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Aspect, as discussed here, is a ''formal'' property of a language. Some languages distinguish a large number of formal aspects (see the list below), while others distinguish none at all. Even languages that do not mark aspect formally, however, can convey such distinctions, if important, by the use of adverbs, phrases, serial verb constructions or other means. COMMON ASPECTUAL DISTINCTIONS 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 tenses known respectively as the Aorist and Imperfect in Greek, the Preterite and imperfect in Spanish, the Simple Past (passé simple) and imperfect in French, and the Perfect and imperfect in Latin. Essentially, the perfective aspect refers to a single event conceived as a unit, while the imperfective aspect represents an event in the process of unfolding or a repeated or habitual event. In the past tense, the distinction often coincides with the distinction between the simple past "X-ed", as compared to the progressive "was X-ing". For example, the perfective would translate both verbs in the sentence "He raised his sword and struck the enemy". However, in the sentence "As he was striking the enemy, he was killed by an arrow", the first verb would be rendered by an imperfective and the second by a perfective. ASPECT VS. TENSE Aspect is a somewhat difficult concept to grasp for the speakers of most modern Indo-European Languages , because they tend to conflate the concept of aspect with the concept of Tense . (The two concepts are, however, mostly independent in the modern Slavic Languages , such as Russian , and in Greek .) Although English largely separates tense and aspect formally, its aspects (neutral, progressive, perfect and progressive perfect) do not correspond very closely to the distinction of perfective vs. imperfective that is common in most other languages. Furthermore, the separation of tense and aspect in English is not maintained rigidly. One instance of this is the alternation, in informal English, between sentences such as "Have you eaten yet?" and "Did you eat yet?". Another is in the past perfect ("I had eaten"), which sometimes represents the combination of past tense and perfect aspect ("I was full because I had already eaten"), but sometimes simply represents a past action which is anterior to another past action ("A little while after I had eaten, my friend arrived"). (The latter situation is often represented in other languages by a simple perfective tense. Formal Spanish and French use a Past Anterior tense in cases such as this.) LEXICAL VS. GRAMMATICAL ASPECT It is extremely important to distinguish between grammatical aspect, as described here, and '', especially by German and Slavic linguists. USAGE OF ASPECTS In some languages, aspect and time are very clearly separated, making them much more distinct to their speakers. There are a number of languages that mark aspect much more saliently than time. Prominent in this category is Chinese , which differentiates a whole slew of aspects but relies exclusively on (optional) time-words to pinpoint an action with respect to time. In other language groups, for example in most modern Indo-European Languages (except Slavic Languages ), aspect has become almost entirely conflated, in the tense system, with time. 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). Arabic shows a contrast between Dynamic and Static Aspect . For example, the concepts 'ride' and 'mount' are shown by forms of the same verb ''rukubun'', static in the former case and dynamic in the latter. Aspect can mark the stage of an action. The '', e.g. ''Mi ekmangas'', "I am beginning to eat."). Aspects of stage continue through progressive, pausative, resumptive, cessive, and terminative. Important qualifications:
ASPECT IN ENGLISH According to one prevalent account, the English tense system is considered to have strictly only two basic ''times'' (since no primitive future tense exists in English, and the futurity of an event is expressed in English through the use of the Auxiliary Verb s " Will " and " Shall ", by use of a present form, as in "tomorrow we go to Newark", or by some other means). But present and past are expressed using direct modifications of the verb, which may then be modified further by the Progressive Aspect (also called the ''continuous'' aspect), the Perfect Aspect (also called the ''completed'' aspect), or both. Each tense is named according to its combination of aspects and time. So we have for the present tense:
...and for the past tense:
