# Aspect (perfective, imperfective verb)



## gaer

_Moderator edit: This thread was split from another but it need not revolve around the topics and examples mentioned in the first couple of posts. Please feel free to tell us how you express aspects in your languages and - if you are unfamilliar with the concept (which is the case with a high probability)  - do not hesitate to ask for clarification. 

***
_ 
I just did a search for "perfective verbs", and this is what I immediately saw:

English-Belarusian Dictionaries: Grammar: Perfective VerbsEnglish-Belarusian Dictionary provides a searchable database and some older English-Belarusian word lists. 

Czech verbs - aspect (vid), perfective and imperfective verbsPerfective verbs are often formed by adding a prefix, such as s-, za-,

Perfective verbs of motionThe normal Perfective partner of идтО/ходОть, Ѕхать/Ѕздить, летЅть/лет¬ть is formed with the prefix по- on the One-way verb.

If you wish you can start a thread in the English forum about this term, but I believe you will find out that most native speakers of English will be highly confused by the terms "perfective" and "durative". I'm not saying that they do not exist, but I have never seen them used, and they are really not at all helpful for English.

Gaer


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## Whodunit

Gaer, people usually don't know much about aspects like perfective and imperfective verbs until they occupy with a Slavic language. This is a feature of them, which does not exist in any other language family, as far as I know.

Venenum, I don't know too much about the aspects and can't use them myself actively. So, I'd like to ask Jana: Does the reflexive verb "zdokonalit se" exit? It would be rather ridiculous to say that "sich verbessern" is perfective or non-progressive.


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## beclija

No, aspect exists in many languages, although few have such a regular morphological expression of it as the Slavic languages. But take for example the past tenses in Latin, they express aspectual notions as well.


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## Whodunit

Nevertheless, aspects are usual in the present tense in some Slavic languages, too. I think, it works for Czech, but not for Russian. Only past and future actions can be catogorized into perfective and imperfective in Russian, right?


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## beclija

I am not too firm about Russian minutia, but I guess you know... I think even in Slavic languages that allow in principle perfective verbs to occur in present contexts, there use will be quite restricted. But we are driving off topic...


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## Jana337

Whodunit said:


> Venenum, I don't know too much about the aspects and can't use them myself actively. So, I'd like to ask Jana: Does the reflexive verb "zdokonalit se" exit? It would be rather ridiculous to say that "sich verbessern" is perfective or non-progressive.


Yes, it exists.

Perfective: Zdokonalit se - to achieve an improvement (action completed, which is what the Latin word actually means)

Imperfective: Zdokonalovat se - to be working on an improvement (action in progress)

Why would it be ridiculous to say that "sich verbessern" is perfective?
_
Zdokonalil jsem se v angličtině. Ich habe mich im Englischen verbessert. I improved my English skills._

I would understand if the imperfective verb were perceived as ridiculous by you.

_Byl jsem v Londýně a zdokonaloval jsem se v angličtině. I was in London and I was working on my English. _(roughly)

It does not mean that I did not succeed and that my English is still poor. The result is simply not expressed. There is nothing in German to capture this nuance unless you resort to a causal construction like (in English) "I went to London to improve my English", which is imprecise. So why is the former ridiculous? 

Jana


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## gaer

Jana337 said:


> Yes, it exists.


Jana, I think the most important point here is that each language, even individual languages within a group with many things in common, are able to describe certain things easily with great precision that other languages can't do with a great deal more work.

This to me is the great thing about languages. Learning them opens our eyes to other ways of thinking and gives us a huge insight into other cultures.

I would be very interested to find out if you (or others) can describe a bit more precisely (or on a more elementary level) what it is that is expressed with such verb forms or types of verbs that is lacking in English.

Gaer


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## Jana337

gaer said:


> I would be very interested to find out if you (or others) can describe a bit more precisely (or on a more elementary level) what it is that is expressed with such verb forms or types of verbs that is lacking in English.



OK. 

To some extent, English can express the nuance by progressive tenses. But you take the same verb and an auxiliary, while we have two sets of verbs that are conjugated on their own. Which is why learners of Slavic languages struggle hard to learn aspects. With a bit of practice, it is not extremely difficult to distinguish perfective and imperfective verbs, but correct usage is a problem even for extremely advanced speakers.

What follows holds for Czech. I know that it is even more complex in Russian, but probably not very different.

Before I start, let me briefly sketch the relevant Czech tenses (all examples for 3rd person masculine) for the verb "to write":
Imperfective - *psát*:
present - píše
future - bude psát

Perfective - *napsat*:
present - napíše (morphologically present but has a _future_ meaning)
future - N/A 

Now what it is all about: Perfective verbs (in Czech "finishing" verbs) describe a result, imperfective verbs describe a process.

It follows that perfective verbs cannot have a present tense. You cannot be doing something that has already been accomplished or something that will be (as if suddenly) accomplished later.

About writing a letter:

IMPERFECTIVE: _Bude psát dopis_. - At some point in the future, he will be spending his time writing a letter (maybe he will finish it, maybe he will trash the draft, who knows - but the purpose is NOT to imply uncertainty about the result. The result is just not an issue at all.). _He will be writing a letter._
PERFECTIVE:_ Napíše dopis. _- At some point in the future, the letter will be written/finished (nothing is implied or said about the process; only the result is signalized). _He will write a letter._

But we use the imperfective aspect much more often than English speakers use "will be -ing". In fact, they do it only when they really want to stress the process or contrast it with something, while we do it absolutely automatically without meaning to emphasize something.

A girl to her lover who is going abroad:
_Každý den (every day) ti budu psát dopis. _- Message: I will take the time to write a letter every day.
_Každý den ti napíšu dopis. _- Message: You will get a letter a day.
No particular difference in the meanings. Neither necessarily implies more or less love.

Precisely the same principle works in the past tense (see my post above).

Now if will do/will be doing and did/was doing can be thought of as equivalents of our aspects, let's look at the present:
He is writing = *on píše* (to express explicitly that it is happening now, you have to use adverbs like "just", "at the moment" etc.).
He writes = *on píše* (again, adverbs and adverbial constructions are used to give details, such as "every day", "occasionally" etc.).

Confusing simple present and present continuous is therefore one of the typical Slavic mistakes. But we are probably not really unique. 

Czech pupils use a simple trick to determine the aspect. They say "budu (the auxiliary for the future tense) + infinitive". If it sounds fine, the verb is imperfective. Otherwise perfective. A Czech native speaker, even an uneducated and/or illiterate (very rare in our latitudes ), can determine whether it sounds fine or not with certainty.

Well, a bit longer than I had thought.  

Jana


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## Jana337

An addition - closely related to the above but it might provide you with some more insight:

We often use perfective verbs for single events and imperfective verbs for repetitions.

To visit (I will use the verb although it would be more fluent to say "come and see" or "to attend"):

 Perfective - *navštívit*
past - navštívil 
future (morphologically looks like present) - navštíví

 Imperfective - *navštěvovat*
past - navštěvoval
future - bude navštěvovat

PERFECTIVE: 
Navštívil mě, když jsem byl nemocný. - He visited me (once) when I was ill.
Zítra mě navštíví. - He will visit me tomorrow.
_
What is perfective about the latter: He will visit me once and that's it._

IMPERFECTIVE: 
Navštěvoval mě, když jsem byl nemocný. - He used to visit me when I was ill.
Každý čtvrtek bude navštěvovat jazykový kurz. - He will visit (=attend) a language course every Thursday.

