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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.

 

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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 Slavic languages and 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 some forms of 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.)

 

In most dialects of Ancient Greek, aspect is indicated uniquely by tense. For example, the very frequently used aorist tense, though a functional preterite tense in the indicative mood, conveys historic or 'immediate' aspect in the subjunctive and optative. The perfect tense in all moods is used solely as an aspect marker and not, ironically, as a tense, conveying the sense of a resultant state. E.g. ὁράω - I see (present); εἶδον - I saw (aorist); οἶδα - I am in a state of having seen = I know (perfect).



 

Many Sino-Tibetan languages, like Mandarin, lack grammatical tense but are rich in aspect.

 

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Lexical vs. grammatical aspect

 

It is extremely important to distinguish between grammatical aspect, as described here, and lexical aspect. Lexical aspect is an inherent property of verbs or verb-complement phrases, and is not marked formally in most languages. The distinctions made as part of lexical aspect are different from those of grammatical aspect, usually relating to situation aspect rather than viewpoint aspect. Typical distinctions are between states ("I had"), activities ("I shopped"), accomplishments ("I painted a picture"), achievements ("I bought"). These distinctions are often relevant syntactically. For example, states and activities, but not usually achievements, can be used with a prepositional for-phrase describing a time duration: "I had a car for five hours", "I shopped for five hours", but not "*I bought a car for five hours". Lexical or situation aspect is sometimes called Aktionsart, especially by German and Slavic linguists. Lexical or situation aspect is marked in Athabaskan languages.

 

One of the factors in situation aspect is telicity. Telicity might be considered a kind of lexical aspect, except that it is typically not a property of a verb in isolation, but rather a property of an entire verb phrase. Achievements and accomplishments have telic situation aspect, while states, activities and semelfactives have atelic situation aspect.

 

The other factor in situation aspect is duration, which is also a property of a verb phrase. Accomplishments, states, and activities have duration, while achievements and semelfactives do not.

 

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Date: 2015-01-02; view: 997


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