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:
“I hope that you live on good terms with yourself and the gods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)