_What is imperfective about the latter: No particular limit is specified, it can seemingly go forever (i.e. never completed)._

Unlike the example with love letters above where - as I said - the meaning is not particularly different, navštívit/navštěvovat are not interchangeable in the green examples at all (grammatically wrong) and they obviously change the meaning of the green sentences.

Jana


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## gaer

Jana337 said:


> OK.


Oh my!  

First, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this. So far Czech sounds as alien to me as Japanese, and at least I know a bit about Japanese (from very hard work), but I'll attempt to follow along.


> To some extent, English can express the nuance by progressive tenses. But you take the same verb and an auxiliary, while we have two sets of verbs that are conjugated on their own. Which is why learners of Slavic languages struggle hard to learn aspects.


So far it seems to me that this may be why those who speak Slavic languages may look for things that do not exist in other languages (much the way English-speakers attempt to form progressive tense structures in German. 

Ich bin sprechen, ich bin sprechend…


> With a bit of practice, it is not extremely difficult to distinguish perfective and imperfective verbs, but correct usage is a problem even for extremely advanced speakers.


(I can think of some verb structures that cause problems in English even for people who are very advanced.)


> What follows holds for Czech. I know that it is even more complex in Russian, but probably not very different.
> 
> Before I start, let me briefly sketch the relevant Czech tenses (all examples for 3rd person masculine) for the verb "to write":
> Imperfective - *psát*:
> present - píše
> future - bude psát
> 
> Perfective - *napsat*:
> present - napíše (morphologically present but has a _future_ meaning)
> future - N/A


"Perfective" seems to add something…


> Now what it is all about: Perfective verbs (in Czech "finishing" verbs) describe a result, imperfective verbs describe a process.
> 
> It follows that perfective verbs cannot have a present tense. You cannot be doing something that has already been accomplished or something that will be (as if suddenly) accomplished later.


Okay…


> About writing a letter:
> 
> IMPERFECTIVE: _Bude psát dopis_. - At some point in the future, he will be spending his time writing a letter (maybe he will finish it, maybe he will trash the draft, who knows - but the purpose is NOT to imply uncertainty about the result. The result is just not an issue at all.). _He will be writing a letter._


I will be writing three letters or emails as soon as I finish answering this. But I am focusing on the writing. I am not saying what I will do after I finish. In fact, it is not even clear so far if I _will_ finish. Perhaps I will write part of all three and finish them at another time. Perhaps I will delete them and try again if I am unable to say what I wish to say.


> PERFECTIVE:_ Napíše dopis. _- At some point in the future, the letter will be written/finished (nothing is implied or said about the process; only the result is signalized). _He will write a letter._


I will be write three letters or emails as soon as I finish answering this. (This is true, in fact.) I will definitely finisht them, and I will send them.


> But we use the imperfective aspect much more often than English speakers use "will be -ing". In fact, they do it only when they really want to stress the process or contrast it with something, while we do it absolutely automatically without meaning to emphasize something.
> 
> A girl to her lover who is going abroad:
> _Každý den (every day) ti budu psát dopis. _- Message: I will take the time to write a letter every day.
> _Každý den ti napíšu dopis. _- Message: You will get a letter a day.
> No particular difference in the meanings. Neither necessarily implies more or less love.


Hmm. That's hard, but I think I understand theoretically. And I can see this is VERY difficult to explain.


> Precisely the same principle works in the past tense (see my post above).
> 
> Now if will do/will be doing and did/was doing can be thought of as equivalents of our aspects, let's look at the present:
> He is writing = *on píše* (to express explicitly that it is happening now, you have to use adverbs like "just", "at the moment" etc.).


Yes. "I am writing you" is not specific enough. I might, for instance, write this if I received a notification of a PM while writing you a letter:

"Jana, I'm taking a moment to answer your PM, but look for more complete information in a few minutes. I'm writing you an email right now and will send if off very soon."


> Czech pupils use a simple trick to determine the aspect. They say "budu (the auxiliary for the future tense) + infinitive". If it sounds fine, the verb is imperfective. Otherwise perfective. A Czech native speaker, even an uneducated and/or illiterate (very rare in our latitudes ), can determine whether it sounds fine or not with certainty.


So in the end it comes down to "feel" for most natives, and this is what makes it so hard for people learning?

Again, thank you for your time, Jana,

Gaer


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## Flaminius

Gaer, let me illustrate Jana's point may be better understood in a modified form; perfective verbs cannot have a progressive form.  I am going to explain it with a Japanese example.

Aspects are coded at semantic level in Japanese verbs.  That is to say, perfective verbs are morphologically the same with other verbs.  The Japanese verb _shiru_ means "to know" and is a perfective.  The form _shiru_ cannot be used when expressing an idea, "I know the author of this book."

* この本の著者を知る。 (kono hon-no chosha-o shiru)
OK この本の著者を知っている。 (kono hon-no chosha-o shitteiru)

The former is grammatically impossible.
With regular verbs such as _taberu_ (to eat), verb stems suffixed with _teiru_ signify progressive:
朝食を食べている。
I am eating breakfast.

But it is not the case with perfective verbs.  With them,  _teiru_ signify resultative, or a continuous state as the result of the action of the verb.  In the latter illustration, 知っている means "I know" as opposed to "I am knowing."


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## gaer

Flaminius said:


> Gaer, let me illustrate Jana's point may be better understood in a modified form; perfective verbs cannot have a progressive form. I am going to explain it with a Japanese example.
> 
> Aspects are coded at semantic level in Japanese verbs. That is to say, perfective verbs are morphologically the same with other verbs. The Japanese verb _shiru_ means "to know" and is a perfective. The form _shiru_ cannot be used when expressing an idea, "I know the author of this book."
> 
> * この本の著者を知る。 (kono hon-no chosha-o shiru)
> OK この本の著者を知っている。 (kono hon-no chosha-o shitteiru)
> 
> The former is grammatically impossible.
> With regular verbs such as _taberu_ (to eat), verb stems suffixed with _teiru_ signify progressive:
> 朝食を食べている。
> I am eating breakfast.
> 
> But it is not the case with perfective verbs. With them, _teiru_ signify resultative, or a continuous state as the result of the action of the verb. In the latter illustration, 知っている means "I know" as opposed to "I am knowing."


Very interesting. And yes, in Japanese I can follow the logic.

Thank you!

Gaer


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## cajzl

I should say that the closest equivalents to the Czech (Slavic) perfective verbs are the English _perfect_ tenses as the name suggests. It is true particularly in the temporal (time?) subordinate clauses.

For example:

perfective:

(past) (Když/Jakmile) napsal dopis... (When/As soon as) he has (had) written a letter...

(present) ---

(future) (Až/Jakmile) napíše dopis... (When/After) he will have written a letter...

imperfective:

(past) (Když) psal dopis... (When) he was writing a letter...

(present) (Když) píše dopis... (When) he is writing a letter...

(future) (Až) bude psát dopis... (When) he will be writing a letter...


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## cajzl

Hmm... Now I have discovered that:
 
The Future Perfect cannot be used in clauses beginning with "when," "while," "before," "after," "by the time," "as soon as," "if" and "unless".


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## DrWatson

We have a similar imperfective/perfective construction in Finnish, but instead of expressing it with the verb, we usually use noun declension.

*Kirjoitin kirjeen *"I wrote a/the letter". The word letter is in accusative case: the action was completed and the letter is ready.
*Kirjoitin kirjettä *"I was writing a/the letter". The word letter is in partitive case: the action was started but not completed, the letter's unfinished.

Although, there exists a nominal verb construction that corresponds somehow to imperfective. In my experience it's commonly used e.g. when translating English continuous verbs literally, instead of using the form described above.

