Talk:Grammatical aspect/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

aspect (linguistics)

Regarding linguistic aspect, there are a number of distinctions that are made that I'm not sure are correct, and some examples that are ambiguous. For example, the original author distinguishes between perfect/perfective, suggesting that the latter refers to a completed action (but not specifying that this would be the case in the former.) He also supplies an aspectually ambiguous sentence as an example of perfective:

• I went to the store.

This sentence does not have any aspect encoded in it at all, as far as I can tell. Completion is implied but not required; this an example of a simple past tense, because the only encoded information is temporal.

(not true! it implies non progressive!!!!! either i went to the store (that day, and saw jim........) or (habitual) i went to the store (a lot that year, for some reason....) this is aspectual information as far as i can see, if only by default- interested 3rd party)

As aspect is not my area of expertise, and many of the aspects listed here are, shall we say, exotic, I do not believe that I am necessarily qualified to correct the original author's assertions. However, when talking about aspect in English, it is very important to distinguish it from tense (which I attempted to do.)

I would suggest that at least the Perfect/Perfective and Imperfect/Imperfective distinctions be removed, or, if appropriate, clarified. English is by its nature not a very good language to give examples of aspect in.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.231.250.39 (talk • contribs).

Comment: As you say, English is a rather difficult language to exemplify aspect with, however, a few comments of yours confuse me somewhat. "I went to the store." is indeed in the simple past, but you state "Completion is implied but not required"; I cannot think of a single example in the simple past where an action has not been completed. Therefore, this example, to me, is acceptable for its intended purpose, as it would appear that the simple past tense in English incorporates a perfective aspect. However, my guess is likely as good as yours in this situation, and I will second that call for someone with the necessary expertise to clarify this example.

-Wytukaze

disputed

"Prominent in this category is Chinese, which differentiates a whole slew of aspects but relies exclusively on (optional) time-words to temporally pinpoint an action."

quick elaboration?

This statement is pretty much true. I can probably write up a whole section on Aspect in Chinese this weekend hopefully. -- Umofomia 22:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"..the concepts 'ride' and 'mount' are shown by the same verb, rukubun, static in the former case and dynamic in the latter."

Shouldn't these be switched?

Serbian: "I have eaten (a long time ago) Ja sam bio pojeo."

To be consistent with the two-tense pairs in English and one-tense pairs in Serbian, shouldn't that be "I had eaten."?

Serbian original is plusquamperfect. Nikola 12:17, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) Reading more about English tenses, I believe yes. Nikola 01:35, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"The typical contrasts of aspect in many languages can be distinguished in English only with the aid of phrases"

This seems like the other languages don't. What are their examples? I reckon not; in sheer English, without the Latin or English bits, many aspects drop the aid:

• Habitual: 'I walk home from work.' (every day) -> "I walk.. home from work."

'I would/used to walk home from work.' (past habit) -> "I walked.. home from work."

• Perfect: 'I have/had gone to the cinema.'
• Imperfective: 'I'm going home.' (the action is in progress)
• Perfective: 'I went home.' (the action is finished)
• Progressive: 'I am eating.'
• Prospective: 'I am about to eat.' -> "I am be-eating."
• Inceptive: 'I am beginning to eat.' -> "I am eatening."
• Continuative: 'I am continuing to eat.' -> "I am eatishing."
• Terminative: 'I am finishing my meal.' -> "I am witheating."
• Inchoative: 'My nose is turning red.' (from the cold) -> "My nose reddens."/"My nose is reddened."
• Cessative: 'I am quitting smoking.' -> "I am offsmoking."
• Pausative: 'I stopped working for a while.' -> "I am forsmoking."
• Resumptive: 'I resumed sleeping.' -> "I am asleeping."
• Punctual: 'I slept.'
• Durative: 'I slept for an hour.'
• Delimitative: 'I slept for a while.'
• Protractive: 'The argument went on and on.' -> "The argument awenter."
• Iterative: 'I read the same books again and again.' -> "I reader the same books."
• Frequentative: 'Fireworks crackle.'
• Experiential: 'I have gone to school many times.' -> "I igone to school."
• Intentional: 'I listened carefully.' -> "I listen-ed."
• Accidental: 'I knocked over the chair.' -> "I was felled the chair."/"I felld the chair."
• Generic: 'Mangos grow on trees.'
• Intensive: 'It glared.' -> "It shinered."
• Moderative: 'It shined.'
• Attenuative: 'It glimmered.' -> "It shineled."

I don't understand - are your changes correct English?? Nikola 12:17, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Most of the stuff after the arrows is very bad English. I'm confused as to why anyone would write them. Felix the Cassowary 09:23, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Languages which contrast intentional and accidental aspect are extremely rare; one such language is Bats, which distinguishes this aspectual difference for just six verbs. Compare so wodze I fell down (through no fault of my own, accidentally) and as wodze I fell down (through something I did, or on purpose)."

