Aspect, Tense, Situations

A. What is 'aspect'?
The term 'aspect' designates the perspective taken on the internal

temporal organisation of the situation, and so 'aspects' distinguish
different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of the
same situation. 'Situation' is meant here as a general term
covering events, processes, states, etc., as expressed by the verb
phrase or the verb construction.
Unlike tense, which is situation-external time, aspect is situation-

internal and non-deictic, as it is not concerned with relating the
time of the situation to any other time point.
Aspectual meaning of a clause can be broken up into two

independent aspectual components:
1. Aspectual viewpoint - this is the temporal perspective from

which the situation is presented. An aspectual viewpoint can
span an entire situation, as in the perfective, or it can span only
part of it, as in the imperfective.
The perfective indicates that the situation is to be viewed as a

bounded whole, looks at the situation from outside, without
necessarily distinguishing any of its internal structure.
The imperfective looks at the situation from inside, or looks

inside its temporal boundaries, and it is crucially concerned with
its internal temporal structure.
Perfectivity and imperfectivity are not objective properties of

situations, and so the same situation can be presented from
either viewpoint. In the sentence John read that book yesterday;
while he was reading it, the postman came, the different forms
of the verb 'read' refer to the same situation of reading (which in
both cases is located in the past through the use of the
appropriate tense), but the situation is presented in two different
ways, with a difference in aspect.
2. Situation type - situations unfold in time in different ways.

This component of the aspectual meaning of a clause indirectly
classifies the situation according to its temporal properties.
Vendler and Smith (1967, 1997) distinguish five types of
situation: state, activity, accomplishment, semelfactive, and
achievement. They differ in the temporal properties of
dynamism, durativity, and telicity. The following table provides a
summary of situation types:
Situation type Temporal properties Examples

state stative, durative; (N.B. know the
telicity is irrelevant to answer, love
stative situations) Mary
activity dynamic, durative, laugh, stroll in
atelic the park
accomplishment dynamic, durative and build a
telic (i.e. consisting of house, walk to
process and outcome) school, learn
Greek
semelfactive dynamic, atelic, tap, knock
punctual (i.e. non-
durative/instantaneous)
achievement dynamic, telic, win a race, reach
punctual (i.e. non- the top
durative/instantaneous)
B. Expressions of 'aspect'
Verbs tend to have inherent aspectual meaning because the
situations described by them tend to have inherent temporal
properties. Three types of lexicalaspectual oppositions are
frequently identified:
1. Punctual and durative - these refer to situations which are not
conceived of as lasting in time (punctual), versus situations which
are conceived of as lasting for a certain period of time, however
short it may be (durative). Inherently punctual situations can be
further interpreted as semelfactive (taking place only once) or
iterative (repeated). Many languages recognise a class of verbs
that under normal circumstances can only refer to punctual
situations (or iteration of punctual situations).
2. Telic and atelic - these refer to situations which have an

internal structure consisting of a process leading up to the
terminal point (telic), versus situations which do not have an
inherent endpoint (atelic). In this semantic distinction, it is
particularly clear that situations are not described by verbs alone,
but rather by the verb with its arguments (subject and objects),
and it is in fact difficult to find sentences that are unambiguously
telic or atelic. The telic nature of a situation can often be tested as
follows: "if a sentence referring to this situation in a form with
imperfective meaning (such as the Progressive) implies the
sentence referring to the same situation in a form with perfective
meaning (such as the English Perfect), then the situation is atelic;
otherwise it is telic. Thus from John is singing one can
deduce John has sung, but from John is making a chair one
cannot deduce John has made a chair. Thus a telic situation is
one that involves a process that leads up to a well-defined
terminal point, beyond which the process cannot continue."
N.B. The term 'telic situation' corresponds most closely to

Vendler's (1967:102) 'accomplishment'.
3. Stative and dynamic - roughly, these refer to situations which
continue and do not change over time (stative), versus situations
which involve necessarily change (dynamic). More precisely, with
a state, unless something happens to change that state, the state
will continue (e.g. standing, or knowing). With a dynamic situation,
the situation will only continue if it is continually subject to a new
input of energy, whether from inside or from outside (e.g. running,
or emitting light). Since punctual situations inherently involve a
change of state, they are always dynamic.
Sometimes the distinction between states and non-states is
referred to as 'states' and 'actions'. However, the term 'action' is
also used in a more restricted sense, for a dynamic situation that
requires the involvement of an agent. Similarly, the term 'event' is
used to refer to a dynamic situation viewed perfectively, and the
term 'process' - to a dynamic situation viewed imperfectively.
Lexical aspectual meaning, or inherent meaning, is frequently
referred to as Aktionsart. The most common Aktionsart are the
iterative, the inceptive, and the inchoative.
C. The values of 'aspect'
The minimal set of aspectual values is two, with the most frequent
opposition being perfective versus imperfective. Many languages
have a single category to express imperfectivity, in some
languages an aspectual category may correspond only to a part
of the meaning of imperfectivity, and in others imperfectivity may
be subdivided into a number of distinct categories. Comrie
(1976:25) offers the following diagrammatic representation of the
most typical divisions within the set of aspectual values:
Habituality refers to situations which are characteristic of an
extended period of time, so extended that the situation is viewed
as a characteristic feature of a whole period. The decision that a
situation constitues a characteristic feature of an extended period
of time is not in itself linguistic, but once it has been made, an
explicitly habitual form can be used to describe it. Habituality can
in principle be combined with any other semantic aspectual
values appropriate to situations that can be protracted in time or
iterated.
Continuousness can be defined negatively as imperfectivity that
is not habituality. Progressiveness is defined as the combination
of progressive meaning (referring to a situation in progress, but
not habitual) with nonstative meaning. Since languages have
different criteria for classifying predicates as stative or not, they
may have different rules for determining when explicitly
progressive forms can be used.
In many languages aspects express different groupings of the
semantic distinctions captured in the diagram. For
example, Romanian, in the past tense, has a distinction between
perfective and imperfective.
The category of aspect itself may be optional in some languages
which have grammaticalised aspectual distinctions. Specifically,
there are aspectual systems which allow sentences with no
realisation of an aspect value. Such sentences are aspectually
vague, i.e. neither perfective nor imperfective, and "more flexible
than either viewpoint in that they allow both open and closed
readings", though "the context often indicates the favoured
interpretation".
D. Problem cases
Is English Progressive an expression of progressive
aspect? The English Progressive form has a number of specific
uses that do not seem to fit under the general definition of
progressiveness. That is, it can be used to refer to a temporary
state or to a habitual situation that holds for a relatively limited
period, and it can also have some purely idiosyncratic uses.
What is the difference between the perfective and the
perfect? The perfective is a type of aspect and it is concerned
with a particular way of representing the internal temporal
constitution of a situation. The perfect tells us nothing directly
about the situation itself, but is typically understood as relating
some state to a preceding situation, which makes it closer in
meaning to tense than to aspect.

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A. What is 'aspect'?

The term 'aspect' designates the perspective taken on the internal

Unlike tense, which is situation-external time, aspect is situation-

Aspectual meaning of a clause can be broken up into two

1. Aspectual viewpoint - this is the temporal perspective from

The perfective indicates that the situation is to be viewed as a

The imperfective looks at the situation from inside, or looks

Perfectivity and imperfectivity are not objective properties of

2. Situation type - situations unfold in time in different ways.

Situation type Temporal properties Examples

2. Telic and atelic - these refer to situations which have an

N.B. The term 'telic situation' corresponds most closely to

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