Talk:Grammatical aspect/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 1

I've moved all discussions that hadn't been touched since January 2006 to Talk:Grammatical aspect/Archive 1. This includes the following discussions:

• aspect (linguistics)
• disputed
• Serbian example
• Some observations on comments here
• Know what you're doing with the English translations
• perfective v perfect
• Aspect in English and Slavic
• English and Slavic
• Aspect and Actionsart
• Eat vs eat up
• Semitic aspects
• Slavic aspects - the second attempt
• Aspect in Finnish
• Text removed from article.

Ruakh 01:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Continuous vs. progressive

I am a student of linguistics trying to understand the labyrinth of tense and aspect, and i must say your articles have helped me a great deal. Thank you all! However, I have a question... I was talking to my professor today and he mentioned that the progressive and the continuous are not equivalent in motivation. I have to be honest and say that I do not understand what he meant by this. Would any of you perhaps be able to explain?

Thank you again! boram

In English, the continuous/progressive construct has two distinct uses: it can indicate that the action is taking place right now ("I'm playing tennis right now" vs. "I play tennis fairly often"), but it can also indicate that the action will take place soon ("I'm playing tennis tomorrow"). Perhaps your professor views one of these as "continuous" and the other as "progressive"? When you find out, please let us know! Ruakh 19:25, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I indicated the difference between continuous and progressive aspects in Talk:Continuous aspect and proposed that the article be split because of the difference. Please feel free to comment on that talk page. —Umofomia 06:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

---

I would think that "progressive" could mean continuation toward some goal (making progress), and "continuous" could mean a more static or motivationless repetition. "We're getting better at our exciting activity every day". "The gear in the drab Orwellian factory is turning, as it always has been and always will be".

Now I'm depressed.

As to "I'm playing tennis tomorrow" I don't see this as a continuous/progressive aspect at all -- but rather as a mutant non-progressive, non-continuous, perfective future tense, that just happens to be using the same form as the present progressive/continuous aspect.

Structural Cleanup

Is there anyway that we could cleanup this article so that it has a more formal, easier-to-follow structure? I think that it would be best if we could structure the article so that the aspects of different language groupings (Semitic; Finno-Urgic; Germanic; Slavic, etc.) are discussed separately without most of the confusing comparisons and references that we currently have. I am limited in my knowledge (English, Ancient Greek, and only small amounts of Latin and Bulgarian), but I would be willing to work with someone on those sections if this seems like a viable option. --KraDakar 00:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, the point of the comparisons is so that anyone who might know those other languages will be able to make a comparison: often those comparisons don't align exactly in every case, but sometimes they do. For instance, the Greek "chi", according to a chart I have on the Greek Alphabet, has the sound of the German "ch". Unfortunately I don't know German. The examples are for those that just might, however, know something about them. Therefore to separate them would not only be an aweful idea, but would ruin the point of the comparisons!

Language can be quite complex to hammer-out into its rules and descriptors, so it's not surprising that you get confused. It's good to have at least some knowledge of one or more languages which might give you some insight into reading articles like these. The comparisons themselves are what help give people access to understanding the other languages!Infinitelink 05:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

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Hear hear. Just what I'm here to discuss.

But in a different way. I think the article is currently too specific about specific languages, and too focused on English.

It should start out with more of a general discussion on, and clarification of, the meaning of this very difficult concept (even for linguists) of aspect, in contrast to other types of verb distinction.

It should go on to discuss the origins of our concept of aspect, as found in (traditional analyses of) Classical Greek and Latin, and then how these concepts have been expanded to a whole broad array of aspect types. Maybe it should even ask -- has this really gone too far? Is the notion of defining "aspect" being applied to what are in some situations simply general "meaning"? What is, and what should be the criteria for an "aspect" - structural, conceptual, functional?

An inventory of aspect types should then be presented -- ideally grouped into related types, with a discussion of overlapping/conflicting definitions and/or terminology and any scholarly disputes -- with explanations, and examples as best as possible in English.

Then there should be a section which takes a few examples of languages which use aspect in some important way (for that language), which is representative of many languages, or distinct and unusual -- explicating how aspect is important for them. Then a mention of some languages where aspect is not signicant, in varying ways. The point of this is describing the ways aspect can be used and be important in language -- not to teach details about particular languages.

Then a section which gives us links to articles which have more complete descriptions of aspect for particular languages, such as Russian. These linked articles can be the general existing article on a particular language if it has some aspect content, or -- for a language where there is much in-depth discussion to had on the subject, such as Ancient Greek -- your excitingly clear and readable new article "Aspect in Ancient Greek" (also to be linked of course from the general Greek language article).

Now get to work -- or, be getting to work with the intent of magnificently completing the action within a specifically conceived-of time frame!

Arabic Aspect

The author seems to say arabic has "static" and "dynamic" aspect but these are not defined. Arabic aspect is problematic, because many grammars refer to the two conjugation paradigms as either "perfect" and "imperfect" or "past" and "present." The independence of perfective and imperfective aspects is not complete in Arabic as in slavic languages. The single so-called imperfect form can be interpreted just as present tense as well, and the single so-called perfect form can be interpreted as an aorist past. Further tensing is done with forms of the verb to be (كان) to say things like "I used to go" or " I will have done." In written Arabic, modals can be the most problematic. For example, to my knowledge, "كنت أريد" and "آردت" are essentially stylistic variants both meaning "I wanted." However, aspectual distinction between the two forms becomes important, for example, with "know" (عرف). The difference between "كنت أعرف" and "عرفت" is similar to the usage distribution of "sabía" and "supe" ("I knew/used to know" and "I found out") in Spanish. Interestingly, in my experience with Jordanian colloquial, the tensing كنت on the former is dropped often in speech, using the conjugated form as a simple imperfective with context words indicating tense. I would like to know what is meant by the distinction "static" vs. "dynamic." - Mike Rieger

I removed the stuff about static and dynamic aspect - it's essentially meaningless and certainly has nothing to do with Arabic - and added a paragraph about tense/aspect from the perspective of traditional Arabic grammar. النحوي (talk) 08:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know Arabic, but my understanding from the article is that dynamic aspect marks a change, whereas static aspect indicates a continuing action. For example, whereas in English "the window was broken" can have either a dynamic sense — "I heard a crashing sound when the window was broken" — or a static one — "the door was locked, but the window was broken, so we had no difficulty getting in", Arabic would presumably distinguish these. (Granted, English can explicitly mark the dynamic case by using "was being" instead of simply "was", but this is optional.) Ruakh 18:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

That may be, but if in this case the example forms are labeled incorrectly. "Rakiba" is not a continuous form, for example. The reason I bring this up, is because I have never heard the terms "dynamic" or "static" used in discussion of Arabic aspectual distinctions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marieger (talk • contribs) .

