Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, grammatical aspect is a property of a verb that defines the nature of temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. In most modern Indo-European languages, including English, the concept of aspect has become conflated with the concept of tense, although aspect is still emphasized in modern Slavic languages such as Russian. Older Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit, Latin, and Classical Greek all emphasize aspect, as do many non-Indo-European languages such as Finnish, Chinese, and Arabic. Moreover, certain pidgin dialects of English such as Hawaiian Creole English and African-American Vernacular English emphasize aspect instead of tense. The classical Indo-European aspects are aorist aspect, perfective aspect, and imperfective aspect, although it is possible to create grammatical models which use additional or different aspects with Indo-European languages. As linguistic tense-forms often convey distinctions of both time ('past', present, future) and aspect ('aorist', perfective, imperfective), many discussions of grammar conceive of both aspect and time as mutually distinct and subsumed under tense. It is somewhat difficult to explain the idea of aspect in English (and most other modern Indo-European languages) since they use the same patterns to encode in tense both the time and the aspect of a verb together. Time describes whether an action or event happens in the past, present, or future. Aspect describes the duration that the event covers; for example, whether the event was/is/will be of some fixed range of time, or whether it was/is/will be an ongoing process. The two do not necessarily have to be represented together, a distinction that has been long since lost in English, where the verb tense-form now encodes both aspect and time together. For example, "I had eaten" expresses both past time and perfective aspect (a completed action), whereas "I was eating" expresses both past time and imperfective aspect (an ongoing/unfinished action). Several other naming schemes have been created in English grammar; perfective aspect is sometimes referred to as completed, imperfective aspect as continuous or progressive, and aorist aspect as simple. Another aspect that does survive in English, albeit latently, 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're affixed (e.g., "blabber" for "blab", "chatter" for chat", "dribble" for "drip", "crackle" for "crack", etc.)

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 which care much more about aspect than time. Prominent in this category is Chinese, which differentiates a whole slew of aspects but relies exclusively on (optional) time-words to temporally pinpoint an action. In other language groups, for example in most modern Indo-European languages (except Slavic languages), aspect has become entirely conflated with the tense system. In Russian and others, 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 it morphologically and others with auxiliaries (e.g. English). Arabic shows a contrast between dynamic and static aspect For example, the concepts ride and mount are shown by the same verb, rukubun, static in the former case and dynamic in the latter.

Aspect and Aktionsart

Some linguists (particularly German and Slavic linguists) draw a distinction between the grammatical phenomenon of aspect and the semantic concept which they call Aktionsart (German for manner/method of action). In these terms, aspect is a specialized grammatical category for the expression of Aktionsart. Aktionsart can be expressed in all languages, but the grammatical category aspect is only found in very specific languages. In English linguistics, the term aspect is often used for both meanings, and so it is on this page.

Aspect in Slavic languages

In Slavic languages there are two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective. Perfective aspect allows the speaker to describe the action as finished, completed. Imperfective aspect does not describe the action as finished, but rather as continuing or repeating. An example will be made of the verb "to eat" in the Serbian language. The verb translates into Serbian either as "jesti" (imperfective) or "pojesti" (perfective). Now, each aspect could be used with each tense of Serbian (except the present tense).

Serbian
Example	Tense	Aspect
Ja sam jeo	past	imperfective
Ja sam pojeo		perfective
Ja sam bio jeo	plusquamperfect	imperfective
Ja sam bio pojeo		perfective
Ja ću jesti	future	imprefective
Ja ću pojesti		perfective

Ja sam pojeo conveys the notion that the action was completed. Its meaning can be described as "I ate (something) and I finished eating (it)". Ja sam jeo passes on the information that the action took place (at a specified moment, or in the course of one's life, or every day, etc.).