*Olin kirjoittamassa kirjettä *"I was writing a letter"


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

Cajzl:

In Russian anyway, the standard word for "while" (пока) is normally used with verbs in the imperfective.

When it is used with a verb in the perfective _in the negative, _it translates into English "until" with the English verb in the present tense _in the affirmative._

Logical, yes?


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## beclija

There is, I think, a similar sort of test in German and English as to wether a verb is used perfectively or imperfectively (as for semantic analyses or simply working out into which member of a pair to translate it): When you can say "for two hours" (or "zwei Stunden lang"), it is imperfective/durative, if you can say "in two hours" ("in zwei Stunden") it is perfective/telic. It is not 100% accurate because aspect in Slavic covers more than telic/atelic distinction, but I think it often helps to capture the difference.


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## ireney

I'd say that all languages have verb forms that show aspect as well as time.

In modern Greek (I leave ancient Greek out of it to keep things simpler) there's no perfective form of the present tense (for obvious reasons).

The present tense by itself implies the imperfective aspect of the action and is used as Present Perfect Continuous too although the use of Παρακείμενος (Parakeimenos) = Present perfect emphasises this aspect with the use of the verb "start" (I have started washing the dishes an hour ago).

Present Perfect  is obviously imperfect and is formed by present of have + infinitive of the Aorist (much like the English really)

*The past *has 3 tenses allocated to it

Simple Past (Παρατατικός/Paratatikos) which is the same as the simple past in English. While one could argue that anything past is  by nature perfective this one is considered imperfective (both "I wrote" and "I was writing" are expressed in Simple Past although another verb is also translated as "I wrote" see below)

Aorist (Αόριστος) That confuses many who learn any form of the English language since it has a perfective aspect and cannot be translated properly into English.

Έγραφα ένα γράμμα χτες ( I wrote/was writing a letter yesterday) Simple Past

Έγραψα ένα γράμμα χτες ( I wrote a letter yesterday) Aorist. It's an action done once and it's most definitely over and done with. 

A better example might be
I cried all day yesterday 
( Έκλαιγα όλη μέρα χτες) that's in simple past and, while I am obviously done crying, the meaning it carries is that of continuity whereas
(Έκλαψα όλη μέρα χτες) means the same really if you think about it but with the meaning that crying is over and done with.
Can't explain it better I'm afraid.

There's also the Past Perfect (Υπερσυντέλικος) which doubles as Past Perfect continuous too and the difference of aspect is shown by the choice of words. (formed with past of have + infinitive of Aorist)

*Future* has another group of 3 tenses 

Future simple (called continuous in Greek) which is imperfective and the same as "I will write"( formed by future particle θα +  subjunctive of the present tense)

Future perfective (called instantaneous in Greek). This one is translated as "I will write" but is perfective in aspect and means an action which will be finished in a certain point in the future. ( formed by future particle θα +  subjunctive of the aorist tense)

Future perfect. Same as the English one, perfective and showing that an aspect will be finished _before_ another one. ( formed by future particle θα +  present of have + infinitive of Aorist)


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## !netko!

In Croatian, ''to write'' is both: ''pisati'' and ''napisati''. ''Pisati'' is imperfective (to write continuously) and ''napisati'' is perfective (to write, but under the condition that you finish the action). Both verbs can be used in every tense (Present, Future 1st (Simple Future?), Future 2nd (Conditional Future?), Perfect, Plusquamperfect, Imperfect, Aorist). Their meaning is different, but extremely close.


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## modus.irrealis

Just to add to Irene's account of Greek, Greek (of any kind) also marks the imperative for aspect, which seems very rare. I was wondering if any of the Slavic languages, or any other language, does that as well.

I don't know if I can think of an example to explain the difference, but maybe from διαβάζω "to read":

imperfective διάβαζε: read!, study!,  "be reading!"
perfective δίαβασε (το): read (it)!

(I guess English can do something similar, but I'd say something like "be reading" is extremely rare -- I doubt I've ever heard or said it in a normal context.)

And more generally, I've been reading about aspect lately and it's ridiculously complicated, and there seem to be very few standard definitions of things and the terminology does not seem to be fixed across languages. I read the following Russian example (in the book, the questions are in English and the responses in transliteration)

Q: What did your brother do after dinner yesterday?
A: On pisal pis'ma (He wrote letters)

and found it very odd that the imperfective "pisal" must be used. And I've never understood how "to be" can have a perfective aspect in some languages, so it does seem pretty bewildering.


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## Jana337

Yes, the aspects work in the imperative as well.

Examples:

to go
jdi! - e.g. go away 
choď - go to English classes regularly

to read
přečti! - e.g. read this letter and tell me what you think about it
čti! - read to be educated, to improve your vocabulary etc.

Jana


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## cyanista

Spanish also has the means for expressing the perfective/imperfective aspect - at least in the past tense. It is done with the help of two different past tenses: _indefinido_ and _imperfecto_. The verbs in _indefinido_ correspond to the Russian past perfective verbs (and _imperfecto_, logically enough, to imperfective verbs).  Once I got my head around this, all exercises were a piece of cake. 

By the way, Jana: if I remember rightly, perfective verbs in Russian are, in contrast to Czech, viewed as having only past and future tense forms.


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## lazarus1907

cyanista said:


> Spanish also has the means for expressing the perfective/imperfective aspect - at least in the past. It is done with the help of two past tenses: _indefinido_ and _imperfecto_. The verbs in _indefinido_ correspond to the Russian past perfective verbs (and _imperfecto_, logically enough, to imperfective verbs).  Once I got my head around this, all exercises were a piece of cake.


They are still used: Many foreigners believe that the difference between these two past tenses in Spanish is related to how long ago  something happened, but the difference is that imperfect is durative, whereas the indefinido is perfective.

These concepts are very useful to understand lots of things in Spanish grammar. Verbs can also be divided intro perfective and imperfective, but this division is not as important it might be in other languages.


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## !netko!

modus.irrealis said:


> Just to add to Irene's account of Greek, Greek (of any kind) also marks the imperative for aspect, which seems very rare. I was wondering if any of the Slavic languages, or any other language, does that as well.
> 
> I don't know if I can think of an example to explain the difference, but maybe from διαβάζω "to read":
> 
> imperfective διάβαζε: read!, study!, "be reading!"
> perfective δίαβασε (το): read (it)!
> 
> (I guess English can do something similar, but I'd say something like "be reading" is extremely rare -- I doubt I've ever heard or said it in a normal context.)
> 
> And more generally, I've been reading about aspect lately and it's ridiculously complicated, and there seem to be very few standard definitions of things and the terminology does not seem to be fixed across languages. I read the following Russian example (in the book, the questions are in English and the responses in transliteration)
> 
> Q: What did your brother do after dinner yesterday?
> A: On pisal pis'ma (He wrote letters)
> 
> and found it very odd that the imperfective "pisal" must be used. And I've never understood how "to be" can have a perfective aspect in some languages, so it does seem pretty bewildering.


 

Croatian does the same thing with imperatives. My guess is, so do other Slavic languages.

Čitaj! - *read*
*Pro*čitaj! - *finish reading it (*this translation is a bit clumsy but I can't think of a better one)

Also, I'm not a speaker of Russian, but I think that the imperfective ''pisal'' was used because he was writing the letters for a certain amount of time. You can, at least in Croatian, use the perfective form ( I think it's ''napisal''), but then the meaning would be a bit different.