Try "I was falled|fall-ed|fallen." or "I falld." and "I fall-ed." :D lysdexia 20:35, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's interesting that this is "extremely rare", as I believe Spanish has forms that can be described as conveying intentional/accidental aspect; for instance, when you drop something on accident, it's common to use a form based on a reflexive verb: "se me cayó", it fell on me/it fell (and I was there). Vorlon 11:08, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Who'd call that an aspect? Aspects deal with how an action takes place on the time scale (not when). Nothing to do with intention. J. 'mach' wust 18:17, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that calling intentional/accidental features of verbs an aspect can be far-fetched, at least not generally agreed of, but aspect IS NOT "how an action takes place on the time scale", this is tempus (tense). It is generally agreed that aspect has to do with completion and/or repetitiveness, somehow also habituality. Christopher, 15.06.05

Serbian example

The difference between the perfective and imperfective aspects cannot be rendered by grammatical means in English. The difference between an imperfective verb in the past tense and a perfective verb in the past tense is definitely not the same as the difference between the past continuous and the past perfect tense. These are just different categories. Probably only a native speaker of a Slavic language who has no deep knowledge of English is likely to be under the illusion that imperfective is continuous. The comparison presented in the section "Serbian example" is in my opinion deeply confusing. The translation of "Ja sam jeo" should be "I ate" and the translation of "Ja sam pojeo" should be "I ate" as well. I am really sorry, but I am afraid the most part of the section should be deleted, as it spreads a misunderstanding (which is BTW quite common among native speakers of Slavic languages). Boraczek 10:40, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I do not agree.

I have no deeper knowledge of the Serbian language, but if the pattern is the same as in Polish or Russian, then following should be true: Ja sam jeo may mean:

"I was eating"

"I ate"

"I used to eat".

I do not understand why omission of the simple past should be so deeply confusing. It may be inaccurate, but why so confusing? Christopher, 16.06.05

That’s quite right. In some Slavic languages there are imperfective forms of perfective verbs and vice versa: perfective forms of imperfective verbs, eg. the Old Church Slavonic imperfective verb ěsti (eat), ěmъ has forms in aorist (which is a perfective past tense): ědohъ, ěde, ěde, ědohomъ, ědoste, ědošę, and forms in the imperfect tense: ěděahъ, ěděaše, ěděaše, ěděahomъ, ěděašete, ěděhą. The situation is the same in the modern Bulgarian: jadoh (I’ve already eaten or I ate), jadjah (I was eating at a past moment when something happened or I used to eat). Unfortunately, in most of the modern Slavic languages the aorist and imperfect are extinct tenses.--Harry 17:36, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Some observations on comments here

It's been some time since I had much to do with theory of aspect, but I'll have a go.

Wytukaze, you say:

"I went to the store." is indeed in the simple past, but you [Alexander] state "Completion is implied but not required"; I cannot think of a single example in the simple past where an action has not been completed. Therefore, this example, to me, is acceptable for its intended purpose, as it would appear that the simple past tense in English incorporates a perfective aspect.

But no. Sure, "I went to the store", devoid of context, is most naturally taken as perfective (assuming the propriety of that category, for English – which I for one do, by the way). That is characteristic of simple past tenses (of non-stative verbs) in English. But how about "I walked my dog as I went to the store"? Or consider this: "I was walking my dog as I went to the store". Even without further context, our sentence (or clause) as it is embedded in these might best be taken as imperfective; and as such it is only slightly less idiomatic English than this more clearly imperfective version: "I walked [OR: I was walking] my dog as I was going to the store".

But "I went to the store" may be judged to involve other aspects beyond perfective and imperfective, depending on context (as someone else suggests above): "In those days I went to the store whenever I wanted to." The aspect (at least the dominant aspect, if there are more than one) is habitual, is it not?

In any case, it may not be safe to generalise from the sentence in question (partly because it involves a "going" verb, and these can be tricky). How about this one: "He ate the cake"? Plainly, or invariably, perfective? Certainly not. Consider some context: "As he ate the cake he began to choke, and fell into a coma." If "he ate the cake" were perfective here, we could infer that he finished eating the cake; that doesn't seem right, though the containing sentence is as idiomatic as: "As he was eating the cake he began to choke,...".

Moving along, I note that Boraczek writes:

The difference between an imperfective verb in the past tense and a perfective verb in the past tense is definitely not the same as the difference between the past continuous and the past perfect tense.

I agree entirely. It's just that certain forms in English are usually associated with certain aspects; but they do not necessaraly or invariably mark those aspects, at least not with anything approaching the very definite Slavic sort of marking (or the Hungarian, etc., for that matter). But Boraczek also writes:

The difference between the perfective and imperfective aspects cannot be rendered by grammatical means in English.

Here I'd have to ask what Boraczek means by "grammatical means". To use the example of Serbian imperfective piti (to drink), it has the corresponding perfective popiti. But doesn't English have such a pair also? I would translate popiti as to drink up, and I would say that this "up" is a grammatical element as much as the "po" prefix in popiti. It would be possible to construct cases in which to drink up is used imperfectively, but these would be rather stretched – certainly more stretched than my earlier examples. I'll try just one, like the earlier ones: "As she eagerly drank up the last of the vodka, Natasha was shot from behind."

In short, there is aspect-marking in English, and at least some of it might qualify as "grammatical"; but it is rarely very definite, and appears always to be vulnerable to subversion. Despite these qualifications, English aspect-marking is well worth recognising for what it is.

