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
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