor may say that a student who comes a minute before each class starts is a punctual student. Based upon the professor’s judgment of what punctuality is, he or she may make that assumption of the situation with the student. Situation aspect is firstly divided into states and occurrences, then later subdivided under occurrences into processes and events, and lastly, under events, there are accomplishments and achievements.^[20]

The third type of aspect is viewpoint aspect. Viewpoint aspect can be likened to situation aspect such that they both take into consideration one’s inferences. However, viewpoint aspect diverges from situation aspect because it is where one decides to view or see such event. A perfect example is the glass metaphor: Is the glass half full or is it half empty. The choice of being half full represents an optimistic viewpoint while the choice of being half empty represents a pessimistic viewpoint. Not only does viewpoint aspect separate into negative and positive, but rather different point of views. Having two people describe a painting can bring about two different viewpoints. One may describe a situation aspect as a perfect or imperfect. A perfect situation aspect entails an event with no reference to time, while an imperfect situation aspect makes a reference to time with the observation.^[20]

Torau[edit]

Aspect in Torau is marked with post-verbal particles or clitics. While the system for marking the imperfective aspect is complex and highly developed, it is unclear if Torau marks the perfective and neutral viewpoints. The imperfective clitics index one of the core arguments, usually the nominative subject, and follow the rightmost element in a syntactic structure larger than the word. The two distinct forms for marking the imperfective aspect are (i)sa- and e-. While more work needs to be done on this language, the preliminary hypothesis is that (i)sa- encodes the stative imperfective and e- encodes the active imperfective. It is also important to note that reduplication always cooccurs with e-, but it usually does not with (i)sa-. This example below shows these two imperfective aspect markers giving different meanings to similar sentences.

In Torau, the suffix —to, which must attach to a preverbal particle, may indicate similar meaning to the perfective aspect. In realis clauses, this suffix conveys an event that is entirely in the past and no longer occurring. When -to is used in irrealis clauses, the speaker conveys that the event will definitely occur (Palmer, 2007). Although this suffix is not explicitly stated as a perfective viewpoint marker, the meaning that it contributes is very similar to the perfective viewpoint.^[27]

Malay/Indonesian[edit]

Like many Austronesian languages, the verbs of the Malay language follow a system of affixes to express changes in meaning. To express the aspects, Malay uses a number of auxiliary verbs:

• sudah: perfective, ‘saya sudah makan’ = ‘I have [already] eaten’
• baru: near perfective, ‘saya baru makan’ = ‘I have just eaten’
• belum: imperfective, ‘saya belum makan’ = ‘I have not eaten’
• sedang: progressive not implicating an end
• masih: progressive implicating an end
• pernah: semelfactive

Philippine languages[edit]

Like many Austronesian languages, the verbs of the Philippine languages follow a complex system of affixes to express subtle changes in meaning. However, the verbs in this family of languages are conjugated to express the aspects and not the tenses. Though many of the Philippine languages do not have a fully codified grammar, most of them follow the verb aspects that are demonstrated by Filipino or Tagalog.

Creole languages[edit]

Creole languages^[28] typically use the unmarked verb for timeless habitual aspect, or for stative aspect, or for perfective aspect in the past. Invariant pre-verbal markers are often used. Non-stative verbs typically can optionally be marked for the progressive, habitual, completive, or irrealis aspect. The progressive in English-based Atlantic Creoles often uses de (from English «be»). Jamaican Creole uses a (from English «are») or de for the present progressive and a combination of the past time marker (did, behn, ehn or wehn) and the progressive marker (a or de) for the past progressive (e.g. did a or wehn de). Haitian Creole uses the progressive marker ap. Some Atlantic Creoles use one marker for both the habitual and progressive aspects. In Tok Pisin, the optional progressive marker follows the verb. Completive markers tend to come from superstrate words like «done» or «finish», and some creoles model the future/irrealis marker on the superstrate word for «go».

American Sign Language[edit]

American Sign Language (ASL) is similar to many other sign languages in that it has no grammatical tense but many verbal aspects produced by modifying the base verb sign.