''To be'' has a perfective form in Croatian *- budem, budeš, bude, budemo, budete, budu *(the imperfective form is: *jesam, jesi, jest, jesmo, jeste, jesu*). We use the perfective form as the auxiliary in the Conditional Future tense.


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## cyanista

lazarus1907 said:


> They are still used: Many foreigners believe that the difference between these two past tenses in Spanish is related to how long ago  something happened, but the difference is that imperfect is durative, whereas the indefinido is perfective.
> 
> These concepts are very useful to understand lots of things in Spanish grammar.



Sorry lazarus, I didn't mean to suggest that these tenses are no more used. I actually meant that Spanish makes this distinction *in the past tense*.  I even wrote it but deleted the word "tense" because it interfered with my next sentence where I talked about tenses as a narrower notion.  Sorry for the confusion, I'm going to edit my post now.


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## Jana337

cyanista said:


> By the way, Jana: if I remember rightly, perfective verbs in Russian are, in contrast to Czech, viewed as having only past and future tense forms.


I do not think there is a contrast. I am sure many people would dispute my classification and put the verb into the field future, with N/A in the present tense category. I decided for the morphological structure just for the sake of the argument, but I said elsewhere that perfective verbs cannot have a present meaning by definition.



Jana


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## cyanista

Jana337 said:


> I do not think there is a contrast. I am sure many people would dispute my classification and put the verb into the field future, with N/A in the present tense category. I decided for the morphological structure just for the sake of the argument, but I said elsewhere that perfective verbs cannot have a present meaning by definition.



Your post led me to believe that it was the "normal", or "official" classification, now I see it's your original invention.  What are children taught at school then? They have to learn such things, at least we had to.

I wish I hadn't written anything at all - I managed to create twice as much confusion as I did clarity.


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## Maja

In Serbian, perfective and imperfective aspects are called "svršeni i nesvršeni  vid".
Perfective can be formed by adding a prefix "po" to imperfective form like čitati / pročitati; jesti / pojesti; gledati / pogledati; tražiti / potražiti ... but there are other examples like pevati / otpevati; pisati / napisati; pitati / upitati...
Imperfective are smt translated with continuous tense. As far as I know, but don't hold me to that, they both can form all the tenses.


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## vince

Do cognate verbs in slavic languages have the same perfective/imperfective pair?


e.g. if I know both of the verbs in a Russian imperfective/perfective pair, and I know the cognate of one of these verbs in Serbo-Croatian, does this mean that I'll know the other verb in the Serbo-Croatian pair?

Of course I'm only talking about cognates, if they use etymologically unrelated words to express the same action it shouldn't be predictable.


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## Jana337

Vince, only now do I see your question. But I am not sure I understand it well. Anyway, this thread may help. 

Jana


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## Qcumber

What about Arabic? It has aspects, too.


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## Lemminkäinen

cyanista said:


> Spanish also has the means for expressing the perfective/imperfective aspect - at least in the past tense. It is done with the help of two different past tenses: _indefinido_ and _imperfecto_. The verbs in _indefinido_ correspond to the Russian past perfective verbs (and _imperfecto_, logically enough, to imperfective verbs).  Once I got my head around this, all exercises were a piece of cake.
> 
> By the way, Jana: if I remember rightly, perfective verbs in Russian are, in contrast to Czech, viewed as having only past and future tense forms.



I'm currently studying Russian, and when I found out that aspect was generally the same difference as the French _passé composé_ and _imparfait_ it got easier getting the idea (of course, in French it's only used in the past tense).

We don't have aspect in Norwegian (though the meaning can of course be conveyed by adding qualifiers or rewriting), but I find it really fascinating.

For instance, in Norwegian you'd say:

1) Jeg leste denne boken i går

which in Russian can be translated as either:

2) Вчера я писал эту книгу
or
3) Вчера я написал эту книгу

Where 2) indicates that I did some reading in the book (imperfective), and 3) that I finished it (perfective).
If you want to convey the semantic sense in 3) in Norwegian, you'd have to say:

4) Jeg leste ut denne boken i går

Using the adverb _ut_ will in a lot of instances give the verb a perfective meaning.


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## Whodunit

Qcumber said:


> What about Arabic? It has aspects, too.


 
Does it? As far as I know, Arabic tenses are limited to perfect (= past) and imperfect (= present). Subjunctive, jussive, imperative, future particles do not count as aspects, Qcumber.


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## Qcumber

Whodunit said:


> Does it? As far as I know, Arabic tenses are limited to perfect (= past) and imperfect (= present). Subjunctive, jussive, imperative, future particles do not count as aspects, Qcumber.


 
I was taught Arabic had no tenses, only aspects. Is that all changed?
Besides, I happen to have an excellent French grammar of Classical Arabic. The authors (Blachère & Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 1952) use the terms "_accompli_" for fa3ala and "_inaccompli_" yaf3alu. Such terms refer to aspects. Were these authors wrong?


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## Whodunit

Qcumber said:


> Aren't perfect and imperfect aspects?


 
I differentiate them like the past and present tense in English.


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## Spectre scolaire

*This is an important discussion about a phenomenon which exists in most of the world’s languages, but which does not have a morphological expression in most of the languages that are normally being taught in Western Europe. It is difficult to immagine why this is so, but the fact remains that aspect was first “discovered” (among linguists) in Slavic languages – the reason for which participants having a Slavic language as their native tongue, or those learning a Slavic language, always have an acute understanding of what aspect is all about. In Russian and in all the other Slavic languages aspect is built into the verbal stem – one simply cannot avoid grappling with it.*

*It is my firm belief that whenever a foreign language presents something radically different on the scale of f.ex. aspect (like in Russian or Modern Greek) or sentence structure (like in Turkish, Tamil or Japanese), one can talk about a real mental hurdle. It is not possible to imagine this hurdle unless you have tried to overcome it, which of course means to learn such a language. Then you will also discover that it takes time – often a long time - to be able to “run 110 m hurdles”. A language is uttered like a quick sequence of words put into a conventional shape and/or order – in a language like Chinese it is “only”[!] a matter of order... You are supposed to perform this task without stumbling, which means choosing infallibly the right aspect – or “agglutinating freely”. Natives don’t think consciously about their choices, foreigners have to – until they can mentally carry out the same operation. Natives don’t make errors, foreigners do indeed – even if they teach the language in question at university level. The later you start learning such a language – having f.ex. English as your native tongue – the more difficult it is. Still it is not impossible, but developing native skill in these areas is a very demanding task.*

So, why is this such an important discussion? The answer is, I would say, that aspect is not sufficiently focused on! Most of the discussions in the WordReference fora are of lexical or idiomatic nature. Nothing wrong about that – this is “practical execution” of “how-do-you-say-this?” in Dyirbal or “how-do-you-say-that?” in Myirbal. There is also a lot of focus on fields like (macro)sociolinguistics, contrastive lexicography and etymology. No objections! You can’t avoid finding interesting stuff!

Note, however, that the deeper you go into the “mental execution” of a sentence, the less it is being discussed. Many links are even pure compilations. Even such an exercise can be rewarding, especially in the framework of collecting stamps or ancestors which quite a number of people actually do. The problem is how to discuss these things in such a way that “mental hurdles” in language acquisition can be lowered. Not an easy task, and I don’t know how to supply good answers. 

I am glad the moderator introduced this link by stating (paraphrastically) that “it is highly probable that most people are unfamiliar with the notion of aspect.” This is definitely the case – and also the reason why the subject is important.