Now, I might be mistaken or muddled in the opinions I express above. (And then I would love to be shown how I am mistaken.) Even if I am mistaken, I think the article needs considerable clarifying work – and some more general copy-editing, which I may well attempt. --Noetica 07:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, Noetica. By "using grammatical means" I meant expressing semantic differences with formal grammatical categories, such as tense, voice, etc. I am not a native speaker of English, but I will rely on your proposition that "to drink up" has the same meaning as "popiti". I'd say that "to drink up" is an example of expressing semantic aspect by lexical means, because 1) a limited set of English verbs have similar corresponding perfective verbs; 2) the "up" element often has another function than marking perfective aspect ("to give" - "to give up"); 3) most English verbs can be used both perfectively and imperfectively ("I drank", "I gave"). This makes me think of "to drink" and "to drink up" as two different lexemes rather than two related grammatical forms. However, I am not an expert on the English language and maybe your interpretation is better. What I wanted to make clear was that it is not possible to explain the difference between imperfective and perfective by mere inflection of an English verb. Best regards. Boraczek 20:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Boraczek. Yes, I myself have reservations about how "popiti" and "to drink up" may properly be said to differ (in the ways relevant to the present discussion). Perhaps the lexical and the grammatical are themselves not such sharply differentiated categories as we normally assume. By the way, should we say even of Serbian that it marks "the difference between imperfective and perfective by mere inflection", any more than English does? Only if adding "po" is taken to be inflecting "piti", I'd have thought. Anyway, the article is very useful as it stands, and I'm sure we and others will find incremental improvements in good time, to help it on its way. Regards to you. --Noetica 22:03, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I find your remarks very astute. Personally, I do not interpret the difference between "piti" and "popiti" in terms of inflection. Some linguists do, but my view is different. I think there is a formal analogy between adding "po-" in Serbian and adding "- out" in English. My previous comment was not clear on this, sorry. Best regards. Boraczek 19:16, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate your remarks, too, Boraczek. This area continues to interest me. My preliminary judgement is that much theorising about aspect in English is unduly bound to traditional categories, and that this stands in the way of theoretical efficiency, clarity, and robustness. I have the same attitude to traditional ways of dealing with voice (active, middle, and passive) in English, along with the related matter of transitivity. New theoretical brooms sweep cleaner! I hope we will both continue to monitor things here, and have more to say later. "Original research" is prohibited in Wikipedia, but there must be recent published theory that we could look out for (though alas, I am out of touch with mainstream theory in this area). Best wishes to you. --Noetica 21:09, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aha, similar issues surfaced some time ago at Talk:Grammatical tense and it was decided to go for a rewrite from scratch. At Grammatical tense/multilingual sources we have started to collect data and to draft a better article; the thought-out opinions of both of you would be much appreciated! You two might also be interested in the Linguistics section of Wikiproject Countering Systemic Bias. Issues like this, like Noetica remarks, often have to do with the use of traditional (Latin-inspired) terminology. The Linguistics section of the CSB project aims at a more universal and modern approach in Wikipedia's linguistic articles. — mark ✎ 13:33, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mark, while I agree that Latin categories in particular have hobbled English grammatical theory, I myself was referring to more native traditional categories! Take the so-called progressive, as an aspect, for example. The association of this term with the English tenses that use participial forms in "-ing" obscures the fact that both simple forms and "-ing" forms often involve imperfective aspect (as I discuss above), or indeed perfective aspect. The same sort of revision that we would do to free ourselves from English-as-Latin is needed to free us from English-as-"English", so to put it. For me, this is most evident when we look at voice in English. --Noetica 22:03, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I must say, I'm impressed with your analysis here. You are quite correct in saying that with further clarification, the same phrase can switch to a quite different aspect. I was referring specifically to the unclarified simple past phrase, or others of similar construction, when I stated that the simple past tense incorporates a perfective aspect. I think this highlights the compound nature of many English 'inflections' (for want of a better word), wherein a tense, mood, aspect (or such semantic subtleties as an implied insult, for that matter: "I like you", "I liked you" as a very simple example) can be added simply by using a traditional tense marker. English in many ways relies on the listener's intuition, rather than plain speech, perhaps ironic in light of the huge amount of English words. I digress. Your comments on additionally clarified sentences are quite valid, of course, and I think this calls for a complex discussion of these subtle linguistic changes in their own section in the main article, rather than the current list we have now. (A list is a much easier thing to read, mind.) I'm hardly qualified to tackle this all by myself, but I would be more than willing to input my thoughts. --Wytukaze 08:15, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Know what you're doing with the English translations

The English language does have a frequentative, even if it isn't productive anymore (-le and -er endings, e.g. crackle, patter). Do not revert it to "I go to school a lot".

That is not a frequentative at all, and cannot be translated as such in languages where the frequentative is productive. (E.g. Finnish "Käyskentelen kouluun" means "I walk to the school leisurely", not "go to school a lot".) In summary, you'll have to know a language, which uses the respective aspect, before you edit. --Vuo 15:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

perfective v perfect

In english there are two quite different aspects. One epresses relation between times. "I have eaten" is something that happened in the past but is relevant now and could be redered as "I am not hungry." Then there is the difference between completed and continuous as in "I ate" and "I was eating" and just to be confusing the habitual in english is often expresed by the simple past: "I ate every day".

In SerboCroat only the continuous v completed distinction is expressed. Hence "jeo sam" v "pojeo sam" where "jeo sam" means both "I was eating" and the habitual "I ate" in the sense of "I ate every day" while "pojeo sam" means "I ate" but in the sense "I ate once". (Okay, Okay, I know you can say "pojeo sam bio" "I had eaten" but people tell me it is so archaic that to say something like that labels you as a pretentious git.) Because "perfect" is used for Present perfect etc some people use perfective/imperfective solely to mark the distiction between completed and continuous. I think that is a useful distiction but here perfect and perfective are used interchangebly. I think that's a mistake. Dejvid 16:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes! And it can lead to serious misunderstandings. My proposal is to eliminate the terms "perfective" and "imperfective" when the discussion is on English. See below.