An example is illustrated with the verb TELL. The basic form of this sign is produced with the initial posture of the index finger on the chin, followed by a movement of the hand and finger tip toward the indirect object (the recipient of the telling). Inflected into the unrealized inceptive aspect («to be just about to tell»), the sign begins with the hand moving from in front of the trunk in an arc to the initial posture of the base sign (i.e., index finger touching the chin) while inhaling through the mouth, dropping the jaw, and directing eye gaze toward the verb’s object. The posture is then held rather than moved toward the indirect object. During the hold, the signer also stops the breath by closing the glottis. Other verbs (such as «look at», «wash the dishes», «yell», «flirt») are inflected into the unrealized inceptive aspect similarly: The hands used in the base sign move in an arc from in front of the trunk to the initial posture of the underlying verb sign while inhaling, dropping the jaw, and directing eye gaze toward the verb’s object (if any), but subsequent movements and postures are dropped as the posture and breath are held.^{[citation needed]}

Other aspects in ASL include the following: stative, inchoative («to begin to…»), predispositional («to tend to…»), susceptative («to… easily»), frequentative («to… often»), protractive («to… continuously»), incessant («to… incessantly»), durative («to… for a long time»), iterative («to… over and over again»), intensive («to… very much»), resultative («to… completely»), approximative («to… somewhat»), semblitive («to appear to…»), increasing («to… more and more»). Some aspects combine with others to create yet finer distinctions.

Aspect is unusual in ASL in that transitive verbs derived for aspect lose their grammatical transitivity. They remain semantically transitive, typically assuming an object made prominent using a topic marker or mentioned in a previous sentence. See Syntax in ASL for details.

Terms for various aspects[edit]

The following aspectual terms are found in the literature. Approximate English equivalents are given.

• Perfective: ‘I struck the bell’ (an event viewed in its entirety, without reference to its temporal structure during its occurrence)
• Momentane: ‘The mouse squeaked once’ (contrasted to ‘The mouse squeaked / was squeaking’)
• Perfect (a common conflation of aspect and tense): ‘I have arrived’ (brings attention to the consequences of a situation in the past)
  • Recent perfect, also known as after perfect: ‘I just ate’ or ‘I am after eating’ (Hiberno-English)
• Discontinuous past: In English a sentence such as «I put it on the table» is neutral in implication (the object could still be on the table or not), but in some languages such as Chichewa the equivalent tense carries an implication that the object is no longer there. It is thus the opposite of the perfect aspect.
• Prospective (a conflation of aspect and tense): ‘He is about to fall’, ‘I am going to cry» (brings attention to the anticipation of a future situation)
• Imperfective (an activity with ongoing nature: combines the meanings of both the continuous and the habitual aspects): ‘I was walking to work’ (continuous) or ‘I walked (used to walk, would walk) to work every day’ (habitual).
  • Habitual: ‘I used to walk home from work’, ‘I would walk home from work every day’, ‘I walk home from work every day’ (a subtype of imperfective)
  • Continuous: ‘I am eating’ or ‘I know’ (situation is described as ongoing and either evolving or unevolving; a subtype of imperfective)
    • Progressive: ‘I am eating’ (action is described as ongoing and evolving; a subtype of continuous)
    • Stative: ‘I know French’ (situation is described as ongoing but not evolving; a subtype of continuous)
• Gnomic/generic: ‘Fish swim and birds fly’ (general truths)
• Episodic: ‘The bird flew’ (non-gnomic)
• Continuative aspect: ‘I am still eating’
• Inceptive/ingressive: ‘I started to run’ (beginning of a new action: dynamic)
• Inchoative: ‘The flowers started to bloom’ (beginning of a new state: static)
• Terminative/cessative: ‘I finished eating/reading’
• Defective: ‘I almost fell’
• Pausative: ‘I stopped working for a while’
• Resumptive: ‘I resumed sleeping’
• Punctual: ‘I slept’
• Durative/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’. Or, ‘I run around’, vs. ‘I run’
• Experiential: ‘I have gone to school many times’ (see for example Chinese aspects)
• Intentional: ‘I listened carefully’
• Accidental: ‘I accidentally knocked over the chair’
• Intensive: ‘It glared’
• Moderative: ‘It shone’
• Attenuative: ‘It glimmered’
• Segmentative: ‘It is coming out in successive multitudes’^[29]