Please be bold about making improvements, especially fixing errors.. Ruakh 03:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to add more notes, rukubun is not n a verb, it's a noun. Up to my knowledge, there is no continuous aspect in Arabic at all, as a native speaker, if I want to express "he is riding" I would have to literally say "he continues to ride". --Maha Odeh (talk) 12:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course there is continuous aspect. هو يفكر (huwa yufakkiru) - he is thinking. In colloquial it would have the prefix bi-: بيفكر biyifakkir النحوي (talk) 08:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Arabic conflates the continuous and the habitual. For dialects the prefix is /b/ or /bi/ in Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic, but /ka/ or /ta/ in Moroccan Arabic. It is not infrequent to encounter /ħa/ as an indicative prefix in some gulf states; and, in South Arabian Arabic (viz. Yemen), /ʕa/ is used in the north around the San'aa region, and /sha/ is used in the southwest region of Ta'iz. See article Varieties of Arabic. Libyan, Tunisian, Algerian and Maltese don't have such a prefix. Just a reminder for those who think that colloquial Arabic is a monolythic slab. The term is meaningless unless it is qualified by the name of a region. ;) Hakeem.gadi (talk) 13:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Bibliography

I am not a fan of long bibliographies, but I think we should mention a few influential books. I will start wih one, and a link to my review. Johncmullen1960 11:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Frequentative and telic/atelic aspects in Slavic languages

68.91.95.49 edited the first paragraph of #Aspect in Slavic languages, adding the part in bold:

In Slavic languages there is only one type of aspectual opposition which forms two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective (in contrast with English which has two aspectual oppositions: perfect vs. neutral and progressive vs. nonprogressive) (incorrect - Slavic languages also have the frequentative aspect, and traces of telicity). The aspectual distinctions exist on the lexical level - there is no unique method to form a perfective verb from a given imperfective one (or conversely).

I've reverted it, since it doesn't really fit the tone of a wiki (wikis are editable so people can fix errors, not point them out), but I don't know how to fix the section. Does anyone here know what (s)he's talking about? Is (s)he correct?

—Ruakh_TALK 01:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's true. In Czech, it is IMO more than just traces of telicity. Za- preposition is telicity, I think. (correct me if I'm wrong)

some examples:

střelit - to shoot

zastřelit - to shoot to death

kopat - to dig

zakopat - to bury (Just in the meaning "to place in the ground". It is not used when talking about corpses, except when it's done by a murderer)

bít - to beat

zabít - to kill

jít - to go

zajít - to go somewhere (probably with some purpose) and go back

jet - to ride/to go by (vehicle)

zajet - as above example with jít, or (coloquial/dialectal) to kill by vehicle

malovat - to paint

zamalovat - to cover by paint

pálit - to burn

zapálit - to set fire

žít - to live

zažít - to experience

lít - to pour

zalít - I don't know an english word for this. You put something into a pot. Then you pour enough water into the pot to make that something submerged. Then you zalil that something by water. It also means to water. (plants)

I would add that it's not true that perfect/imperfect is on the lexical level. It is true that both are considered separate words, (possibly because infinitive has aspects too) but it is possible to change aspect, neologisms and loanwords usually distinguish aspects just like native words. Another thing, 'to become' has both aspects in Czech - 'stát se' (perfective) 'stávat se' (imperfective). It seems that the section is based only on one Slavic language and mentions facts specific for this language.

Aspect in Finnic languages

I don't speak Finnish or Estonian, so don't feel comfortable editing this section, but it seems that the difference between the two examples given would be better paraphrased by "I shot the bear" / "I shot AT the bear" (rather than "towards") where the former clearly indicates the bear was hit, whereas the latter statement remains open to interpretation and may even imply the contrary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Henkeldg (talk • contribs) 22:55, 15 August 2007 (UTC).

That's a good point. I don't speak any Finnic languages, either, but I think this is a case where what's needed is actually a native English speaker. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 23:42, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

What's an action nominal?

"Yaska applies the same distinction also for between a verb and an action nominal."

I'd like to change that to "Yaska also applies the distinction to verbs and action nominals," but I have no idea what an action nominal is!

At first glance, I'd consider "action" to be a noun and "nominal" to be an adjective, and conclude that "action nominal" is a borrowing from French, the plural of which might be "actions nominals."

But in contrast with "verbs," perhaps some sort of noun is indicated, such as one involving activity -- a "noun of action"? An active noun? A noun expressing an act?

Perceiving a bit deeper, I contrast completed actions with those in progress, and suspect it may be some sort of Zen-like incompletion, an action suspended in time, irrespective of holistic totality, to which Yaska extended his conception of aspect. Could "swimming" be an action nominal?

Knowing little about grammar except that it ought to come naturally, but doesn't, I'll leave it to the experts, but still, I wish somebody would do something about that sentence. Unfree (talk) 02:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

some rewriting to come

Just to give a heads-up to anyone who may be watching this article... soon I will probably rewriting large sections of this article, at least sections near the beginning. This article is written in a very confusing way (for example, there is the sentence The distinctions made as part of lexical aspect are different from those of grammatical aspect, usually relating to situation aspect rather than viewpoint aspect, when neither the term "situational aspect" nor "viewpoint aspect" had ever been brought up anywhere else in the article!) and if I hadn't written a thesis examining event structure and aspect marking I would not be able to understand most of this article. (In fact, I remember coming to the article a year or two ago and not understanding most of it.) So I'm going to try to make some of the stuff more accessible to the lay reader (as well as, of course, adding citations where I can). —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:12, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

The concept of 'aspect' with reference to English is an artificial construct

I submit that aspect is not a meaningful concept in discussions of the grammar of English, nor, indeed, of most modern West European languages. The English example chosen at the beginning of the article is invalid as an example of 'aspect': it is merely illustrative of the difference between the simple present tense and the periphrastic present progressive tense which is peculiar to English. There is plainly no overt marking of aspect in English verbal morphology (nor in German or French, etc.) as opposed to Russian, Polish, etc. Therefore grammatical aspect cannot be said to be a feature of verbal morphology in English.

I would argue that, to most educated English speakers, grammatical aspect with reference to English would appear to be a specious concept concocted for use within the linguistic meta-language used by philosophers of language - Slavicists and others - who, misguidedly, seek to impose the concept of aspect upon English in order to achieve some kind of 'normative universal' within their discipline.

It is the case that English deals with what is described as 'aspect' by means of choice of tense, plus or minus features of adverbial governance ("qualifiers") and/or periphrastic or auxiliary verbal constructions - none of which accord with the definition of grammatical aspect strictu sensu: that is all that may reasonably be stated with reference to English.

The bottom line is that every language evolves in its own particular way, though it is clearly demonstrable that closely related languages and geographically proximate languages do frequently share common characteristics.