(Note that, while many elementary discussions of English grammar would classify the Present Perfect as a past tense, from the standpoint of strict linguistics – and that elucidated here – it is clearly a species of the present, as we cannot say of someone now deceased that he "has eaten" or "has been eating"; the present auxiliary implies that he is in some way ''present'' (alive), even if the action denoted is completed (perfect) or partially completed (progressive perfect).) Another aspect that does survive in English, but that is no longer productive, is the Frequentative , which conveys the sense of continuously repeated action; while prominent in Latin , it is omitted from most discussions of English grammar, as it suggests itself only by Scandinavian Suffix es 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.). Note that the aspectual systems of certain dialects of English, such as Hawaiian Creole English and African-American Vernacular English , are quite different from standard English, and often distinguish aspect at the expense of tense. ASPECT IN SLAVIC LANGUAGES In and Imperfective (in contrast with English which has two aspectual oppositions: perfect vs. neutral and progressive vs. nonprogressive). The aspectual distinctions exist on the lexical level - there is no unique method to form a perfective verb from a given imperfective one (or conversely). With a few exceptions each Slavic verb is either perfective or imperfective. Most verbs form strict pairs of one perfective and one imperfective verb with generally the same meaning. However, in each Slavic language there is a number of verbs which are bi-aspectual and act as both imperfective and perfective. They are mainly borrowings from non-Slavic languages, but some native verbs also belong to this group. As opposed to them, mono-aspectual verbs are mainly native. There are mono-aspectual imperfective verbs without perfective equivalents (among others, verbs with the meaning ''to be'' and ''to have'') as well as perfective verbs without imperfective equivalents (for instance, verbs with the meaning 'become ...', e.g. ''to become paralyzed'' etc.). Perfective aspect allows the speaker to describe the action as finished, completed, finished in the natural way. Imperfective aspect does not present 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, both aspects could be used in the same tense of Serbian. For example: ''Ja sam pojeo'' signals that the action was completed. Its meaning can be given as "I ate (something) and I finished eating (it)"; or "I ate (something) up". ''Ja sam jeo'' signals that the action took place (at a specified moment, or in the course of one's life, or every day, etc.); it may mean "I was eating", "I ate" or "I've been eating". The Polish Language can also serve as a typical Slavic language. All following examples are Polish. Imperfective verbs mean:
Perfective verbs mean past or future, but not present activities – an activity which is happening now cannot be ended, so it cannot be perfective. Perfective verbs mean:
Most simple Polish verbs are imperfective (the same in other Slavic languages), ex. ''iść'' 'to walk, to go', ''nieść'' 'to carry', ''pisać'' 'to write'. But there are also few simple perfective verbs, ex. ''dać'' 'to give', ''siąść'' 'to sit down'. There exist many perfective verbs with suffixes and without prefixes, ex. ''krzyknąć'' 'to shout', ''kupić'' 'to buy' (cf. the imperfective ''kupować'' with a different suffix). Numerous perfective verbs are formed from simple imperfectives by prefixation. To create the perfective counterpart, verbs use various Prefix es without any clear rules. The actual prefix can even depend on a dialect or special meaning, ex. the perfective counterpart to ''malować'' is ''pomalować'' when it means 'to paint a wall', or ''namalować'' when it means 'to paint a picture'. Besides the strict perfective equivalent, a number of other prefixed verbs may be formed from a given simple imperfective verb. They all have similar but distinct meaning. And they form, as a rule, their own imperfective equivalents by means of suffixation (attaching Suffix es) or stem '''alternation'''. Example:
There is a number of verbs which form their aspectual counterparts by simultaneous prefixation and suffixation or by suppletion, ex. (the first one is imperfective) ''stawiać - postawić'' 'to set up', ''brać - wziąć'' 'to take', ''widzieć - zobaczyć'' 'to see'. Special imperfective verbs are those which express aimless motions. They are mono-aspectual, i.e they have no perfective equivalents. They are formed from other imperfective verbs by stem alternations or suppletion, ex. ''nosić'' 'to carry around' (from ''nieść''), ''chodzić'' 'to walk around, to go around' (from ''iść'' 'to go, to walk'). However, when such a verb gets an aim anyway, it becomes iterative: ''chodzić do szkoły'' 'to go to school'. Other iteratives build another group of mono-aspectual imperfective verbs. They are formed