--195.136.118.2 14:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Re the examples rendered in English under the sub" Semelfactive (momentane)" is the example 'The mouse squeaked once.' This is not how a native speaker would render this. A more natural way of saying this is 'The mouse let out (or gave out) a squeak', the momentane aspect being carried in the verb form "to let out" (or "to give out") which has the implied sense that it was momentary and reactionary. I'll leave the experts here to decide if the phrase should be changed in the main article.

Aspect in English and Slavic

SUMMARY:

1. The simple past in English is "aspect neutral", or it has an "indefinite aspect"

2. English speakers are often happy with sentences that have no clear aspect. The speakers of Slavic languages must take the decision.

3. The perfective and imperfective verbs in Slavic languages are separate lexical items, and not mere inflectons of the basic verb.

---

In the English language the aspect of the verb is not marked grammatically and the native speakers of English usually are not aware of the aspect, unless directly asked. The aspect, however, can be usually defined for most of the verbs. In some cases the aspect is considered to be of no importance, and the aspect can be said to be indefinite. We can therefore distinguish between four most common aspects in English:

- perfective (for example: he killed the assailant)

- imperfective (he slept in a very bad bed)

- indefinite (he ate bread)

- habitual (he used to sit on this bench)

All the examples are in the simple past tense, which does not confer any aspect in itself. The aspect of the verb in English is usually inferred from the following features:

- lexical ("slept" conveys an inherent idea of the imperfective aspect, "killed" of the perfective aspect)

- context (he ate the bread and there was none left, or he ate bread every day and nothing else)

- grammatical form: he has/had eaten the bread (present/past perfect tense convey basically the perfective aspect)

- syntactical, by using special constructions (he used to sit on this bench)

In most of the Slavic languages the situation is diametrically different:

- all verbs express the idea of aspect

- there are two basic aspects: perfective and imperfective (can be also called completed and non completed)

- many verbs can also express the habitual and repetitive aspect

- the indefinite aspect can be sometimes conveyed by an imperfective verb, but this is very rare

- the aspect is expressed by the lexical means, that is the verb appears as a lexical item that is either perfective or imperfective

- there are certain rules for how to form a perfective verb from an imperfective one, but these rules are not general, and every verb is treated individually

- for each imperfective verb there are on average five perfective verbs, each with its own meaning

- the meaning of a perfective verb is always more precise than the meaning of an imperfective one.

Conclusion: while translating from English into Czech, Polish, Russian or Serbian one may have problems in choosing the correct aspect, as the aspect can be indefinite because of lack of an adequate lexical, contextual or grammatical marker.

Christopher, 13.06.05

The above seems to be a good summary explaining some of the nuances of Slavic aspect. Perhaps with a minor edit and some examples it can go right into the article. —Michael Z. 2005-07-12 19:12 Z

Here's an example from Ukrainian language#Grammar:

For example, the verb pysaty (to write) is an imperfect verb. For the perfect form there exist a number of related verbs each expressing slightly different aspect of have written: napysaty (to write down), zapysaty (to make note of), perepysaty (to rewrite), prypysaty (to prescribe), dopysaty (to append), spysaty (to list), etc.

Much of the above is problematic:

• the "indefinite" is not clearly a distinguishable aspect.
• in general, it does not make sense to try and distinguish "aspects" in English or Slavic that have no formal expression. instead, describe the aspects that do exist formally, and how English would render the Slavic aspects (see my text below).

I fully agree with you. Formal aspects should be described separately from semantic Aktionsarts. But the author of the chapter "Aspect and Aktionsart" in the article suggest to do contrarily, because "in English linguistics...". So, Benwing, what is you suggestion? I would split this article into two, despite of the quoted opinion. Note that even the chapter "Aspect in English" has two parts easy to be distinguished. --Grzegorj 00:38, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

• your examples are not clear. E.g. "I slept in a very bad bed on Friday night" might well be perfective.

IMHO, the term "perfective" should not be used to English at all. In Slavic, the sentence that you have cited, is in imperfective. --Grzegorj 00:38, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

• these two:
  

- for each imperfective verb there are on average five perfective verbs, each with its own meaning

- the meaning of a perfective verb is always more precise than the meaning of an imperfective one.

are simply wrong. you can form imperfectives from perfectives by e.g. -ovat' (Russian) and they are not more or less precise. for more imperfectives there is a *single* perfective identified in the dictionary as having the equivalent or approximately equivalent meaning. for the above perfectives only the first has a meaning close to the imperfective "write"; the others are obviously different meanings.

What should be said is (this applies at least to Russian)

• Most simple verbs are imperfective, although many foreign words are bi-aspectual.
• Perfectives can be formed from imperfectives by prefixation. Typically, various such perfectives can be formed, and one usually has a meaning close to or equivalent to the imperfective, and is listed in the dictionary as the perfective equivalent. The prefix that forms the equivalent perfective varies from verb to verb; some prefixes are more common than others (Russian po-, na- are quite common, e.g.).
• Imperfectives can be formed from perfectives by suffixation. This forms an imperfective with a meaning exactly equivalent to the perfective; this is typically done for perfectives formed by the above process that differ in meaning from the original imperfective.