With all respect, I’d like to comment on _ireney_ whose contributions I always read with great interest. But here she seems to be a bit off the point. And it is not her fault! As I said initially, aspect was “discovered” in Slavic languages, and it was Slavicists who brought it to Modern Greek – sometimes in the 1950s. Most of what _ireney_ writes above has nothing to do with aspect. Aspect in Modern Greek (MG) is theoretically based on a very simple distinction – it is only the application of it that is difficult, both morphologically (because the verbal system is unpleasantly irregular), and “mentally” (because of what I have said above).

Let me use a verb with a non-sigmatic aorist – “sigmatic” is like γράφ-ω – έ-γραψ-α [γraf-o] – [e-γrap*s*-a]. The fact that the chosen verb (δέρνω) – from an indoeuropean point of view – is equally sigmatic, is of no interest here. 

***present: δέρν-ω [δern-o] - [δern] is the morpheme of imperfective aspect. –o is 1st pers. sing. of “primary endings” [in active]

***aorist: έ-δειρ-α [e-δir-a] – [δir] is the morpheme of perfective aspect. e- is an “augment”, -a is 1st pers. sing. of “secondary endings” [in active]

In Class. Gr. augment is compulsory for all past tenses (except for “injunctive” in Homer). In MG the existence of augment is basically depending on the syllabic structure of a word. More than three syllables, no augment. There are many exceptions to this rule in modern dialects. 

The intelligent question here is why I am talking about “past tenses” when I should be talking about aspect. In fact, Greek has _both_ – consider f.ex. what _ireney_ calls παρατατικός. She is right in not using “imperfectum” because of its fatal link with “imperfective” aspect. Unfortunately, nobody has so far come up with a better word than translating “imperfectum” into Greek and calling it _paratatikos_. Have a look at our verb in this tense:

***paratatikos: έ-δερν-α

Obviously, paratatikos must have the same verbal stem as present because both tenses (sic) have imperfective aspect. 

So, tenses in MG are f.ex. present/paratatikos and aorist, the difference between the three being _grosso modo_ like in French présent/imparfait and passé simple. In fact, it is not – excuse me for the pun - that _simple_, but I think we should not go into that discussion here. As _ireney_ indicates, there are more tenses in MG, but they are not relevant for describing the basic distinctions of _aspect_. 

It is in _subjunctive_ that we really see what aspect in Greek is all about. Subjunctive doesn’t have any distinctive morphological expression in MG – that is distinctive from indicative - a fact which already in the 1930s made a Greek linguist ask the question whether subjunctive really exists in MG. The question provoked a great deal of uproar because in _katharevusa_ – this hybrid officialese which never seems to “resign” – a morphological distinction is made [in script], notably in those cases of the verbal paradigm where it does not change the vernacular pronunciation; where it does, they pretended it did not exist.

In subjunctive there is no augment because the augment indicates tense. The verbal stem, however, indicates aspect.

1. [perfective aspect:] Παρακάλεσε τον πατέρα της να μην τον δείρει. [parakalese tombatera tis na min ton diri] She begged her father not to beat him. 

2. [imperfective aspect:] Παρακάλεσε τον πατέρα της να μην τον δέρνει. [parakalese tombatera tis na min ton derni] She begged her father not to beat him. 

[dir-i] (which can not stand alone) and [dern-i] both have “primary endings”. The latter is identical with the indicative form, cf. above δέρν-ω, 3rd pers. δέρν-*ει*.

The m in [tombatera] should either have a _punctum_ _subscriptum_ or it should be raised as f.ex. nd in 2nd. 

Well?

1. implies that her father has not beaten him before; he should not think of doing such a thing.

2. implies that her father is constantly beating him up; this practice should stop.

A propos mode: The verb is here in active. MG also has medium and passive, the last two with the same morphological expression in MG. Things get a bit more complicated in medio-passive, but only from a morphological point of view. The basic distinction of two verbal stems expressing aspect still obtains, and so does “primary endings” in subjunctive which means that medio-passive has “borrowed” active endings in subjunctive whereas there is a distinctive set of endings in paratatikos medio-passive.

Difficult? 

The morphology of a language – even the most abstruse one – can always be learned through a concerted effort. Aspect can only be learned by reading tens of thousands of pages of literature and through practising the language regularly over a number of years.

Unless you are a child. Most of us are not when we start learning a new language...

The discussion has shown that in languages where aspect is not built into the verbal stem, it can still be expressed, cf. Norwegian lese boken vs. lese ut boken – ex. taken from _Lemminkäinen_. This is called _Aktionsart_, a German word in English. The problem with Aktionsart is that it is basically an _ad_ _hoc_ lexical expression, which makes it extremely difficult to pin it down in terms of grammatical rules. That should perhaps remind us that much of the lexical discussions going on in these forums may in fact be of great importance to understanding grammar.

*) Footnote: Dimotiki was formally recognized in 1976 as the language of the State, but the present Constitution doesn’t say a word about language and the patriarch in Istanbul is still conducting official correspondance in stiff katharevusa.


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## palomnik

In my experience, every language must have some way to express aspect. The Slavic languages are the ones that express it most clearly as a grammatical issue, but Japanese also does, as we have seen, and so does Arabic (the basic verb forms are aspectual, not temporal) and actually, so do Spanish and Portuguese (compare _yo sabía _with _yo supe_). Spectre goes in to some considerable detail about Modern Greek, a language I'm not very familiar with, although I know Classical Greek fairly well and it has always been pretty clear to me that the aorist and, normally, the future in Classical Greek are perfective aspect forms, which explains in part why there is frequently a similarity in the aorist and future roots of Classical Greek verbs.

In English, the distinction is sometimes made by the use of progressive vs. continuous tenses, but frequently it is made by using different verbs (_speak _vs. _say_). If you look at the matter lexically, many English verbs can only occur in one aspect, based on their meaning.


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## Lugubert

Too many for me interesting aspects to cover in one post.

I tried Slavic languages to get a feeling for aspects. Failed so far. I fully agree with Qcumber that there's aspects in Arabic (and Bible Hebrew): perfect vs. imperfect is a misleading choice of names for them.

Chinese also substitutes aspects for tense. In pinyin (without tones): _Women chi fan-le qu kan dianyingr_ "We eat-finish go watch movie." Could be yesterday (When we had eaten, we went...), or in a few minutes, or tomorrow (When we will have eaten, we'll go to watch...), unless you add clues like yesterday, as soon as, tomorrow, and/or other suitable  context.

For Hindi, you could discuss for ages what is (using the German terms) Tempus, Aktionsart, or Aspekt.


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## vince

Cantonese also has aspects, and like Mandarin they are indicated by words called "particles". Unfortunately it has a more complex system than Mandarin, e.g. there are three different sub-aspects that correspond to "perfective" in Slavic languages. (saai, yuen, and jo), and two (or more?) for progressive aspect.


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## Alijsh

Persian has also separate tenses for perfective, imperfective and continuous forms:

miraft - imperfect form
rafte ast - perfective form
mirafte ast - imperfect form of perfective form
dâšt miraft - continuous form
dâšte [ast] mirafte ast - perfective form of continuous form

mi- is imperfective prefix. All past tenses of Persian are conjugated regularly. We have also subjunctive tenses.


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## Spectre scolaire

Just a small comment and a note of _corrigenda_ to my too long contribution #36.

The last first: Indicative and subjunctive are _moods_, active and medio-passive are _voices_. 

“A propos mode” should be read as: “A propos voices” – _mode_ does not mean anything. If there are other _errata_ or unclear points, please tell me!