Perhaps the article should attempt to distinguish between "grammatical aspect" and "lexical aspect", though here again I have great problems with current linguistic terminology. 86.145.207.120 (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Valuable research has been done (in stuff like, for example, second language acquisition) using differences between the interpretation of English completive and progressive aspects and other languages' interpretations of the same aspects. Grammatical aspect is real and exists in every language, it just might not be overtly marked.

As for lexical aspect, there is another article on that. Both these articles are in need of cleanup, but that doesn't mean that aspect doesn't exist in English. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:29, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The article (but not the lead) distinguishes lexical/grammatical tense/aspect. And er, lexical aspect in English is more salient than grammatical. Yes aspect is universal, but since there are no purely aspectual morphemes in English, might not it be better to include an example from a language that does? – Synchronism (talk) 20:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Lexical aspect arises from a combination of inherent features of a verb and from the syntactic structure of the verb+object.

Including examples of aspect morphemes in other language is an excellent idea; personally, I could add examples such as Chinese le, Japanese te-iru, and any of a number of aspectual inflections from K'iche', Yucatec, Jacaltec, Tzeltal, or other Mayan languages. The only thing to watch out for is that we don't let the article turn into a ridiculous list. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

You have not presented an argument. You'll have to do better that that. You are basically saying: " It exists because I say it does (shades of 'Alice in Wonderland')." Where is your evidence? Please re-read what I have written: there is no verbal morphology in English which displays any characteristic that might be construed as 'aspect'; the concept is an ephemera with regard to English. 86.137.250.27 (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

If I haven't presented an argument, then you haven't done any better. Why does there need to be overt verbal morphology to prove that aspect exists? There are many, many things that exist in grammar (in many languages) without being overtly marked in the morphology. Let's take another example: case in English. Case is widely thought to exist in English (case-checking and other kinds of feature-checking is one of the basics of syntactic theory in the Minimalist program, the most widely used syntax paradigm today), even though the only places where it's overtly marked are in pronouns (I/me, he/him, etc.) and who/whom. The fact that it's not marked in nouns doesn't mean it's not there. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:51, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. English communicates aspect, although it does not use morphemes to mark it. A certain aspectual notion is inextricably built into the meaning of each verb form. Fluent speakers "feel" it as inherent to that form, although they cannot modify it morphemically. Analogously, English is not a tonal language, but in our speech (oral/aural) we sometimes communicate using tone. We just have no layperson's metalanguage to describe how we do it. Linguistic scientists have devised some scientific metalanguage to describe how we do it. But that's not surprising, because traditional layperson's metalanguage and emic grammatical analysis are flawed. That's why linguistic science exists in addition to traditional (folk) grammatical study and metalanguage—to try to better analyze and describe the etic reality. As anthropologists say, there's a difference between "knowing" and "knowing about". — ¾-10 00:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Please can you define what you mean by 'aspectual notion'; ditto that the traditional layperson's metalanguage is flawed? Who is a lay person in this instance - perhaps anyone who is not a 'trained' linguistic scientist? - and why might his/her metalanguage be inadequate/defective? Also, you seem to be implying that aspect is 'built into' the lexical meaning of a verb-form. Is this in fact what you are saying? If so, it would be useful to have illustrative examples.86.137.250.27 (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying that. Lexical aspect is partially built into the verb's meaning (but also determined by the verb in composition with its complement: "paint" is an ongoing activity whereas "paint a picture" is an incremental accomplishment with an endpoint), but grammatical aspect is more or less freely variable: the same verb can be used in different grammatical aspects. (For example, "I am eating" has progressive aspect, though that aspect is not overtly marked; "after I eat" has perfective aspect; "I was eating" has imperfective aspect; "I have eaten," in the sense of "I have eaten that kind of food before," has experiential aspect, etc.) The difference between other languages and English is that in many languages (such as the examples I added to the intro) speakers signal a change in aspect by adding an affix or a special aspect marker, whereas in English and French (for example) aspect mostly just follows along with tense markers. But even there, there is some aspectual distinction. In French, for example, the difference between the passé composé and the imparfait is a difference in aspect, not tense; they are both in the past tense. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your additional comments. I was actually addressing my remarks in the first instance in reponse to contributor 'three-quarter-ten', in order to elicit some clarification of his comments. However, something further: in the course of browsing I came across the following link which appeared worthy of follow-up, especially in the light of your comments regarding L2 acquisition. Unfortunately, only the abstract and not the full article was available to me. I was intrigued by the comment regarding absence of aspect in Swedish, which might seem to indicate that the rigid definitions of aspect you are putting forward are not universally held within the linguistic community. http://www.idf.uni-heidelberg.de/abs_bylund.html 86.137.250.27 (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe where that abstract says "Swedish lacks this grammatical category" the writer means that Swedish lacks overt marking for aspect in the grammar, not that Swedish lacks aspect altogether; when he differentiates between "aspect languages" and "non-aspect languages," that distinction is referring to aspects that do or do not mark aspect, not languages that do or do not have aspect. In fact, the main conclusion of the abstract seems to be that Swedish is sensitive to endpoints and boundedness of events, which is a major feature of perfective aspect. In any case, if this researcher actually does believe that Swedish doesn't have aspect (which I doubt, given my interpretation of that abstract), it's certainly not a widely held view. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

At first, I would like to stress out that the aspectual distinction in the Slavic languages does not correspond to the cross-linguistic perfective-imperfective dichotomy (see numerous works by Bertinetto, Dahl, Bybee, among many others). Thus, when people say that aspect is "grammatical" in those languages (e.g. Russian), all they mean to say is that aspectual meanings can be consistently and overtly expressed by the majority of verbs. In fact, the Slavic aspectual distinction is a mishmash (and it is derivational, by the way); thus, it is rather lexico-grammatical. In English, on the other hand, all non-stative verbs (and stative verbs under certain conditions, too) can be marked for the progressive, overtly expressed by the discontinuous morpheme [be...ing]. Russky1802 —Preceding undated comment added 01:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC).

Later

[2009-08-18: Had been inserted above in reply to comment by 86.145.207.120 17:19, 2008-11-16 (UTC). Moved down out of 2008-11 chronology.]

Actually, it is English that has overt grammatical aspect marking (habitual "I play the guitar" vs. progressive "I'm playing the guitar"), as do other Western European languages that have grammatical derivation of perfect and imperfect (parfait/imparfait, perfetto/imperfetto) aspects, whereas in Slavic languages, aspect marking tends to be strictly lexical. Russian, for one, has no grammatical forms that would allow one to derive the perfect form of a verb from the imperfect: they have to be memorized separately. Your use of the word 'tense' is unfortunate. The word comes from the Latin 'tempus', of course, meaning 'time', and, strictly speaking, there are only three possible tenses/times, absolute or relative: past, present, and future (or before, now, and later). The differences within each tense are aspectual: the fact that 'present simple' and 'present progressive/continous' are called 'tenses' in English, rather than aspects, is an unfortunate leftover from the old days of blind faith in ancient Latin grammarians. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.149.218.135 (talk) 06:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

That Indian linguist...