Benwing 01:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

A similar situation is in all Slavic languages, not only in Russian, so you are right, Benwing. Of course not always perfectives can be formed from imperfectives by prefixation. It is one of some possibilities in fact. As a contrary example see Russian impf. pokupat' vs. pf. kupit' 'buy' (the imperfective is formed from perfective by prefixation and changing the suffix at the same time). Grzegorj 00:04, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

English and Slavic

One should NOT talk about any imperfective and perfective aspects in English under any conditions. English does not know "imperfective" and "perfective" at all - but only "non-perfect" and "perfect" (and these terms have both nothing to do with terms concerning to Slavic languages). So I suggest that these parts of the main article where we can read about "perfective" aspect in English need to be changed before any changes in the text on Slavic. From the formal point of view English knows exactly 4 aspects:

• neutral (I ate)
• progressive vel continuous (I was eating)
• perfect (I had eaten; please never term it perfective)
• perfect progressive (I had been eating)

From the formal point of view Slavic languages know exactly 2 aspects, none of them is equal (or even similar) to any of the English aspects listed above. They are:

• imperfective (Polish jadłem)
• perfective (Polish zjadłem)

The latter corresponds to English he ate up rather than to I had eaten.

(Remark: there are not formal marks for imperfective/perfective aspects in Slavic. But each single aspect is limited to some forms of the verb; for example the Present Tense can only be formed from imperfective verbs, the same about the Present Active Participle.)

--Grzegorj 10:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Grzegorj, some of what you have written seems a bit confused; at the very least, the perfect is "I have eaten" not "I had eaten" and likewise the perfect progressive is "I have been eating".

Not true. "I have eaten" is Present Perfect. "I had eaten" is Past Perfect. Both forms have the same aspect, so, both are Perfect. We are talking about aspects, not tenses. There is nothing confusing here.

--Grzegorj 23:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

If you are using "I ate", you should compare it to "I have eaten", not "I had eaten". Regardless of whether you may assert that "I have eaten" is formally "present", an English speaker will consider it past, and will not consider "I had eaten" to be comparable to "I ate" in the way that "I have eaten" is. Compounding the problem is that many uses of "had eaten" in English are purely tense, referring to an action that took place before another past action, and have no "perfect aspect" in them. So please don´t use the pluperfect here.

Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I cannot agree with you, all the time. But it's you who emphasize the formal nature of aspectual differences (we both agree in this point) - formally the Present Perfect has more common with other present tenses than with past ones (have/has, not had). And you perfectly know that Present Perfect belongs to the present plan (I said I have done it is ungrammatical). You shouldn't mix Present Perfect and Past Simple in one sentence. An English speaker uses Present Perfect until he/she feels a reference of the action with the presence. So, I ate and I have eaten cannot build a pair, any way.

On the contrary, Past Perfect (which you termed Pluperfect - which should be avoided at least as long as we take its form into consideration, and formaly it is the exact past counterpart of Present Perfect) can be mixed with another past tense in one sentence. Hence between Present Perfect and Past Simple there are a difference in tense, not only in aspect.

In addition, the Present Perfect doesn't have to be "past" at all, even from the logic point of view. Please take a glance at the sentence: I'll let you know as soon as I have finished my article on Slavic aspects. Can you see any past here? Anteriority - yes, but past - no way. And another example: I have lived in Poland for 39 years. But it doesn't mean that I do not live in Poland now, so the action is not past nor even resultative. You can see the continuative meaning of the perfect aspect in English (in the presence, not in the past). BTW similar sentences uses imperfective (present) in Slavic.

And finally... I am reading a book now (after a while:) I have already read the book now. Notice this now in both sentences (artificial or not, but grammatically correct). An English speaker has the consciousness that both sentences are in the present tense. So any comparings of I ate with I have eaten in aspectual regards are faulty. These are two different tenses, not only two different aspects.

--Grzegorj 20:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

You are right that English aspects do not correspond exactly with aspect in Slavic, Spanish, etc.; and the words "perfective" and "perfect" should not be confused (see the entire section I wrote about this). However, at the same time we should not make too much of the differences by claiming that it is impossible to make equivalences.

Equivalences between what and what? Grzegorj 23:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Don´t claim that it is impossible to show equivalences between Slavic and English aspects. See the text I´ve used in perfective aspect and imperfective aspect (these have been rewritten since I last wrote on this talk page, and include the relevant text posted below from the aorist page) to describe equivalences been English aspects and the perfective and imperfective aspects. Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do is to (1) describe the formal scheme approximately as you list it for each language and give what these different aspects convey; (2) show how the Slavic aspects correspond to English in different situations. For (2), please do not use artificial constructions like "he ate up".

Sorry guy, Google can find 135,000 examples of this "artificial" construction. You can find similar examples in English-Polish contrastive grammars. See also here: [1]. --Grzegorj 23:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, of course I know that "he ate up" is a real English construction. I am, after all, a native English speaker. "Artificial" here means that it is an artificial and confusing way to render the perfective aspect; it will not enlighten but merely confuse, since the "up" adds a bunch of semantic info, not just aspect. The natural way to render the perfective is by means of the kinds of examples I´ve already used: e.g. "He picked up a stone and struck the pig" vs. "He was striking the pig when ...". Again, see also the text I wrote under "perfective aspect" and "imperfective aspect". Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Artificial or not but he ate up can be the most correct mean to render Polish perfective zjadł in a number of instances. This is what I am trying to say: sometimes the English temporal-aspectual system (I mean all 16 tenses) is not enough to correctly render the Slavic aspects in any instance. --Grzegorj 20:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

As an example of the text that should go in (2), here is what I wrote in Aorist:

As an aspect, the aorist is equivalent to what is normally called the perfective aspect (name is extremely unfortunate; see Grammatical aspect#Confusing terminology: perfective vs. perfect), and refers to a single event conceived as a unit.