My comment is reserved for _vince_ who mentions Chinese. Aspect in Chinese is fascinating. So far I only have an idea as to how it works in Mandarin, but I see a complexity which is very different from the one in Slavic languages and in Modern Greek. I think, at one point, one would have to look into Classical Chinese – at least to see how the content of the characters denoting aspect has developed. 

A difficult thing about aspect is the very different form it takes in different languages. This often boils down to a question of terminology. But so far, there is no consensus as to a general theory of aspect – even if there are a couple of monographies on the subject, the “classical” one being written by Bernard Comrie. Unfortunately, this book is presently about 8000 km away from me.

PS: Being a neophyte to this forum, I experience some problems with the fonts. I have no idea why the first part turned out in *bold*.


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## vince

Spectre scolaire said:


> My comment is reserved for _vince_ who mentions Chinese. Aspect in Chinese is fascinating. So far I only have an idea as to how it works in Mandarin, but I see a complexity which is very different from the one in Slavic languages and in Modern Greek. I think, at one point, one would have to look into Classical Chinese – at least to see how the content of the characters denoting aspect has developed.



Cantonese and Mandarin/Written Chinese have very different aspect systems, although a small number of them evolved together (e.g. - _guo_: to have done before). Many aspects are similar in function (e.g. Mandarin's perfective _-le_ vs. Cantonese's _-jo_) but I think that Cantonese makes finer distinctions, e.g. there are several aspects that can be considered "progressive" or imperfect, and several that can be considered "perfective". The interesting point, which may make comparison with Classical Chinese hard, is that many of these aspectual particles are only used in either Mandarin/Written Chinese or Cantonese, and not both. However I'm sure that the character chosen for the particle (at least for the Mandarin ones) might give a clue to their origin. The grammar of aspect in Cantonese is also different, for example, the particle must immediately follow the first verb in Cantonese and unlike in Mandarin/Written Chinese can never be moved to the end of the sentence or phrase. This is not true for non-aspect particles.

It is very interesting how closely related languages can have such different aspect systems. e.g. How French lacks progressive aspect while Spanish distinguishes both progressive and imperfective/perfective. French also lost its remote past tense in the spoken language (try saying _"Hier je mangeai une pomme"_ to a French person hehe).


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## virgilio

Moderation Note
The following 14 posts have been moved from a similar thread in LA.  Latin, Greek, English, German, Czech and Spanish evidence is under examination but discussion needs not be limited to those languages.
Flaminius, moderator


modus.irrealis,
                   Are you aware also of the English past tense 'timeless' aorist commonly used in hypothetical conditional sentences.
In English, when a conditional seems so hypothetical as to be little short of pure fantasy, there are two ways in which the protasis is expressed.
(rather 'educated'): If I were to say such a thing, you would think me mad.
(colloquial)           : If I said such a thing, you would think me mad.
 These two sentences are identical in meaning and the colloquial use of the past tense is plainly aoristic, or, as you and Whodunit might say, "gnomic".
Best wishes
Virgilio


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## virgilio

Whodunit and modus.irrealis,
                                      Can you please explain something to me? I see that you seem to see both some similarity and some distinction between "tense" and "aspect". I'm a simple soul and don't understand words like "aspect". I know the Latin verb, of course, from which it is derived but I can't see how "tense" (from "tempus") could get mixed up with "aspect".
Please answer, if you will, in words not exceeding three syllables in length, if possible, because long words make my head spin.
Thank you

Virgilio


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## Outsider

virgilio said:


> In English, when a conditional seems so hypothetical as to be little short of pure fantasy, there are two ways in which the protasis is expressed.
> (rather 'educated'): If I were to say such a thing, you would think me mad.
> (colloquial)           : If I said such a thing, you would think me mad.
> These two sentences are identical in meaning and the colloquial use of the past tense is plainly aoristic, or, as you and Whodunit might say, "gnomic".


I disagree with that interpretation. I see nothing generic about the protasis you've got there. I'd even say that, from a semantic point of view, that's one of the clearest forms of subjunctive.


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## Whodunit

virgilio said:


> I'm a simple soul and don't understand words like "aspect".


 
Hm, it's actually very easy to understand the term _aspect_, once you've learned English as a second language, because it is used in English, too, much more than in any other Germanic language, I daresay.

My favorite example is _I was writing a letter_. The aspect of this sentence is imperfective, because the action is not completed at the moment I say the sentence. The perfective counterpart in English would be _I wrote a letter_, because the action was already completed when the sentence was spoken.

In German, as you might know, there are no aspects. They are, as far as I can tell, possible in some Romance languages grammarwise, but usually not taught to students of these languagas. The Italian _Stavo scrivendo una lettera_ is imperfective and _Avevo scritto una lettera_ sounds perfective to me.

In many languages, aspect and tense could technically be used interchangeably, but they shouldn't in Greek nor in the Slavic languages, because every tense can be used with the perfective and imperfective aspect, which has different declensions.

I hope this was not too confusing.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> Hm, it's actually very easy to understand the term _aspect_, once you've learned English as a second language, because it is used in English, too, much more than in any other Germanic language, I daresay.


I agree that English is quite "aspect-minded". Except that the past simple and the present perfect kind of muddy the waters between "perfect" and "perfective"... whatever it is the two terms mean, precisely.



Whodunit said:


> My favorite example is _I was writing a letter_. The aspect of this sentence is imperfective, because the action is not completed at the moment I say the sentence.


I would call that a progressive. The dividing line between the two can be a thin one...


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> I agree that English is quite "aspect-minded".


 
I hope I didn't say anything else. English has no aspects, but they can technically be found in English, if one really wants to.



> I would call that a progressive. The dividing line between the two can be a thin one...


 
Another term would be continuous. However, you're right that the line between a "progressive tense" and an "imperfective aspect" is only a very thin one.


----------



## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> English has no aspects, but they can technically be found in English, if one really wants to.


Not a very traditional point of view. Why do you say that?


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## modus.irrealis

virgilio said:


> modus.irrealis,
> Are you aware also of the English past tense 'timeless' aorist commonly used in hypothetical conditional sentences.



I guess hypothetical could be seen as timeless, and Greek similarly uses the aorist indicative in these kind of conditional sentences, but it also uses the imperfect indicative, so it wouldn't be a distinguishing feature of the aorist (plus with English, as long as people still say "If I were," I think you have to recognize that this is the past subjunctive as Outsider says). In the end though I think any of the timeless uses of the aorist (or of the English past) are derived from the principal, and most frequent, use, which is as a definite past tense.



virgilio said:


> Can you please explain something to me? I see that you seem to see both some similarity and some distinction between "tense" and "aspect". I'm a simple soul and don't understand words like "aspect".



Just to add to the other responses, one way to think of it is that "tense" describes the time of an action, while "aspect" describes how the action is being presented (is it complete?, is it ongoing?, etc.) -- obviously not a good definition (and there's all sorts of things that are called aspects) but I think examples are better.

If you think of Greek, how would you describe the difference between the present and aorist subjunctives, the present and aorist infinitives, the present and aorist imperatives, and so on? The difference is clearly not one of tense, so you really need the concept of aspect to describe it correctly.

And with Latin, how would you describe the difference between the imperfect and perfect -- in terms of tense, both of them can refer to the same points in time, but the latter is used for events that are complete (whether they have relevance for the present or not), while the former do not, and that difference is often called aspect.

English has been brought up too, and I would think that the difference between progressive and non-progressive is basically one of aspect since "I wrote" and "I was writing" can refer to the same event, so there's no difference in the times they can refer to, and aspect is the name applied to the difference (although it's a different difference than the one in Greek or Latin -- e.g. "I knew" would normally be translated by an imperfect). But with English it's even more complicated because "perfect" is also considered an aspect but you can have "perfect" and "progressive" at the same time ("I have been writing"), so I'm not sure it's appropriate to say they're both aspects, but that's the terminology that's in use.