Yaska 7th c. BCE, certainly distinguished ongoing processes (bhāva) from completed ones (mūrta), but is there a continuity from this guy to the current grammatics system, or was he developing the basis for the independent Sanskrit grammar system? Now, everybody know that English is a language from the Imperialist Europe surpressing the knowledges of conquered nations, so the question regards whether the current grammar system is based on Yaska's work, or independently rediscovered. If the later is the case, Yaska and his discovery should be in a special section, such as for example Sanskrit grammar system, otherwise his discovery should be in a History section. Both cases might have some justification: a language is certainly an observable system, so structures can be discovered, rediscovered and be independently discovered. However: if he was that early, then his discoveries might actually have influenced Hellenic (Greek) grammarians of c:a 4th c. BCE, which inspired the Latin grammarians of antiquity, which provably is the basis for the current western grammar systems. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 15:01, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you know of any books or articles that mention Yaska's aspect theory (either as a "contribution to" later theory, or just pointing out the similarities)? If such sources exist, we could include a mention of him in the article. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:13, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

He is already in the intro, I forgot to mention. Unsourced, but I can easily believe the statement if it is about Sanskrit. Relevant info and sources are probably already in the article Yāska, but if he influenced Hellenic grammar or not, then I think his mentioning should be in a future section of the article, Sanskrit grammar or History, not in the intro. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 17:51, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW: the articles in Wikipedia aren't precise enough to tell us that if happenstance the Greek grammarians were happenstance influenced by either Indian grammatical information, or rumors thereof. Maybe we cannot decide yet. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 18:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Additional aspects

Could anyone confirm whether there is an accepted form of aspect to indicate 1) ability ("I can", "I am able to") 2) permission ("I am allowed to") or 3) willingness ("I am willing to") to do something? I will tentatively call these the abilitative, permissive, and dispositive aspects, but I would love to know if these are valid forms of aspect or are more appropriately classified otherwise, and if anyone knows more on the subject. Royote (talk) 10:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No, these are not types of aspect, you are talking about modality. Aspect is about the "non-deictic [i.e. non-temporal] structure of an event" (Frawley 1992, 295). Russky1802 —Preceding undated comment added 00:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC).

Russky1802 is correct on your 'aspects' expressing modality. The 'aspects' you are talking about are actually irrealis moods. The first 'aspect' you mention - the 'abilitative' aspect, is called the Speculative mood, and indicates that "the utterance is based on the speculation of the speaker, and is not actually known to be the case". The second 'aspect' you mention - the 'permissive' aspect, is another irrealis mood known as the Permissive mood, and is a type of Imperative mood. The final 'aspect' you mention - the 'dispositive', is called the Desiderative mood and is used to indicate a speaker's desire or willingness to perform an action.Mcmisher

Intuitive Description of Aspect

From the point of view of a layman, this article could benefit a great deal from a more intuitive description of exactly what aspect is, right at the start of of the aricle. Currently, we have: "the...aspect...of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state."

What is "temporal flow"? Is this phrase academic jargon or just a general and imprecise description? Either way, to me as a layman, it doesn't provide a great deal of understanding. Perhaps aspect is quite a difficult concept to convey and grasp intuitively, but if this is the case, we should say so. Punter30 (talk) 18:21, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps something like this: "Aspect conveys a sense of the degree of progression of the action being described. Most commonly the distiction is made between whether the action is completed ("I have eaten") or on-going ("I am eating"), although this is not the only distinction possible." Punter30 (talk) 18:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Your insights are spot-on; you're "onto something" that's entirely real and entirely worth pursuing. The answer is basically that no one has cracked the nut yet. The nut definitely exists, and you have described its contours above; now all we have to do is crack it. Aspect is easier to understand than it is to explain. One of the things you asked is, "Is this phrase academic jargon or just a general and imprecise description?" This is an interesting question and reminds me of previous discussions about the nature of "big words". Often "big words" are both academic jargon *and* a failed attempt to communicate a valid idea at the same time. The idea that is (trying to be) communicated is valid and worthwhile, but the words are lost on the receiver. In 1999 I conceived of using a physical, visual model analogous to ball-and-stick molecular models to explain tense and aspect in a way that students could intuitively understand. For example, in a ball-and-stick model, you would use sticks (which have length) to represent a span of time, and you would use balls to represent a point in time. The colors of the sticks and balls would handily convey aspectual notion differentiations such as "up to [and including] the present moment"–versus–"exact end point [in the past] not known and not relevant". To my (very limited) knowledge, no one else has ever proposed such a visual model for the teaching of verb tense and aspect. I suspect that a literature search of the professional literature (or a conversation with the right professional) would prove me wrong on that, though. One of the reasons I conceived it was as a way to easily compare and contrast the way that the "same" morphological-and-or-syntactical moves are used differently across languages—for example, French, German, and English all have a structure comprising auxiliary-have/be-present-indicative-V1-plus-past-participle-V2, but they use them to convey different tense-plus-aspect notions. This difference is currently hard to explain to uninitiated people (ie, students), but a ball-and-stick model, if properly developed, would make it so intuitive as to be almost trivial. Or so I like to imagine. It might *at least* make language class enjoyable-instead-of-tedious to many a student, anyway. As I said, probably other people have already conceived of this and I am just too ignorant of a layperson to be aware of their work. I know one thing with fair certainty, though, which is that I went through 20 years of K-12 and college classes without ever encountering it or even a mention of it, which means that no one has *successfully* brought any such Tinkertoy-like idea to the average language classroom yet. I plan to drag it into reality someday if no one else has the sense to do it in the meantime. As for improving the lede of this article, I'm sure it's possible, with or without pictures of visual models; but like many worthwhile things, it'll take some effort, time, and ingenuity. — ¾-10 20:14, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

{{infobox aspect|
{{aspect line| |(|-|)| }}
{{aspect line| |x| |x| |x| }}
|cat = both
|abbr = imperf
|name = Imparfait
|language = [[French language|French]]
}}

Hi! The ball-and-stick model is really a good idea. I've drafted an {{infobox aspect}} and an {{aspect line}}, which could be included in articles about aspects (and tenses). The box on the right is just an example, I know the French imparfait is a bit more than that :-) Tell me if you like it, and if have any suggestions for improvement. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 13:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

{{infobox aspect|
{{aspect line| |(|-|)| }}
{{aspect line| |x| |x| |x| }}
|cat = both
|abbr = imperf
|name = Imparfait
|language = [[French language|French]]
}}