See also[edit]

• Aktionsart
• Ancient Greek grammar: Dependence of moods and tenses
• Aspect in Standard Chinese
• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammatical tense
• Grammatical mood
• Nominal TAM (tense–aspect–mood)
• Tense–aspect–mood

Notes[edit]

Other references[edit]

• 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. Translation of German Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1990.
• Morfofonologian harjoituksia Archived 12 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Lauri Carlson
• Bache, C (1982). «Aspect and Aktionsart: Towards a semantic distinction». Journal of Linguistics. 18 (1): 57–72. doi:10.1017/s0022226700007234. S2CID 144397004.
• Berdinetto, P. M., & Delfitto, D. (2000). «Aspect vs. Actionality: Some reasons for keeping them apart». In O. Dahl (Ed.), Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe (pp. 189–226). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Binnick, R. I. (1991). Time and the verb: A guide to tense and aspect. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Binnick, R. I. (2006). «Aspect and Aspectuality». In B. Aarts & A. M. S. McMahon (Eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics (pp. 244–268). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
• Chertkova, M. Y. (2004). ««Vid or Aspect? On the Typology of a Slavic and Romance Category» [Using Russian and Spanish Material]». Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Filologiya. 58 (9–1): 97–122.
• Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Frawley, W. (1992). Linguistic semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Kabakciev, K. (2000). Aspect in English: a «common-sense» view of the interplay between verbal and nominal referents (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy). Springer. Retrieved 2016-05-18.
• Kortmann, B (1991). «The Triad ‘Tense–Aspect–Aktionsart’«. Belgian Journal of Linguistics. 6: 9–30. doi:10.1075/bjl.6.02kor.
• MacDonald, J. E. (2008). The syntactic nature of inner aspect: A minimalist perspective. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co.
• Maslov, I. S. (1998). «Vid glagol’nyj» [«Aspect of the verb»]. In V. N. Yartseva (Ed.), Jazykoznanie: Bol’shoj entsyklopedicheskij slovar‘ (pp. 83–84). Moscow: Bol’shaja Rossijskaja Entsyklopedija.
• Richardson, K. (2007). Case and aspect in Slavic. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Sasse, H.-J. (2002). «Recent activity in the theory of aspect: Accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state?» (PDF). Linguistic Typology. 6 (2): 199–271. doi:10.1515/lity.2002.007.
• Sasse, H.-J. (2006). «Aspect and Aktionsart». In E. K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 1, pp. 535–538). Boston: Elsevier.
• Smith, Carlota S. (1991). The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Tatevosov, S (2002). «The parameter of actionality». Linguistic Typology. 6 (3): 317–401. doi:10.1515/lity.2003.003.
• Travis, Lisa deMena (2010). «Inner aspect», Dordrecht, Springer..
• Verkuyl, H. (1972). On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects, Reidel, Dordrecht.
• Verkuyl, H. (1993). A Theory of Aspectuality: the interaction between temporal and atemporal structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Verkuyl, H. (2005). «How (in-)sensitive is tense to aspectual information?» In B. Hollebrandse, A. van Hout & C. Vet (Eds.), Crosslinguistic views on tense, aspect and modality (pp. 145–169). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
• Zalizniak, A. A., & Shmelev, A. D. (2000). Vvedenie v russkuiu aspektologiiu [Introduction to Russian aspectology]. Moskva: IAzyki russkoi kul’tury.

External links[edit]

• Robert Binnick, Annotated tense/aspect bibliography (around 9000 entries)
• TAMPA: Aspect Explained
• Anna Kibort, Aspekt doi:10.15126/SMG.18/1.08
• Anna Katarzyna Młynarczyk: Aspectual Pairing in Polish, a pdf version of the book
• Grammar Tutorials — a column overview of the English tenses
• Greek tenses
• Verb Aspect