Aspect is a grammatical category

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Romance languages

 

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 language example (verb mangiare, to eat):

 

Mood: indicativo (indicative)

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", or "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").

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Finnic languages

 

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., "I shot the bear (and I am not telling if it died)".

 

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

 

Also, derivational suffixes exist for various aspects. Examples:

-ahta- "do suddenly by itself" as in ammahtaa "to shoot up" from ampua "to shoot"

-ele- "repeatedly" as in ammuskella "to go shooting around"

 

There are derivational suffixes for verbs, which carry frequentative, momentane, causative, and inchoative aspect meanings also, pairs of verbs differing only in transitivity exist.

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Philippine languages

Main article: Tagalog grammar#Conjugation Chart

 

Like many Austronesian languages, the verbs of the Philippine languages follow a complex system of affixes in order 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.

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Hawaiian

 

The Hawaiian language conveys aspect as follows:[10][11][12]

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.

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Creole languages

 

Creole languages,[13] 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 pan (from English "upon") for the present progressive and wa (from English "was") for the past progressive. 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".

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American Sign Language

 

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 of the jaw, 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.

 

Other aspects in ASL include the following: stative, inchoative ("to begin to..."), predisposional ("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.

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Terms for various aspects

 

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)

Prospective (a conflation of aspect and tense): 'I am about to eat', 'I am going to eat" (brings attention to the anticipation of a future situation)

Imperfective (an action with ongoing nature: combines the meanings of both the continuous and the habitual aspects): 'I am walking to work' (continuous) or 'I walk to work every day' (habitual).

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)

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)

Gnomic/generic: 'Fish swim and birds fly' (general truths)

Episodic: 'The bird flew' (non-gnomic)

Continuative aspect: 'I am still eating'

Inceptive or 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 my meal'

Defective: 'I almost fell'

Pausative: 'I stopped working for a while'

Resumptive: 'I resumed sleeping'

Punctual: 'I slept'

Durative: 'I slept for a while'

Delimitative: 'I slept for an hour'

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'

Intentional: 'I listened carefully'

Accidental: 'I accidentally knocked over the chair'

Intensive: 'It glared'

Moderative: 'It shone'

Attenuative: 'It glimmered'

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See also

Aktionsart

Ancient Greek grammar: Dependence of moods and tenses

Grammatical conjugation

Grammatical tense

Grammatical mood

Nominal TAM (tense–aspect–mood)

Tense–aspect–mood

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Notes

^ Robert I. Binnick (1991). Time and the verb: a guide to tense and aspect. Oxford University Press US. pp. 135–6. ISBN 978-0-19-506206-9. Retrieved 12 August 2011.

^ Pye, Clifton (2008). In Stacey Stowers, Nathan Poell. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics (University of Kansas title=Mayan Morphosyntax) 26.

^ Pye, Clifton (2001). "The Acquisition of Finiteness in K'iche' Maya." BUCLD 25: Proceedings of the 25th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 645-656. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

^ Li, Charles, and Sandra Thompson (1981). "Aspect." Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 184-237.

^ Zhang, Yaxu (2 July 2008). "Brain responses to agreement violations of Chinese grammatical aspect". NeuroReport 19 (10): 1039–43. doi:10.1097/WNR.0b013e328302f14f. PMID 18580575. Retrieved 6 December 2008.

^ Gabriele, Alison (2008). "Transfer and Transition in the L2 Acquisition of Aspect". Studies in Second Language Acquisition: 6. Retrieved 12 November 2008.

^ Bernard Comrie, 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press

^ See, for example, Gabriele, Allison; McClure, William (2003). "Why swimming is just as difficult as dying for Japanese learners of English". ZAS Papers in Linguistics 29: 1.[dead link]

^ See, for example, Partee, Barbara H (1973). "Some Structural Analogies between Tenses and Pronouns in English". Journal of Philosophy (Journal of Philosophy, Inc.) 70 (18): 601. JSTOR 2025024.

^ Östen Dahl, Tense and Aspect Systems, Blackwell, 1985: ch. 6.

^ Schütz, Albert J., All about Hawaiian, Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1995: pp. 23-25.

^ Pukui, Mary Kawena, and Elbert, Samuel H., New Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary, Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1992: pp. 228-231.

^ Holm, John, An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000: pp. 173-189.

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Other references

Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (ISBN 0-415-20319-8), by Hadumod Bussmann, edited by Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi, Routledge, London 1996. Translation of German Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1990.

Morfofonologian harjoituksia, Lauri Carlson

Bache, C. (1982). Aspect and Aktionsart: Towards a semantic distinction. Journal of Linguistics, 18(01), 57-72.

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.

Kortmann, B. (1991). The Triad "Tense–Aspect–Aktionsart". Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 6, 9-30.

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? Linguistic Typology, 6(2), 199-271.

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, C. S. (1991). The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Tatevosov, S. (2002). The parameter of actionality. Linguistic Typology, 6(3), 317-401.

Travis, L. (in preparation). Inner aspect.

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.