Oh yes, now I can understand where is your problem, Benwing. You just confuse aspects with tenses. Notice that aorist (such as in Ancient Greek) is never an aspect. It is a verbal form that expresses aspect and tense at the same time. Both in English and Slavic, tenses and aspects are more independent from one another. See below the widened version of my previous text where I have placed all 16 English tenses and all 5 Polish tenses within all 4 English aspects and both 2 Polish aspects. Grzegorj 00:17, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

No, you don´t understand. I have the feeling you don´t know Ancient Greek very well, either. Please go read the text that I wrote under aorist and you´ll see that the Greek aorist is *both* a tense/aspect combination and a pure aspect; specifically, in the indicative, it is a tense/aspect combo, but in the subjunctive, optative, imperative and infinitive is it a pure aspect (the perfective), and opposed to the present, which (in this case) is also a pure aspect (the imperfective). So no, I am not "just confusing aspects with tenses"; it is the Greek terminology that is confusing. Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

My knowledge of Ancient Greek (AG) seems to be enough any way. First of all, let's better not talk about a non-indicative using. But AG also knows perfect and futur optative and perfect subjunctive, so you are right only with imperative. And, Slavic counterparts of the AG aorist are not always perfective! So, it would be the best solution if we have limited the terms "imperfective" and "perfective" to Slavic aspects and not confused them with Greek language facts. Curious of examples? Kai ebasíleusen étea duôdeka = Polish (word-to-word) i panował lat dwadzieścia (panował = past imperfective vs. ebasíleusen = aorist). Rhekhthèn dé te nēpios égnō (aoristus gnomicus) - here Slavic languages use imperfective present (Polish rzecz dokonaną i głupiec poznaje, poznaje is in present) or perfective future (Polish pozna). This is why the Greeks have termed this tense aóristos khrónos indefinite time. Of course you are right that the difference between imperfect and aorist is in accordance with Slavic imperfective past vs. perfective past, at, say, 90%. However, the Slavic aspects are not tense-limited (see below). --Grzegorj 20:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

It is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which represents an event in the process of unfolding, or a repeated or habitual event. In the past tense, it is often translated in English by the simple past form "X-ed", as compared to the imperfect, which is translated as the progressive "was X-ing". For example, the aorist 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 imperfect and the second by an aorist.

There are a number of important qualifications, however:

• Verbs that represent ongoing states, rather than actions, are usually rendered in English with the simple past, but would be rendered with the imperfect and not the aorist, for example, "He had two dogs" or "There was a chair on the floor".
• The English simple past can be used to represent habitual actions, which would also be rendered as an imperfect, such as "He walked his dog every day".
• Although the aorist is often described as corresponding to a "momentary action", 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".
• For some verbs in some languages, the difference between aorist and imperfect 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 imperfect sometimes adds the notion of "try to do something" (the so-called conative imperfect); hence the same verb, in the imperfect and aorist, respectively, is used to convey look and see, search and find, listen and hear. (For example, ηκουομεν ēkouomen "we listened" vs. ηκουσαμεν ēkousamen "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.

This conveys what the perfective aspect is, how it differs from the imperfective, and how they would normally be rendered in English in different situations. I think that the same text should be used here (in fact, moved here from the aorist page), with appropriate Slavic-specific additions in the final paragraph. Benwing 01:00, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Specially for you, Benwing:

From the formal point of view English knows exactly 4 aspects:

• neutral (I eat, I ate, I will eat, I would eat)
• progressive vel continuous (I am eating, I was eating, I will be eating, I would be eating)
• perfect (I have eaten, I had eaten, I will have eaten, I would have eaten; please never term it perfective)
• perfect progressive (I have been eating, I had been eating, I will have been eating, I would have been eating)

From the formal point of view Slavic languages know exactly 2 aspects, none of them is equal (or :even similar) to any of the English aspects listed above. They are:

• imperfective (Polish jadłem (Past), jem (Present), będę jadł (Future))
• perfective (Polish zjadłem (Past), zjem (Future))

The rest is in preparation, be patient.

---Grzegorj 23:48, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, I will wait for now; but I may at some point edit this page to incorporate what I wrote in perfective aspect and imperfective aspect, since I think it makes more sense to combine the stuff on the two pages. Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

The habitual "I used to eat" should be added as another aspect. Benwing 01:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps. This form differs from the 4 English aspects because it can exist in the past tense only. All 4 "classic" aspects are specified in all 4 tenses (present, past, future, future in the past). Grzegorj 00:17, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

True, but plenty of other languages have aspectual distinctions in only one tense. Note also that "used to" in speech is a single phonetic word that is pronounced noticeably differently from "used" + "to" -- i.e. it is starting to behave like an auxiliary. The advantage of speaking about "used to" is that you can show how "imperfective" really encodes (at least) two different concepts, ongoing and habitual, which have different formal expressions in English in the past, when not using the neutral past to render them.

Note also that even a Slavic language like Russian isn´t consistent across all tenses in its aspects -- there is no present perfective aspect, for example.

Benwing 13:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

It is the only Slavic example, it is a common feature of all Slavic languages, and it is the result of the fact that a present perfective action or state is impossible from the logic point of view. For an English speaker the point of reference does not have to be the real time when the action happened. For a Slavic speaker the point is the real time of the action. And an action cannot be finished (perfective!) just now - if it is finished, it becomes past from the Slavic point of view. So, the nature of Slavic aspect itself is the limitation. That is why we have perfective and imperfective in the past and in the future, but not in the present tense.

