Terms For Various Aspects
The following aspectual terms are found in the literature. Approximate English equivalents are given.
- Perfective: 'I struck the bell' (an event viewed in its entirety, without reference to its temporal structure during its occurrence)
- Momentane: 'The mouse squeaked once' (contrasted to 'The mouse squeaked / was squeaking')
- Perfect (a common conflation of aspect and tense): 'I have arrived' (brings attention to the consequences of a situation in the past)
- Recent perfect, also known as after perfect: 'I just ate' or 'I am after eating' (Hiberno-English)
- Prospective (a conflation of aspect and tense): 'I am about to eat', 'I am going to eat" (brings attention to the anticipation of a future situation)
- Imperfective (an action with ongoing nature: combines the meanings of both the continuous and the habitual aspects): 'I am walking to work' (continuous) or 'I walk to work every day' (habitual).
- Continuous: 'I am eating' or 'I know' (situation is described as ongoing and either evolving or unevolving; a subtype of imperfective)
- Progressive: 'I am eating' (action is described as ongoing and evolving; a subtype of continuous)
- Stative: 'I know French' (situation is described as ongoing but not evolving; a subtype of continuous)
- Habitual: 'I used to walk home from work', 'I would walk home from work every day', 'I walk home from work every day' (a subtype of imperfective)
- Gnomic/generic: 'Fish swim and birds fly' (general truths)
- Episodic: 'The bird flew' (non-gnomic)
- Continuative aspect: 'I am still eating'
- Inceptive or ingressive: 'I started to run' (beginning of a new action: dynamic)
- Inchoative: 'The flowers started to bloom' (beginning of a new state: static)
- Terminative ~ cessative: 'I finished my meal'
- Defective: 'I almost fell'
- Pausative: 'I stopped working for a while'
- Resumptive: 'I resumed sleeping'
- Punctual: 'I slept'
- Durative: 'I slept for a while'
- Delimitative: 'I slept for an hour'
- Protractive: 'The argument went on and on'
- Iterative: 'I read the same books again and again'
- Frequentative: 'It sparkled', contrasted with 'It sparked'. Or, 'I run around', vs. 'I run'
- Experiential: 'I have gone to school many times'
- Intentional: 'I listened carefully'
- Accidental: 'I accidentally knocked over the chair'
- Intensive: 'It glared'
- Moderative: 'It shone'
- Attenuative: 'It glimmered'
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Aspect
Famous quotes containing the words terms and/or aspects:
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)