I didn't quite manage the three-syllable thing, but hopefully that helps a bit .


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## virgilio

Outsider,
            Thank you for your reply. Re:"I see nothing generic about the protasis you've got there. I'd even say that, from a semantic point of view, that's one of the clearest forms of subjunctive."
 It is, of course, subjunctive - as you rightly say - (how could it be otherwise in that setting?) - aorist subjunctive - and thereby also generic, just as its 'educated' equivalent is also generic:
If I were (the man) to say that, you would...etc"

Virgilio


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Not a very traditional point of view. Why do you say that?


 
I say that because the English _progressive/continuous_ is a part of each tense; in German, we call them _Zeit*form *_(= tense form). It's simply a form of the tense that has, as far as I know, no grammatical name. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Aspects are treated differently in the Slavic languages and Greek than the English _progressive_ vs. _normal_ tenses. Wikipedia has some examples, which are not easy to understand, though.

If you like to elaborate upon this interesting topic, I'd advise you to open a new thread in the OL forum (if there hasn't been any yet), in which people should explain what they understand by the English progressive tenses and if they would compare it to the imperfective aspect in the Slavic languages. To me, the difference is clear: The English progressive form describes a duration, whereas the imperfective aspect in Greek and the Slavic languages indicate that an action has not stopped yet.

The English _I have been learning English for 5 years_ would be expressed as _Učím se angličtinu 5 let_ in Czech, in which the present imperfective is used. In English, it is the present perfect progressive. They are similar, but it's not an aspect.


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## virgilio

Whodunit,
             Oh dear! I knew I shouldn't have asked! You say"it's actually very easy to understand the term _aspect_, once you've learned English as a second language."
But I learned it as a first language and I still don't see what it's supposed to mean.
You write that "I was writing a letter" is 'imperfective'. So too, then, presumable is "I am writing a letter" and "I shall be writing a letter"

As an example of the 'perfective' you choose the preterite "I wrote a letter".
But what about the 'perfect' tenses themselves? Surely _they_ must be 'perfective' - if only because of their name!
"I have written a letter" "I had written a letter" "I shall have written a letter"
You say that in German there are no 'aspects'. But German uses perfect tenses too.
"Ich habe einen Brief geschrieben" "Ich hatte einen Brief geschrieben" "Ich werde einen Brief geschrieben haben".

Or do you mean that these 'aspects' apply only to what used to be called "continuous" tenses, involving the verb "to be" (or one of its 'sisters') and a participle: 
I am writing a letter
Sto scrivendo una lettera
Estoy escribiendo una carta
Estou escrevendo uma carta     (please correct, if they are wrong!)

But if that is so, then German too has 'aspects'.
z.B.
Der Brief wird geschrieben.
Since "werden" (to become/to get (intransitive)) is a 'sister' verb of "to be", just as "estar" and "stare" are, why would this German sentence not be evidence of an 'aspect', whatever that means.

Perhaps I should try learning my native language as a second language for so far I can't make head or tail of this term 'aspect'. Perhaps I'm not actually missing very much.
Thanks, anyway, Whodunit, for trying to explain it to me. Sorry I'm so simple-minded. I think I got that way from reading a lot of Plato in my formative years.
Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Whodunit

virgilio said:


> Whodunit,
> Oh dear! I knew I shouldn't have asked! You say"it's actually very easy to understand the term _aspect_, once you've learned English as a second language."
> But I learned it as a first language and I still don't see what it's supposed to mean.
> You write that "I was writing a letter" is 'imperfective'. So too, then, presumable is "I am writing a letter" and "I shall be writing a letter"


 
Everything correct so far. 



> As an example of the 'perfective' you choose the preterite "I wrote a letter".
> But what about the 'perfect' tenses themselves? Surely _they_ must be 'perfective' - if only because of their name!
> "I have written a letter" "I had written a letter" "I shall have written a letter"
> You say that in German there are no 'aspects'. But German uses perfect tenses too.
> "Ich habe einen Brief geschrieben" "Ich hatte einen Brief geschrieben" "Ich werde einen Brief geschrieben haben".


 
No, that's exactly why I said that there are no aspects in English, but you could find them, if you wanted to. The continuous tenses (I'm writing/I have been writing/I'm going to be writing) are comparable to the imperfective aspect, but the English perfect does not compare to the perfective aspect. "I have just eaten" is fine in British English, but would sound formal (?) in American English, whereas Americans would prefer "I just ate", as far as I know. The problem here is that _just_ actually implies a perfective state (I finished eating, so I'm doing something else right now), so the British sentence would be redundant, but grammatically more logical. The same happens in the Slavic languages: _I just ate/I have just eaten_ wouldn't need the adverb _just_ to express the idea of having finished it some minutes ago.

The perfect tense does not necessarily correspond to the perfective aspect. Regard this as a fact. 

By the way, the German _Ich habe einen Brief geschrieben_ corresponds to English _I wrote a letter_, so the German _Perfekt_ is a quite confusing term for learning, since we almost use it like the English _past_. Our _Präteritum_ is used for the modals (and some irregular ones like _laufen, wissen_), auxiliaries, and in historical texts. It often sounds outdated with normal verbs.



> Or do you mean that these 'aspects' apply only to what used to be called "continuous" tenses, involving the verb "to be" (or one of its 'sisters') and a participle:
> I am writing a letter
> Sto scrivendo una lettera
> Estoy escribiendo una carta
> Estou escrevendo uma carta (please correct, if they are wrong!)


 
Yes, that comes close to the aspects. The English gerund by _to be_ is comparable to the Czech imperfective _Píšu dopis_. 



> But if that is so, then German too has 'aspects'.
> z.B.
> Der Brief wird geschrieben.
> Since "werden" (to become/to get (intransitive)) is a 'sister' verb of "to be", just as "estar" and "stare" are, why would this German sentence not be evidence of an 'aspect', whatever that means.


 
You're bringing up a very good point here. What you use there is called _Vorgangspassiv_ in German (dynamic passive) that implies that something is about to be done. The _Zustandspassiv _(stative passive) [Der Brief ist geschrieben] is used for completed passive actions. The latter emphasizes the result, the former the on-going action. This is a very good example for the German use of aspects, but I'm afraid this is only possible in the passive voice.



> Perhaps I should try learning my native language as a second language for so far I can't make head or tail of this term 'aspect'.


 
I have never heard _aspect_ used in connection to English, unless I showed some interest in the Slavic languages, when the Slavic _aspect_ was compared to the English _continuous_. You have never learned how difficult it is for foreigners to use the correct tense in English, because English tenses can be really tricky, and I often feel uncomfortable with them (as Outsider mentioned in one of his posts). You feel when an action is _progressive_ or _continuous_, but we have (had) to learn it.


----------



## Outsider

Progressive/continuous is not too hard for me, because Portuguese also has this aspect (or whatever you choose to call it). There are some differences; English doesn't always use it the way we would, but that's just a refinement. The basic feel for it is there.

We also have (what I would call) an aspect for completed actions (_I had spoken, I will have spoken, to have spoken_, etc.), so the English perfect tenses are not a problem in general. However, the *present perfect* is a special beast. I don't think it always requires that the action we speak of be finished by the present moment. More importantly, you often use the past _simple_ to speak of actions completed before the present, rather than the present perfect.

