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.

Related Topics:
Linguistics - Verb

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 an perfective.

Related Topics:
Perfective aspect - Imperfective aspect - Aorist - Imperfect - Preterite - Simple past - Perfect

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Important qualifications:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• In many cases, the English simple past is used in situations that would be rendered in the imperfective in most other languages, not the perfective. This occurs particularly with verbs that represent ongoing states, rather than actions ("He had two dogs" or "There was a chair on the floor"), and in constructions describing habitual actions ("He walked his dog every day").
• 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 the above languages that are described as having imperfective and perfective aspects will agree in most cases in their usage of these aspects, no two languages will agree in every situation. For example:
• Some languages have additional grammatical aspects. Spanish and Ancient Greek, for example, have a perfect aspect (not the same as the perfective!), which refers to a state resulting from a previous action (also described as a previous action with relevance to a particular time, or a previous action viewed from the perspective of a later time). 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 synonymous American 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 Chinese, with the perfective suffix le and (especially) the imperfective zhe.
• For some verbs in some languages, the difference between perfective and imperfective conveys an additional meaning difference; in such cases, the two aspects will typically be translated using separate verbs in English. In Greek, for example, the imperfective sometimes adds the notion of "try to do something" (the so-called conative imperfect); hence the same verb, in the imperfective (present or imperfect tense) and aorist, respectively, is used to convey look and see, search and find, listen and hear. (For example, ηκουομεν ?kouomen "we listened" vs. ηκουσαμεν ?kousamen "we heard".) Spanish has similar pairs for certain verbs, such as (imperfect and preterite, respectively) sabia "I knew" vs. supe "I found out", podia "I was able to" vs. pude "I succeeded (in doing something)", queria "I wanted to" vs. quise "I tried to", no queria "I didn't want to" vs. no quise "I refused (to do something)". Such differences are often highly language-specific.

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 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.)

Related Topics:
Indo-European - Tense - Slavic languages - Russian - Greek - Past anterior

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It is to be stressed that 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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 
Grammatical aspect: Lexical vs. grammatical aspect ►