from other imperfective verbs, including the previous group: ''chadzać'' 'to walk around usually' (from ''chodzić''), ''jadać'' 'to eat usually' (from ''jeść'' 'to eat'). Both groups are not too numerous: most Polish verbs cannot form iterative counterparts. Perfective verbs which express activities executed in many places, on many objects or by many subjects at the same time, and those which express actions or states which last some time, have no imperfective counterparts. They are formed with the prefix ''po-'' (which can have other functions as well). States and activities which last for some time can be expressed by means of both imperfective and perfective verbs: ''cały dzień leżał w łóżku'' 'he was in bed all day long' (literally: 'he lay in bed') means nearly the same as ''cały dzień przeleżał w łóżku''. The difference is mainly stylistic: imperfective is neutral here, while using perfective causes stronger tone of the statement. Aspect in Slavic is a superior category in relation to Tense or Mood . Particularly, some verbal forms (like infinitive) cannot distinguish tense but they still distinguish aspect. Here is the list of Polish verb forms which can be formed by both imperfective and perfective verbs (such a list is similar in other Slavic languages). The example is an imperfective and a perfective Polish verb with the meaning 'to write'. All personal forms are given in 3rd person, masculine singular:
The following may be formed only if the verb is imperfective:
One form may be created only if the verb is perfective, namely:
ASPECT IN FINNIC LANGUAGES is telic and Partitive is atelic. For example, the (implicit) purpose of shooting is to kill, such that:
Sometimes, corresponding telic and atelic forms have as little to do with each other semantically as "take" has with "take off". For example, ''naida'' means "to marry" when telic, but "to have sex with" when atelic. Also, derivational suffices exist for various aspects. Examples:
There are derivational suffixes for verbs, which carry Frequentative , Momentane , Causative , and Inchoative aspect meanings; also, pairs of verbs differing only in Transitivity exist. CONFUSING TERMINOLOGY: PERFECTIVE VS. PERFECT The terms ''perfective'' and ''perfect'' are used in an unfortunate and highly confusing fashion in different writings about linguistics. Traditional Greek grammar uses the term "perfect" to refer to a grammatical tense encoding what is variously described as a past action with present relevance or a present state resulting from a past action. (For example, "I have gone to the cinema" implies both that I went to the cinema and that I am now in the cinema.) The perfect is opposed to the Aorist , describing a simple past action, and the Imperfect , describing an ongoing past action. From this, the aspectual nature of the perfect tense was generalized into the Perfect Aspect , describing a previously completed action with relevance to a particular time. Accordingly, English grammar speaks of the '' Present Perfect '' ("I have gone"), the '' Past Perfect '' or '' Pluperfect '' ("I had gone"), and the '' Future Perfect '' ("I will have gone"). Latin, however, lacks a distinction between aorist and perfect, and for morphological reasons the single tense representing the combination of both meanings is called the "perfect". The two-way distinction here between imperfect and perfect is carried over into the terminology of various modern languages, such as the Slavic Languages , where a distinction between "imperfective" and "perfective" aspect corresponds to a distinction between an event viewed as ongoing or with internal structure and an event viewed as a simple whole. That is, what is called "perfective" is similar to the aspectual nature of the original Greek aorist, ''not'' the Greek perfect. Many linguists have tried to maintain this terminology. The web site of SIL, for example, describes the "perfective aspect" as "an aspect that expresses a temporal view of an event or state as a simple whole, apart from the consideration of the internal structure of the time in which it occurs" {Link without Title} . This has led other linguists to categorize the three-way aspectual distinction visible in Greek, English, Spanish and various other languages as a distinction between "imperfective", "perfective" and "perfect". Not surprisingly, the latter two are constantly confused, and "perfective" is often taken to be synonymous with "perfect". EXAMPLES OF VARIOUS ASPECTS RENDERED IN ENGLISH
: 'I would walk used to walk home from work.' (past habit)
Languages which contrast intentional and accidental aspect morphologically 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)''. EXTERNAL LINKS
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