Perfective aspect

The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing, continuous, or habitual actions). The term perfective should be distinguished from perfect (see below). The distinction between perfective and imperfective is more important in some languages than others. In Slavic languages, it is central to the verb system. In other languages such as German, the same form such as ich ging ("I went", "I was going") can be used perfectively or imperfectively without grammatical distinction. In other languages such as Latin, the distinction between perfective and imperfective is made only in the past tense (e.g., Latin veni "I came" vs. veniebam "I was coming", "I used to come"). However, perfective should not be confused with tense—perfective aspect can apply to events in the past, present, or future. The perfective is often thought of as for events of short duration (e.g., "John killed the wasp"). However, this is not necessarily true—a perfective verb is equally right for a long-lasting event, provided that it is a complete whole; e.g., Tarquinius Superbus regnavit annos quinque et viginti (Livy) "Tarquin the Proud reigned for 25 years." It simply "presents an occurrence in summary, viewed as a whole from the outside, without regard for the internal make-up of the occurrence." The perfective is also sometimes described as referring to a "completed" action, but it would be more accurate to say that it refers to an action or situation that is seen as a complete whole; e.g., the Russian perfective future я убью тебя "I shall kill you" refers to an event that has not yet been completed. The essence of the perfective is an event seen as a whole.

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A history of crowd simulation: the past, evolution, and new perspectives

Daniel Thalmann

This paper aims to discuss the past, evolution, and new perspectives in crowd simulation. Many work have been produced and published in this area that was launched approximately 30 years ago. In this paper, we re-visited the main aspects of the area, presenting the periods and evolution we had in the past. In addition, we also discuss the present and possible trends for the future.

SPRINGER2021

Les figures de l'habitant dans les mondes virtuels

Jean-François Lucas

Les utilisateurs et les avatars des mondes virtuels en ligne sont parfois qualifiés d’habitants, mais ce terme n’est presque jamais défini. L’objet de cet article est de caractériser ce qui fait qu’un habitant habite un monde virtuel. Nous considérons que l’immersion est une condition préalable à l’habiter dans un monde virtuel, puisque habiter implique de faire l’expérience d’un « intérieur ». Ensuite, grâce à des observations réalisées à l’intérieur de mondes virtuels ainsi qu’à une série d’entretiens issus de travaux préliminaires, nous décrivons les manières de « faire avec l’espace » des avatars grâce aux notions d’ancrage, de prise et de trace. L’habiter est alors appréhendé comme le couplage résultant de l’actualisation de ces trois notions, encapsulées dans les possibles d’un monde virtuel, par les actions d’un utilisateur. Ainsi, nous proposons quatre figures de l’habitant dans les mondes virtuels pour rendre compte de la diversité des manières d’y construire des expériences spatiales, donc sociales. Si tous les utilisateurs n’habitent pas un monde virtuel, notre grille heuristique permet d’en caractériser, au moins, certains aspects et effets.

2018

English language

English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It originated in early medieval England and, today, is the most spoken language in the world and the third most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.

Imperfective aspect

The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a general imperfective, others have distinct aspects for one or more of its various roles, such as progressive, habitual, and iterative aspects. The imperfective contrasts with the perfective aspect, which is used to describe actions viewed as a complete whole.

Germanic strong verb

In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel. The majority of the remaining verbs form the past tense by means of a dental suffix, and are known as weak verbs. In modern English, strong verbs include sing (present I sing, past I sang, past participle I have sung) and drive (present I drive, past I drove, past participle I have driven), as opposed to weak verbs such as open (present I open, past I opened, past participle I have opened).