Hi ἀνυπόδητος. Sorry it took me so long to respond. I can't believe 6 weeks have flown by already with it sitting on my to-do list. You're off to a great start. I like it. Sadly, at present I lack the time and graphic-arts skills to contribute any substantial help to further developing the infobox. But I at least wanted to post here another part of my idea that I hope someone (maybe me, maybe anyone) can pursue someday (whether here at Wikipedia, or in 3D (with props) in a classroom, or in an educational video game, or hopefully all of the above). There is another "aspect" (pun intended) of the ball-and-stick model that I've wanted to pursue since I conceived the idea but haven't had a chance. Picture if you will a model person (doll, stick figure, whatever) walking on a timeline. The timeline he's walking on is a ball-and-stick model of factual reality, and thus it represents tense and aspects in the indicative mood. Picture, then, a thought balloon bubbling out of his head, in which an alternate person is walking on an imaginary timeline, which is a ball-and-stick model of an imagined (alternate) reality. This timeline represents a reality that could be but currently isn't; thus it represents the subjunctive mood. Thus is mood also modeled visually along with tense and aspect. A capital idea in my opinion. Hope someone has fun with it someday! In the meantime, cheers. — ¾-10 01:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Section on English

I believe that the section on English aspect currently has a number of problems. It conflates aspect forms (constructions) with actual linguistic aspects (implied meanings about the time fabric in which the verb takes place). It says verb forms in the past or present tense (meaning tense forms) can be modified by "the progressive aspect (also called the continuous aspect), the perfect, or both", referring to the aspects BE Verb-ING and HAVE Verb-EN. But these are aspectual forms, not linguistic aspects, and the distinction needs to be made. English has, at a minimum, the linguistic aspects perfective (not to be confused with the "perfect" construction), habitual, stative, and progressive. The progressive linguistic aspect is not the same thing as the continuous linguistic aspect (as opposed to aspectual form). Linguistically, the continuous aspect includes the stative as well as the progressive. The article says "Each tense, in turn, is named [meaning sub-divided] according to its combination of aspect and time (past, present, or future)." This should refer to "each tense form"; and the word "time" appearing in this sentence is ambiguous since time could refer to when (linguistic tense) or how (linguistic aspect), although specifically the former is intended. Also, near the end of the section it is stated that Hawaiian Creole English is a dialect of English, which it is not--it is a creole language with much of its vocabulary drawn from English.

I'm going to revise the section, with as light a touch as possible, to clarify things. 75.183.96.242 (talk) 18:11, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

What is the difference between a "linguistic aspect" and an "aspect form"? Grammatical aspect is a formal distinction. One can speak of the semantics of aspect, but that makes little sense, and potentially causes a lot of confusion, when the language under discussion does not grammatically or lexically encode the distinction in question. Discussing the perfective in English is about as useful as discussing English tone. (And you can argue that tone applies to English.) English arguably does have a past habitual, but it does not have a perfective or stative aspect in any meaningful sense of the word, just as it does not have tones in any meaningful sense of the word.

As for "tense form", tenses are also formal, so that's redundant, though of course you're right that the word "time" should never be used for them. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There's a distinction to be made between aspect or tense in the conceptual sense (habituality, futurity, etc.) and the grammatical forms that a language uses to express it (grammatical aspect, grammatical tense). Often a grammatical form can convey more than one conceptual aspect, depending on context. For example, the English simple past form can convey habituality, stativity, or perfectiveness. It's a legitimate question to ask about any language, "How does a speaker convey an action viewed in its entirety?" That is, "how does a speaker convey the perfective (conceptual) aspect?" For English, the answer is through an aspectually unmarked form; I don't think this is useless information. The same goes for tense: e.g., English doesn't have a future tense in the grammatical sense, but it's legitimate to ask "What grammatical form (or construction, or whatever) does an English speaker use to convey an action that takes place in the future?" The answer is complicated and IMO not at all useless.

It is an interesting question how to interpret statements like "English does not have a ... aspect" or "English does not have a ... tense". Certainly this is intended in the narrow sense of a grammatical aspect or tense; but does it mean English has no grammatical form that is obligatory for expressing that tense or aspect? If so, then English has no continuous aspect, since "the sun was shining" can also be stated as "The sun shone"; and English then also has no past tense, since the past form need not be used in narratives. Or does it mean there is no grammatical form which occurs if and only if that time fabric or placement in time is intended? If it means this one-to-one relationship between aspectual meaning and grammatical aspect, then English has no progressive aspect, because "be" + verb + "-ing" can be used not only for the progressive "am running" but also for the stative "is shining".

So to sum up, I think that (1) one should distinguish in wording between tense or aspect conceptually and tense or aspect grammatical forms, (2) one should provide the reader information on how a language expresses location in time or fabric of time in each case, whether or not there's overlap or obligatory forms or only the unmarked form, and (3) one should be more specific than "has no ... aspect" or "has no ...tense", by saying "has no obligatory ... aspect [tense] form" or "has no exclusively ... aspect [tense] form". 75.183.96.242 (talk) 21:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The "progressive aspect" does not necessarily indicate progression; "progressive" is instead a label. Noun cases are similar in not matching the literal meaning of their labels very well. (This is why several alternate terms for progressive have been proposed, though none of them have had any more success.)

English has various constructions for rendering the future. Whether they constitute a grammatical tense is a theoretical question; most of what I've read has concluded that English does not have a grammatical future tense, but it does have a past tense regardless of also having a narrative present. That argument's a bit beyond the scope of this article.

But in contrast to the future, which native speakers are very conscious of regardless of whether one calls it a tense or not, perfectivity is not part of English speakers' consciousness. Yes, the simple past is the closest we come to a perfective, but it's not very close. Presenting it as a perfective will, by providing them with a poor model, IMO only make the concept more difficult for readers to grasp.

So I disagree with (2) and (3), just as I wouldn't want to say that English "has no obligatory high tone" or "has no exclusively high tone". But I do agree with (1). In the case of tense, Comrie makes the distinction with "tense" (a grammatical category) and "time" (the semantics), though time is not exclusive to tense. We're even worse off with aspect than with tense, but since this article is expressly about grammatical aspect, I think we can safely stick to that for most of the article, and note that a certain English construction may resemble aspect X of other languages in some way. — kwami (talk) 07:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Split "Slavic languages"

The section on Slavic languages is overly long and unstructured. Per Writing better articles#Size, that should be probably split in its own subpage, and as I'm no expert of this subject, I won't do such a split. At least subheadings should be added. --Blaisorblade (talk) 11:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree a subheading should be added. But not creating a whole new article! Also I think the section should be cleaned up because we have examples in 3 languages in 3 "sections" when it seems they could be combined in a table (for example). Angry bee (talk) 12:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I am trying to clear up a backlog of split tags. I acknowlege the proposal was opposed by Angry bee. However, I found that the page actually existed and thought the best course would be to move the data per the split tag. If it is felt to be an abomination then these things happen. In which case please revert and remove the split tag. Op47 (talk) 20:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Explanation of edits to Romance languages section

This section starts out by saying "Most modern Romance languages merge the concepts of aspect and tense, but consistently distinguish perfective and imperfective aspects in past and future tenses." That's a non-standard statement about the future tense.