Aspect in Fennic languages

Finnish and Estonian, among others, have two aspects: telic and atelic. Telic sentences refer to actions where a goal, that is, the intended purpose of the action is achieved. Atelic sentences do not mention if the goal has been achieved. The aspect is indicated by the case of the object: accusative is telic and partitive atelic. For example, the (implicit) purpose of shooting is to kill, such that:

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

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

Aspects in English

The English tense system is generally considered to have strictly only two times (future tense as such does not exist in English, and the futurity of an event is expressed in English through the use of the auxiliary verbs "will" and "shall"). Present and past are expressed using verbs, which are then modified by some non-simple aspect or combination thereof; i.e., either progressive/continuous, perfect/completed, or both. Tenses are named according to the combination of aspects and time they possess. So we have for the present tense-

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

...and for the past tense-

• Past Simple (not progressive/continuous, not perfect; simple): "I ate"
• Past Imperfect (progressive, not perfect): "I was eating"
• Past Perfect (not progressive, perfect): "I had eaten"
• Past Perfect Continuous (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"/"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). Such is the distinction between tense and aspect, now obscured in English.) As well as the two basic times of present and past, English has a certain number of auxiliary verbs that are combined with the infinitive to convey a variety of senses, including those normally expressed in other European languages by the future and conditional tenses, such as

• capacity: "I can swim."
• permissiveness: "I may swim."
• willingness: "I will swim."
• futurity: "I will swim."/"I shall swim."

When combined with these auxiliaries the infinitive form changes to accommodate the same combinations of aspect available for the two tenses, providing English speakers with, among other semantic possibilities, a working future tense:

• He can/may/will do (not progressive, not perfect)
• He can/may/will be doing (progressive, not perfect)
• He can/may/will have done (not progressive, perfect)
• He can/may/will have been doing (progressive, perfect)

One ought not derive the impression from the above that auxiliary verbs in English serve only to convey aspect; they additionally, and principally, serve to convey differences in mood, and as such are often referred to as modals. Indeed, "can", "will", and "may" all express indicative mood, respectively corresponding to the conditional modals "could", "would", and "might". It should further be noted that, while this correspondence works elegantly in theory, with the obscuring of mood and aspect in English, its gradual extinction of the subjunctive mood, and the further complicating optional usage of the first person "shall"/"should" auxiliaries (to distinguish willingness from futurity), the English system of modals has become quite loose, at times ambiguous, and difficult to formalize so as to reflect common, accepted practice. It is to be stressed that these are the structural expressions of aspect and can convey meanings that would be expressed by separate and different aspects in other languages. The typical contrasts of aspect in many languages can be distinguished in English only with the aid of phrases; thus are exhibited below some of the many aspects found in the world's languages:

Examples of various aspects rendered in English

• Habitual: I walk home from work. (every day)

: I would/used to walk home from work. (past habit)

• Perfective ("perfect"): I have gone to the cinema.
• Imperfective: Im going home.' (the action is in progress)
• Progressive: I am eating.
• Prospective: I am about to eat.
• Inceptive: I am beginning to eat.
• Continuative: I am continuing to eat.
• Terminative: I am finishing my meal.
• Inchoative: My nose is turning red. (from the cold)
• Cessative: I am quitting smoking.
• 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: I go to school a lot.
• Experiential: I have gone to school many times.
• Intentional: I listened carefully.
• Accidental: I knocked over the chair.
• Generic: Mangos grow on trees.
• Intensive: It glared.
• Moderative: It shined.
• Attenuative: It glimmered.

Languages which contrast intentional and accidental aspect are extremely rare; one such language is Bats, which distinguishes this aspectual difference for just six verbs. Compare so wodze I fell down (through no fault of my own, accidentally) and as wodze I fell down (through something I did, or on purpose).

References

• Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, by Hadumod Bussmann, edited by Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi, Routledge, London 1996. Translation of German Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1990.

Category:Grammar Category:Grammatical aspects Category:Linguistics ja:相 (言語学) pl:Aspekt (gramatyka) de:Aspekt (Linguistik)

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