This is an attempt to illustrate how English presents aspect in various tenses with various types of verbs. The means of presenting include verb inflection, modal and auxiliary verbs, modal adverbs, use of lexical terms in periphrasis.
Habitual/repetitive
edit- (present): He attends university / He is attending university
- (past): He used to attend university (perfect or imperfect) / I once attended university (perfect) / He has been attending university. {imperfect)
WP's list of aspect terms
editThe following aspectual terms are found in the literature. Approximate English equivalents are given.
| Aspect | Languages (as morpheme) | English examples | Tense compatability | Aktionsart (5) |
| perfective WP | 'I struck the bell' (an event viewed in its entirety, without reference to its temporal structure during its occurrence) | all | ||
| *perfect WP | (a common conflation of aspect and tense): 'I have arrived' (brings attention to the consequences of a situation in the past) | NA | ||
| *recent perfect WP, also known as after perfect | 'I just ate' or 'I am after eating' (Hiberno-English) | all | ||
| imperfective WP (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). | all | ||
| continuous WP | 'I am eating' or 'I know' (situation is described as ongoing and either evolving or unevolving/stative; a subtype of imperfective) | all | ||
| progressive WP | 'I am/was/will be eating' (action is described as ongoing and evolving; a subtype of continuous) | all | ||
| habitual WP | 'I used to walk home from work', 'I would walk home from work every day', 'I walk home from work (every day/whenever...) [base, present]' (a subtype of imperfective) | all | ||
| momentane WP | 'The mouse squeaked once' (contrasted to 'The mouse squeaked / was squeaking') | all | ||
| prospective WP (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) | all | ||
| stative WP | 'I know French' (situation is described as ongoing but not evolving; a subtype of continuous) | all | ||
| gnomic WP (timeless) | 'Fish swim and birds fly' (general truths; using base, present of verb) | all | ||
| episodic WP | 'The bird flew' (non-gnomic) | all | ||
| continuative WP | 'I am still eating' | all | ||
| inceptive WP | 'I started running' (beginning of a new action: dynamic) | all | ||
| inchoative WP | 'The flowers bloom' (beginning of a new state: static) | all | ||
| terminative WP ~ cessative WP | 'I finished eating' | all | ||
| defective WP | 'I almost fell' | all | ||
| pausative WP | 'I stopped working for a while' | all | ||
| resumptive WP | 'I went back to sleep' | all | ||
| punctual WP | 'I fell asleep' | all | ||
| durative WP | 'I slept for a while' | all | ||
| delimitative WP | 'I slept for an hour' | all | ||
| protractive |
sign languages | 'The argument went on and on' (reduplication, particles 'on') | all | |
| iterative WP | 'I read the same books again and again' (reduplication) | all | ||
| frequentative WP | 'It sparkled', contrasted with 'It sparked'. Or, 'I run around', vs. 'I run' | all | ||
| experiential |
Mandarin | 'I have gone to school many times' | all | |
| intentional |
Lakota, Mina, Malayalam, Irian | 'I ran into him on purpose' [adverbs, prepositional phrases] | all | |
| accidental WP abilitive | Tamil, Ivatan, Uyghur, Indonesian | 'I accidentally knocked over the chair' | all | |
| intensive WP | 'It glared' [adverbs: 'a lot'] | all | ||
| moderative |
Tagalog | 'It shone' [also used about adjectives, see -ish | all | |
| attenuative |
Japanese??? | 'It glimmered' [adverbs: 'intermittently', 'less and less'] | all |