Then the Italian language example given is

* Futuro semplice (simple future): io mangerò ("I shall eat") - imperfective aspect

* Futuro anteriore (future perfect): io avrò mangiato ("I shall have eaten") - perfective aspect

These aspect labels are incorrect. Io mangerò ("I shall eat") can be imperfective (as in "I shall eat every day") or perfective (viewed as a whole with no internal temporal structure implied) (as in "I shall eat once and be done with it"). And io avrò mangiato ("I shall have eaten") is not perfective -- it is the future perfect, which is a combination of future tense and the perfect, which itself is a combination of tense and aspect.

So I'm correcting these in the article. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Whadjasay?

With great respect to all the linguists out there, while this article may be generally accurate, it is as clear as mud. From it, I think I can point to elements od aspect in the English language, but the article does not explain how this might be different in other lanuages. I do not understand the imperfective and how it is used, or why. Considering that this article is written in English, some attempt might be paid to ensure that a comprehensible communication is made. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ooze2b (talk • contribs) 03:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hear, hear! As clear as mud. I couldn't have said it better myself. So, many articles about the 'elementary school things' like English Language and Maths seem to become very messy and convoluted on Wikipedia. --86.130.102.120 (talk) 22:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Merging Continuative aspect into Grammatical aspect

I suggest that the article on Continuative aspect be merged into this article. "Continuative aspect" is not a notion that has been able to persist in aspectology, the definition by Comrie being rarely accepted elsewhere. So this notion (probably being invalid) may deserve a sidenote in some other article, but no article of its own. The current article on Continuative aspect gives a diverging definition, but without reference which is highly suspect. So it might be better to merge it away. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed! I say be bold and merge. --Accedie^{talk to me} 03:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Recent edit

The passage Aspect is a somewhat difficult concept to grasp for the speakers of most modern Germanic languages is, as I said in my May 2011 edit summary, an unsupported assertion. No citation to a Wikipedia-acceptable source was given, and I seriously doubt that any such Wikipedia-acceptable source exists, because backing up that assertion in a rigorous way would require doing a survey of a large number of speakers of each of the Germanic languages, defining "difficult to grasp", and obtaining results showing that for "most" Germanic languages, "speakers" (how many--a majority of speakers? all of them? the deleted passage didn't say) find it difficult to grasp.

The passage should not be restored unless a citation is given. If it's true, there should be no problem in finding a source for it. Duoduoduo (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't put it there, I don't care to retain it, but similar (while not identical) statements could be found e.g. in the writings of Sasse or Breu. G Purevdorj (talk) 19:01, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Could you find a good quote and citation? Duoduoduo (talk) 19:21, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly difficult for English speakers, as evidenced by the elaborate explanations in Comrie and other sources. And none of his examples come from German (a language he's fluent in, and despite terms like Aktionsart coming from German), so it likely is a Germanic thing, but that would be hard to demonstrate. — kwami (talk) 01:35, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

One has to distinguish familiarity with the subject from ease of understanding once it's explained, and to distinguish understanding the concept from understanding its myriad details. Comrie's explanation is elaborate simply because he delves deeply into it, not because the basic concept is hard for English speakers to understand. Pretty much any English speaker, for example, would understand an explanation something like this:

Aspect distinguishes things like he did it once and for all versus he did it continuously versus He did it repeatedly versus he did it habitually, except that the distinction is made in the form of the verb itself rather than with adverbs--i.e., as in he used to do it and he was doing it.

Duoduoduo (talk) 04:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I think both are correct on different parts of the elephant. Kwami is probably right that it is difficult for native English speakers to learn to correctly execute the inflections as foreign-lang acquirers; but Duoduoduo is right that it's not difficult for them to understand a summary statement of what aspect is. This discussion reminds me a bit of Sapir-Whorf debates. Although it may be true that one language (A) expresses a certain distinction more efficiently than another (B), it is generally not true that the speakers of language B are incapable of comprehending the distinction once it is explained in a circumlocution. The latter is why the "classic version" [strong version] of Sapir-Whorf is widely considered discredited, even though there is truth to the notion that "distinction X is efficiently and habitually made in lang A and circumlocutively and infrequently made in lang B" [weak version]. So in summary, it is not hard for us native en-speakers to understand what aspect is, but it is hard for us to learn to use aspectual inflection fluently in a foreign language. Just like anyone can understand the overview of what blacksmithing, baking, or violin playing are about, but not everyone has the training and experience to be a successful blacksmith, baker, or vioin player, producing useable horseshoes, edible cupcakes, or harmonious tunes. Just another user's two cents. — ¾-10 18:16, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I've attempted to edit that statement to one that maintains the obvious problem of tense and aspect being conflated and includes reference to the idea that the original limited perfective vs imperfective classification system was based almost entirely upon the slavic and classical languages (which I'm thinking was the point the person who tried to say English doesn't fit was going for). This edit is more neutral as it leaves out the opinion (which really why are you guys worried about finding a source for the original statement because it's obviously opinion no matter what you find to reference). I did take out the part about "speakers of germanic languages" because it's not speakers of these languages who have problems, but rather people who don't understand tense and aspect, regardless of what language(s) they speak.

I haven't looked at this article in some time but in just looking though a few paragraphs it seems that a couple of users (and I'm guessing I know who they are) have over the past year completely corrupted the quality of this article by adding in all sorts of crazy examples that don't belong and are (much worse) incorrectly described and mislabeled. It's bad enough that most people -- linguists included -- conflate tense and aspect, but this article now reads as if someone got halfway through Comrie and instead of continuing research got bored and decided they knew enough about aspect to rewrite this article. This is not the kind of haphazard editing wikipedia needs if it's to maintain encyclopedic quality.Drew.ward (talk) 04:41, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

It currently reads (in part) as if aspect were the PFV/NPFV distinction, rather than that being simply one example of aspect. — kwami (talk) 04:53, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I've reverted your most recent edit but retained a few of your changes. Perfective/imperfective are not aspects but rather general classifications into which all aspects are arranged (see Comrie's Aspect -- he discusses this confusion in the introduction as being quite common and usually a mix up between the idea of imperfect (aspect) and imperfective (aspects). Also, you can't say "Germanic languages combine aspect and tense" because they absolutely do not. Every language expresses aspect every language expresses tense. While speakers of certain languages may be less aware of the interworkings of these two systems than others, this by no means is the same as combining the concepts. Saying something like this is a poor opinionated generalization at best and just incorrect at worst. I've left out some other parts including the list of forms you'd given (perfect progressive and such) as these conflate perfection with aspect which is no better than conflating tense and aspect. For this same reason I have also removed some of the examples given as the same problem exists with them and the analysis of some of these examples are in error. This article could be a great one, but simplicity and clarity need to be at the forefront and too much iffy information and clouded examples will just degrade the usefulness and quality of it.Drew.ward (talk) 05:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't remember making that edit. I think I hit the 'revert' button by mistake.