However, from the formal point of view, the perfective future tense in Slavic is like if the (non-existant) perfective present tense. Cf. impf. past czytał - pf. past przeczytał and impf. present czyta - pf. future przeczyta ("he reads" in various tenses). And indeed, the perfective future can be used as gnomic (see the Greek - Polish example above). It can be even used for past actions (yes! future perfective for past), even if in limited way. The most known but a little bookish example is rzecze = "he said" (future perfective in Polish) in vivid stories (like if praesens historicum, but in perfective aspect).

Finally, you cannot compare the Slavic limitation with the Greek limitations of the aspect. Say a sentence in Greek in imperfect, and say another, similar, in aorist (ex. Mýrōn epoíei and Mýrōn epoíēsen). Can you preserve this (mainly stylistic) difference in the future in AG? I doubt it. But you will be able to preserve the difference in Slavic (cf. Polish wykonywał = epoíei vs. wykonał = epoíēsen, in future: będzie wykonywał vs. wykona). Of course in presence the artist can only be making his work "impferfectively". If he ended even one milisecond ago, it is not the presence any more for a Slav. And the Slavic speaker will use the past tense (independently whether there are results of the action now or not).

In order to describe what aspects are in English and in Slavic, the right way is to collect all forms of the same aspect in a given language, and compare them with all forms of another aspect. So, to discover what e.g. the English perfect aspect is, we must take all four forms: he has eaten, he had eaten, he will have eaten, he would have eaten into consideration, and compare them with all 4 simple tenses. The same in Slavic (let's say, in Polish, because differences between Slavic languages are not too great in this point): let's take all 3 imperfective tenses, and compare them with both perfective ones. This is the only way to fully understand the conception of aspect. I mean that an analysis of Ancient Greek (or other languages with aspectual differences only between some tenses), even if helpful, must be taken with great care.

BTW thinking that I have eaten is past, you think like a Slav, not like an English speaker :-). Nevertheless, I must tell you that when I learnt English at school (I am a native Polish speaker), I found the difference very quickly.

--Grzegorj 20:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Aspect and Actionsart

The discussion above shows that formal aspects and semantic Aktionarten are two different things. I suggest to remove the chapter entitled like this comment. It appears that drawing a distinction between the two things are very useful in general and comparative linguistics. I fully agree with Benwing that "in general, it does not make sense to try and distinguish "aspects" in English or Slavic that have no formal expression". --Grzegorj 07:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

A small addition to the topic. "Aspect and Aktionsart, which were one before Agrell, were from now on two different categories—they could be called by name and talked about separately." It is a quotation from the book "Aspectual Pairing in Polish" by A. K. Młynarczyk (freely available here as a set of pdf files). Agrell published his notice in 1908. So actually Wikipedia presents the state of knowledge as it was a century ago. I insist on splitting this article into two: one on aspect and another on Aktionsart. These are two different things - this has already been known for a hundred year. -- Grzegorj 10:03, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Eat vs eat up

I have just found 9 examples how to translate Polish imperfective and perfective verbs into English. Because Benwing does not like the example I've cited above, here is the full list (left is imperfective, right - perfective). All Polish examples are Infinitives:

• krzyczeć 'cry' - krzyknąć 'cry out'
• pić 'drink' - wypić 'drink off'
• siadać 'sit' - usiąść 'sit down'
• jeść 'eat' - zjeść 'eat up' <-- this is the questioned example
• siekać 'chop' - posiekać 'chop up'
• palić 'smoke' - zapalić 'have a smoke' (this is only a special meaning; besides, "palić" = "burn")
• kąpać się 'bath' - wykąpać się 'have a bath'
• pchać 'push' - pchnąć 'give a push'
• śmiać się 'laugh' - zaśmiać się 'give a laugh'

Source: J. Fisiak, M. Lipińska-Grzegorek, T. Zabrocki: An Introductory English-Polish Contrastive Grammar. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Warszawa 1987 (second edition), p. 117n (the chapter "The English Counterparts of Polish Aspectual Forms")

How anyone can see, it is impossible to find a unique way to make equivalences of Slavic aspects in English. Sometimes the aspectual difference Progressive : Simple is enough (jadłem : zjadłem can be translated as I was eating : I ate). Sometimes using postpositions can be the right solution. Sometimes periphrastic constructions are better renderings. And sometimes there is no way to fully render the Slavic difference, at all.

--Grzegorj 08:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Great job on the analysis. As a Polish native English mmm.. fluent speaker, I'd say it all depends on context. Ie. your examples don't fit all sentences, and ie. 'spadamy!, krzyknalem' would often translate as 'Let's get out of here, I cried'.

--Konnie

Of course Konnie, you are fully right. And that's is why I wrote that a unique way to translate Slavic aspects into English does not exist. Which is more, some of the periphrastic constructions (have a smoke, give a laugh) sound a little too much colloquial. So, the problem is that sometimes a Slavic language sees a difference when English sees none. Btw. it seems to me that I cried will be translated into Polish krzyknąłem much more frequently than into krzyczałem. --Grzegorj 18:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't get this impression. I think I often read sentences like I cried all night long, (but nobody came), which translate into Polish as imperfective. Boraczek 22:04, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Semitic aspects

