Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, aspect is a 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". 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. 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).

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (1)

Related concepts (132)

Related courses (4)

Related lectures (5)

Multi-parametric source-filter separation of speech and prosodic voice restoration

Olaf Schleusing

In this thesis, methods and models are developed and presented aiming at the estimation, restoration and transformation of the characteristics of human speech. During a first period of the thesis, a c

EPFL2012

AR-666: Contemporary modernity

The seminar will revisit notions, works, architects, and authors of XXIth century Modernism. It will question the issue of "being contemporary" - matching the characteristics of the era you live. Lear

CIVIL-607: Communication for Research Engineers

Communication proficiency is one of the most important results of a good PhD and postdoc experience and it is valued equally in academia and in industry. EPFL PhD students and postdocs are expected to

AR-329: Constructing the view: built images

What is meant by the term "image" as pictorial representation? How do we read, process and interpret images - and what premises can be derived from this for the conception and production of meaningful

Building Requirements and Roles

Explores building requirements, safety, and sustainability in construction, focusing on habitability, safety, and sustainable development.

Evaluation of Readiness State

Covers evaluating readiness in digital education, emphasizing comprehensive assessment tailored to specific contexts.

Constructivism: Piaget, Skinner, Vygotsky

Delves into Piaget, Skinner, Vygotsky's theories, schemas, and 'productive failure'.

In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, and one can refer to the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, participles, prepositions and postpositions, numerals, articles, etc., as declension.

In grammar, tense is a that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, and future. Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future and nonfuture. There are also tenseless languages, like most of the Chinese languages, though they can possess a future and nonfuture system typical of Sino-Tibetan languages.