However, you have a couple points wrong. PFV and IPFV are very much aspects. Yes, a language may have more than one of either, but that doesn't mean they're not aspects, any more than a language having more than one past or future means that those are not tenses. Imperfect, OTOH, is not an aspect. In most languages which use the term, it's a conflation of IPFV with past tense.

Also, your statement that "Every language expresses aspect every language expresses tense" is just wrong. Many languages express neither. They can, of course, express time, but that is not the same as aspect or tense. That would be like saying every language has number just because every language can express number. — kwami (talk) 15:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

User Chetosco has restored his disputed edit, despite there being no consensus to do so on this talk page. Therefore I'm reverting so the previous version, by Drew.ward, which seems to be less controversial. Since Chetosco is a newbie on Wikipedia, I offer several points of Wikipedia etiquette as they relate to his edits of this article:

Don't put in changes to an article which are already considered controversial on the article's talk page, as you have done here, until a consensus is reached on the talk page. This can be construed as disruptive editing.

Don't put in unsupported empirical assertions, as you have done here. If you can find an authoritative source that makes the assertion, then it can go in with the source given.

Do not label as vandalism an edit that you simply disagree with, as you did in your edit summary. Vandalism consists of things like putting in curse words, deleting whole sections without explanation, etc.

Don't attack the qualifications of an editor who you disagree with, as you have done in your edit summaries. An editor's supposed qualifications are totally irrelevant on Wikipedia--what counts is verifiability. Disagree with the edit, but don't try to justify your position by engaging in ad hominem attacks on another editor.

As for your labeling me a "non-linguistics editor", I have immersed myself in certain aspects of the linguistics literature for well over three decades. I understand the parts of linguistics that I edit in, in contrast to someone who puts howlers like these on my talk page: There is no such thing as Imperfective aspect. The inexisting opposition of Imperfect and Imperfective is another pseudolinguistic thing entailed by the difficulty to grasp the concept of aspect. and ...many misinterpretations and equivocations of modern English grammar. Among them:... - misinterpretation of the essence of English imperfect aspect which led to misnaming the whole aspect known today as ´Perfect Continuous/Progressive'; - misinterpretation of so called 'stative verbs' as such that may not represent imperfect aspect....That's just to name the most essential.

Duoduoduo (talk) 15:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You two are both edit warring, it needs to stop. I have protected the page for 1 week; take that time to settle your dispute here, and after protection ends don't edit the article until you've worked out an agreement on how to edit it. Another revert on this topic without consensus will lead to a block.

Also, Chetosco, do not label edits you disagree with as "vandalism". Vandalism has its own meaning on Wikipedia. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:30, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Guys, I think that this is close to developing into yet another situation where disputes over a language/linguistics article gets out of hand and becomes less about the subject and more about irritated people. (btw if this turns out as one big block of text, I have no clue why it's doing that because on my edit page it shows normally)

I don't necessarily agree with the versions being argued on either side of this debate nor do I find the way the edit/dispute process has been undertaken to be of good academic or chivalric character at all. However, I feel that some of the contention within this particular dispute is due to a combination of misinterpreted language (in both context and tone -- Chetosco is not a native speaker of English and while he's certainly more than able in its usage there are some things that don't transfer over ideally and thus there is room for misunderstanding or implied tone that may not be intended) and problems with the etiquette / editing process of wikipedia. Although I find it counterproductive in certain applications, I understand the root of wikipedia's policy of not relying on subject matter experts nor weighing the editing process toward expert opinions. This having been the norm for the print encyclopedia industry, it has been shown to stifle innovation and to limit potential viewpoints only to those that are in line with established views. This can be both good and bad -- good in that it precludes too much outlandish information and bad in that sometimes incorrect or less than correct information is retained when in fact it should be conceded that something 'new' is actually correct.

That said, I think that often people working within a given field find it absolutely infuriating that wikipedia seems dominated by editors who are admittedly not professionals or well-trained in that field yet who because it's their interest or hobby have chosen to concentrate on writing and/or editing articles within that field. Languages and linguistics (my field) is one area of wikipedia for which this has been a huge problem and it was so bad a few years ago that wikipedia was argued as one of the worst things to ever happen to these two fields in the internet age and conferences were held attempting to figure out how to undo the damage being done by these wikipedians. The consensus at the time was that because google gives preference to wikipedia, and because students and lay people tend to default to wikipedia (and unfortunately accept everything they read there as fact), that rather than opposing wikipedia or creating alternative sites (many linguistics and language-centric wikis were born of this), that the best course of action would be for those of us with expertise in certain fields to contribute and/or edit articles on wikipedia (and especially monitor for incorrect claims) so as to vastly improve the quality of the articles extant and to help build a body of linguistic and language articles within wikipedia that while not as technical as may be found in certain linguistics-specific resources, would be both technically correct and publicly accessible from a readability standpoint. We are of course far from this today, but over the past few years great strides have been made and the overall level of quality is worlds different than it was in the past.

Now, with linguistics comes some difficult issues. For one, the field itself is fairly new with modern linguistics "starting" about 150 years ago and only coming into its own as a separate field in the 1950's with most innovation having to wait until computers and the internet made research and processing more viable. This means that there is fairly little comparatively that is agreed upon across the board and that most topics have several schools of thought on them. It also means that there is far more opinion than fact and when applying the field to an encyclopedic project (which should be all fact and no opinion) it becomes a difficult tight rope to walk in determining what should be included and how it should be worded and what is "correct" and what is not, etc. Add to this that linguistics is multi-disciplinary and that it is one of the few classical fields of academia where formal education has relatively little value in determining expertise and it becomes difficult to decide who should and should not be able to say what is and is not correct. We have far too many people out there with PhDs in linguistics who have never worked a day in their life out in the field or who don't understand the very basic concepts of linguistics (although probably are quite adept at their particular genre). Likewise, different universities define linguistics in very different ways so that some people with degrees in linguistics may have solid backgrounds in a wide range of linguistic topics while others may only have basic training in educational theory or have had taken a few language courses -- basically, most linguistics programs aren't actually linguistics programs thus most people who list a linguistics degree as their primary qualification aren't linguists. More than anything, a linguist is someone who researches and researches and sits around thinking about and talks about and researches and thinks about and thinks about and researches...language and linguistics. There is a point where a person becomes a linguist and it has very little to do with their academic training -- it's a moment of clarity where suddenly a page of text reads like a sheet of music and that's not something that can be taught or learnt but rather something that comes with years of attempts and successes but mostly with countless failures followed with attempts to not fail again.