Semitic "tenses" seem to have more in common with Slavic aspects than with Latin, Greek or even English tenses. It would be nice to compare (classic) Arabic, Hebrew or/and Akkadian "tenses" (aspects in fact, not sure about Akkadian permansive) with aspects in some IE languages. --Grzegorj 20:49, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd agree with your assessment. In Modern Hebrew, at least (the only of those languages that I know well, though I do generally understand Biblical Hebrew), I think the distinction between the present and the past tenses is strictly one of tense, though the distinction between those two and the future tense might be said to be one of aspect. (I'm not sure. "I told him I would come later" would be amarti (<- past tense) lo she-ani avo (<- future tense) akhar kakh; does that make the future tense more of an aspect than a tense? It still has to do with placement on the timeline, but the point is that you're looking at it from a different "direction," so to speak.) - Ruakh 22:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I am not a specialist in Semitic languages nor I know any of them. Anyway, I know that in classic Hebrew two forms were in use: perfect (that one with endings, now past) and imperfect (that one with personal prefixes, now future). Both could describe an action in any time. For ex. the imperfect yēlēkh may have meant not only he will walk but also he is walking (similarly lāmmā(h) tha`ǎmōdh baHûS = why are you standing outdoor?) or he was walking (the latter esp. with so called waw consecutivum, ex. wayyāvō' Hûshay hā`îr wə'avshālōm yāvō' Yərûshālām = and Hushay was entering the town while Avshalom was entering Yerusalem, 2Sam 15,37).

Perfect expresses a past action as a rule - but not always: gādhaltā mə'ōdh = you are very large (a state in the presence, not in the past), zākharnû = let's remember (the future rather than the past, isn't it?), ləzar`ǎkh nāthattî 'eth-hā'āreS hazzō'th = to your progeny I will give this land (so called perfectum propheticum with future meaning).

Basing on these examples I am convinced that the difference between the imperfect and the perfect in Biblical Hebrew was not temporal but aspectual rather. I have no idea if this is preserved in modern Hebrew or not. And sorry for possible errors, S is for sade, H for heth, circumflected vowels (î, ô, û) mean yodh or waw in the Hebrew text while those with macron (ā, ē, ō) do not mean any Hebrew consonant in spelling but only the proper vocalization, short vowels (ǎ) stand for the proper khatef (compound schwa).

--Grzegorj 11:14, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, interesting. That is not even remotely preserved in Modern Hebrew, and while I'd obviously noticed that Biblical usage was quite different from modern usage, I never had a good understanding of the details - at least, not on a conscious level. You could be right that the difference in Biblical Hebrew is aspectual; I'll have to think about it. (Do you have any sources that describe this?) - Ruakh 18:26, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Naturally :-) But... as I am Polish, the source is in Polish as well. In case it could be helpful, here you are: W. J. Tyloch: Gramatyka języka hebrajskiego. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. 1980. Warszawa (the examples are taken from there). Another source of my knowledge on Classical Hebrew is a book in Russian: Б. М. Гранде: Введение в сравнительное изучение семитских языков. (Unfortunately, I do not possess copies of these books but only extremally detailed notes; I do not know the year and the place of edition of the latter book, either). --Grzegorj 20:36, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Slavic aspects - the second attempt

Finally finished. Please do not blame me for:

• errors in the text - I am not a native English speaker,
• size of the text - I am convinced that it should be so detailed in order to present what Slavic aspect is for real,
• plagiarism :-) - indeed, some parts are similar (not identical) to those on my private website; however because I am their author anyway, I can copy my texts, and I give such a permission to anyone.

Note that Slavic aspects are morphological, not semantic. It would be nice if such a distinction was in all the article. Hence my comparative notice on 4 (and no more) English aspects. Such a view is consistent with the literature (see my other posts in this discussion).

Any corrections and additions are pleased of course!

--Grzegorj 23:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Great job! :-) Boraczek 14:40, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the "disputable" mark from the article. If somebody else believe that the thing is diputable, let's discuss about it here. Grzegorj 10:26, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Aspect in Finnish

I really do not think that the affairs described in the Finnish chapter had anything to do with telicity (and hardly with aspect, either). See Talk:Telicity.

-- Grzegorj 11:49, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Text removed from article.

I've removed the following text from the article, as it's not related to the article's stated subject (grammatical aspect), but seems encyclopedic and may find a home somewhere:

As well as the two basic times of present and past, English has a certain number of auxiliary verbs that are combined with the infinitive to convey a variety of senses, including those normally expressed in other European languages by the future and conditional tenses, such as:

• capacity: "I can swim."
• permissiveness: "I may swim."
• willingness: "I will swim."
• futurity: "I will swim" or "I shall swim."

When combined with these auxiliaries the infinitive form changes to accommodate the same combinations of aspect available for the two genuine tenses, providing English speakers with, among other semantic possibilities, a working future "tense":

• He can/may/will do (not progressive, not perfect)
• He can/may/will be doing (progressive, not perfect)
• He can/may/will have done (not progressive, perfect)
• He can/may/will have been doing (progressive, perfect)

One ought not to derive the impression from the above that auxiliary verbs in English serve only to convey aspect; they additionally, and principally, serve to convey differences in mood, and for that reason they have been referred to as "modals". Indeed, "can", "will", and "may" all normally express indicative mood, corresponding respectively to the conditional modals "could", "would", and "might". It should further be noted that, while this correspondence works elegantly in theory, with the obscuring of mood and aspect in English, its gradual extinction of the subjunctive mood, and the further complicating optional usage of the first person "shall" and "should" auxiliaries (to distinguish willingness from futurity), the English system of modals has become quite loose, at times ambiguous, and difficult to formalize so as to reflect common, accepted practice.

Ruakh 05:45, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

This sorts best under mood and modality. Kaleissin 16:26, 3 December 2005 (UTC)