It takes a very very long time to become a linguist and it takes a dedicated spirit and a huge amount of humility to become a good linguist and most people who claim the title don't have the drive or willingness to ever reach that level.

Regarding wikipedia -- when you are a linguist and especially when you have chosen to dedicate your efforts to a certain subfield or genre within linguistics and you see someone haphazardly (perhaps not intentionally) or maliciously, or just irresponsibly (because they've taken a college course in whatever they're choosing to edit or because they've found a series of books or articles online and decided that upon having read them they are experts) editing or rewriting article after article about your focus it's irritating to say the least. And worse, when you enter into or observe an edit war or edit dispute in which it's admitted that in fact the person who is trying to edit or deny an edit is by his own admission neither a linguist nor an expert in the topic at hand, it's infuriating and when you see some of these people abuse this process because they are an admin or "in" enough within the WP community to get their way or bully those who disagree by blocking them, it's heartbreaking. This unfortunately happens a lot and seemingly more often in linguistics here than in most fields.

Duo, you are part of a small group of 4-5 people who do a LOT of editing of linguistic articles. You are a self-taught linguist and by far tend to be most conservative among this group in making your edits or selecting your focus and it's clear when you do argue a point that you've researched it. My only complaint with you regarding this is perhaps that you sometimes fail to keep in mind that just because something's been written or published that it may not be correct and that consensus and correctness (and encyclopedic value) are not all the same thing. Along those lines, you're sometimes quick to make a revert or change without first discussing the topic with the person who's on the other end. That said, you do tend to be much more open to hearing different sides than the others and are far more apt to reconsider viewpoints (yours and others). Someone who has developed a passion for linguistics following a career in other fields is certainly a great value and brings the sort of academic caution that tends to be missing here and is appreciated. If the other editors were as cautious we would be much better off.

As much as I don't like to talk about one person over another, I will have to say that (and I assume you're reading and have no ill will in writing this but do feel we all together need to discuss this) I feel that Kwami has been an overall cause of great concern and reason for much of the contention within the linguistics arena here. He is very bad about writing and rewriting articles in a way that feels as if an undergrad linguistics student is rewriting wikipedia as he takes his semester courses. His assertions are very wide and contentious and while he tends to cite huge lists of sources (not necessarily sources that support the claims), he has a pension for taking simple clearcut and uncontroversial articles and inserting his opinions and lots of poorly chosen and mistakenly analyzed examples. And unfortunately this gets combined with a style of writing that purports the things he proposes as the one and only true fact. People could argue that we are all guilty of this (and this is one of the funny and difficult things about linguistics), however Kwami tends to be the ideal (or anti-ideal) example of an editor/admin who bullies those who disagree with him and who incessantly edits things for which he is not well-trained or well-researched enough to be arguing. This is not to say that a person shouldn't feel free to contribute or challenge anything they feel needs improvement in wikipedia. But it does mean, that whether degreed or undegreed, self-taught or formally educated, young or old, professional or hobbyist, that anyone worth his salt limits himself to editing (or at least admitting he may be incorrect when challenged) only those articles for which he is to the best of his abilities an expert. When you edit seemingly everything and then argue vehemently every time a change is made or someone disagrees, and when you entirely rewrite previously undisputed articles or sections, you become a less than positive force -- especially when he initiates edit wars then blocks or threatens those he's warring with for having an edit war and I see far too many talk pages out there where this scenario has played out.

We all need to hone our roles and limit our areas of editing to what we actually do know and even then be open to considering other viewpoints but when arguing a point, it's very important to self-analyze and consider whether as editors our desired changes (or desire for non-change) is correct beyond a shadow of a doubt and not just correct based on our own interpretation or based on something that we've read elsewhere. But mainly though, we need to be open to other ideas and to be nice. Drew.ward (talk) 18:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

All I did was revert an unsourced empirical assertion that conflicts with the talk page!

As for the statement keep in mind that just because something's been written or published that it may not be correct and that consensus and correctness (and encyclopedic value) are not all the same thing: But Wikipedia policy is that the only things that can go in Wikipedia are things that have been published in reputable sources; Wikipedia editors cannot serve as referees of ideas that aren't already in the literature. Duoduoduo (talk) 19:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Mango-eating

I bring nothing to this discussion other than the intuitions of a native speaker of English, so might I enquire whether there are any elucidatable aspects of grammatical aspect encoded in two simple sentences?

By tomorrow I will have eaten my first mango.
(stated presumably in the expectation that this be the first of many occasions of mango-eating) 

and

By tomorrow I will have eaten my first horse.
(stated presumably in the expectation that this be the first and last occasion of horse-eating). 

The cultural or culinary norms expressed here are of course ex-grammatical, but would a grammarian care to (or be at pains to) make any distinction over aspect as such in the case of these two sentences? Cheers NewbyG ( talk) 16:41, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a difference. In particular, I don't get a 'first-and-only' reading of your horse sentence. If I wanted to express that meaning, I would have said "By tomorrow I will have eaten a horse". The way you said it, I don't see any difference; even if there were, it's certainly not a difference in aspect but a difference in pragmatic intepretations, which are coming from cultural norms rather than from anything linguistic. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:02, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I was afraid that that might be the case. Thank you, for replying, I was just off looking at some other contributions, and I just now saw this. Thank you. NewbyG ( talk) 18:11, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Might I venture that

By tomorrow, I will have eaten a whole plate of humble pie.

Thank you NewbyG ( talk) 18:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Aspect in German

I am puzzled by the description of aspect in German. The author of this section claims that the construction to be + am/beim + nominalized infinitive is not part of the standard language. This is simply not true. It is a construction found in newspapers and periodicals of record (Die Zeit, Der Stern, Der Spiegel) and treated in more modern grammars, thus for instance Zifonun et al., 1997, 1877 ff. The author is correct, however, in that in informal speech this construction is found more frequently along the middle Rhine and Moselle than, say, in Vienna or Berlin. A good summary of the current scholarly opinion of the "Verlaufsform" (progressive/continuous) in German is in the dissertation of Gabriella Gàrgyàn, Der Am-Progressiv im heutigen Deutsch,Szeged 2010, 17 ff. --Regensturm23 (talk) 00:13, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

First line

"Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event or state, denoted by a verb, relates to the flow of time."

Is this more accurate?

Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event or state, denoted by a verb, relates to a point or a state in the flow of time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.108.94.123 (talk) 10:46, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

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