The real problem is with the "basic" past tenses, if you will:

English: past simple and present perfect;
Portuguese: imperfeito (imperfect), pretérito (preterite), pretérito composto (present perfect)

In these, tense is often conflated with aspect in complicated ways, or special aspectual distinctions are made which we don't bother with in other tenses. 

I imagine that the same is true to some extent with Latin. Very roughly, the _perfectum_ is the equivalent of the present perfect, and the imperfect is the equivalent of the past simple (_not_ the past continuous, in general). But the truth is that each language draws the line between the two in different ways. I'm starting to think that this may vary too much with language to be systematized.


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## virgilio

Whodunit,
             You write:"You're bringing up a very good point here. What you use there is called _Vorgangspassiv_ in German (dynamic passive) that implies that something is about to be done. The _Zustandspassiv _(stative passive) [Der Brief ist geschrieben] is used for completed passive actions. The latter emphasizes the result, the former the on-going action. This is a very good example for the German use of aspects, but I'm afraid this is only possible in the passive voice.
OK so how about :"Der Brief ist geschrieben worden" (perhaps that could be called something like _Vergangenheitspassiv_) but, whatever it's called, if the presence of "to be" "sein" "estar" "stare" makes it an 'aspect', how can you say that German does not have 'aspects'.
Moreover, your earlier comment "English has no aspects, but they can technically be found in English, if one really wants to." really makes my head spin. You can find almost anything in anything "if you really want to".
I'm beginning to think that my classics teachers were wise men, for they - as I now realise - knew that many details - about which, as has been said above, many pages could no doubt be written - are better being simply absorbed by the student's unconscious mind and integrated unconsciously into his or her understanding of the whole quantum of events which are a foreign language. 
 It is possible to understand something - and perhaps in some cases understand it better - without writing it down.
I remember reading somewhere in a story by Erich Kästner (Als ich ein kleiner Junge war):
"Nicht alles was Kinder erleben eignet sich dafür, das Kinder es hören."

I think something similar might be said with regard to syntax: Vielleicht so was wie:
"Nicht alles was die Menschen verstehen eignet sich dafür, das die Menschen es schriftlich herabsetzen"

The act of writing *can* crystallize one's thoughts, it is true, but writing down or repeatedly reading what *can* be memorised or otherwise left to the unconscious mind can impoverish the imagination. Ask any concert musician.

Still bewildered but less troubled by it.
Thanks again, folks!
Virgilio


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## virgilio

ireney,
         I thought I was bewildered, like modus.irrealis, before but what you write above makes my head spin:
"Present Perfect is obviously imperfect and is formed by present of have + infinitive of the Aorist (much like the English really)
May I try to enumerate the problems:
(1) Do you see no semantic oddity in "Present Perfect is obviously imperfect"
(2) English does not in point of fact form its Present perfect tense with  the present tense of "to have" + the infinitive of the aorist but rather with the present tense of "to have" + a past participle.
παραδειγματος  χαριν - We have written  a letter.
(3) Since modern Greek does not (except possibly in its καθαρεύουσα form) use infinitives (a fact which surely must make νά just about the most used word in any language), it is difficult to see what you mean.
π.χ.
Εχω γράψει ένα γράμμα.

Even in ancient Greek - which did use infinitives widely - the future infinitive of γράφειν  was γράψειν  and the aorist infinitive was γράψαι.
Do you really mean that in the sentence above γράψει is some kind of modern Greek infinitive?

I'm completely non-plussed. The more I read about these 'aspects', the less I seem to understand.

H-E-E-E-L-L-P-P-P!
 Σας παρακαλώ να μου βοηθησετε.

Virgilio


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## tom_in_bahia

Would the difference between "to eat" and "to eat up" be one of aspect?

I see the difference as minute in the present continuous, but if we put it into the past, I see a definite distinction:

_He ate the pizza. _vs. _He ate up the pizza.
_In the first example I can see ambiguity. I didn't necessarily eat all the pizza. However, in the second example it's clear that the pizza is no more.


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## Outsider

That's rather specific to the verb "to eat". You can't "up" just any verb...


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## tom_in_bahia

That's true. I think that, unlike Slavic languages, in English we may use a phrasal composition to get acrossed a more specific meaning of aspect. But that would be the end of the guideline, because "up" paired with other verbs would bring out either a different nuance of that verb, or an entirely different meaning:

put up - raise, construct
get up - awake
live up - enjoy, rejoice
speak up - embellish
change up - emphatic for change
drink up - similar to eat up
make up - create, pretend
read up (on) - discover through reading*
etc....

*Read up makes another interesting distinction:
_I've read Shakespeare  . _(I have read his work, but not necessarily thoroughly.)
_I've read up on my Shakespeare. _(I believe that I have more thoroughly read and understood his work.)


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## Jana337

tom_in_bahia said:


> Would the difference between "to eat" and "to eat up" be one of aspect?
> 
> I see the difference as minute in the present continuous, but if we put it into the past, I see a definite distinction:
> 
> _He ate the pizza. _vs. _He ate up the pizza.
> _In the first example I can see ambiguity. I didn't necessarily eat all the pizza. However, in the second example it's clear that the pizza is no more.


I'm not quite sure which language you have in mind. If Slavic ones, then no, "upping" a verb doesn't imply anything about aspects. "To eat up" can mean both aspects. In Czech:
perfective - dojíst
_Dojedl jsem ten koláč_. - I ate up the cake.
imperfective - dojídat
_Dojídal jsem ten koláč_. - I was eating up the cake (when something else happened.)


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## virgilio

Jana337,
            I am not acquainted with the language involved in your quotation:
" perfective - dojíst
_Dojedl jsem ten koláč_. - I ate up the cake.
imperfective - dojídat
_Dojídal jsem ten koláč_. - I was eating up the cake (when something else happened."
 but in Greek or Latin  or Italian or French the second would be expressed by an imperfect tense of the verb involved, whereas the first would be expressed by a Present Perfect/Aorist or Passato Remoto or Passé Simple -  the function of these latter tenses being often take over by the Present Perfect tense.
Is there therefore any advantage for students of these western European languages in learning extra abstract terms like "imperfective aspect" and "perfective aspect"?
All students (worthy of the name) of Latin, for example, are aware of the differences between 'simple' tenses and 'perfect' tenses of verbs. Could you please explain how understanding a concept like "aspects" of verbs adds anything to such a student's understanding of language?
After several requests for this information, I am still at a loss to understand. In my formative years I read a lot of Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil and Ovid and so my understanding is not geared to long abstract phraseology.
I would be very grateful, therefore, if you would kindly explain to me - as to a moderately intelligent child - how aspects are different from tense groups.
Thank you.
Virgilio


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## Outsider

virgilio said:


> but in Greek or Latin  or Italian or French the second would be expressed by an imperfect tense of the verb involved, whereas the first would be expressed by a Present Perfect/Aorist or Passato Remoto or Passé Simple -  the function of these latter tenses being often take over by the Present Perfect tense.


"To eat" and "to eat up" mean different things, right? You might have to use different verbs altogether.

But I also wonder if "I was eating up" would be accepted by native speakers in English, or if the concept of "eating up" excludes a continuous perspective of the action...


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## Jana337

Ciao Virgilio, 

In my example with "eat up", Slavic aspects nicely overlap with some Romance past tenses (I addresed this in #9). This is not always the case, however. There's more to it (examples mainly in #8).

Anyway, here's a simple argument against the (implicit) claim that aspects are a way to obfuscate the fact that Slavic languages actually have many tenses:
Ha scritto/scrisse and scriveva have the same infinitive, scrivere. In Czech, napsal and psal have different infinitives: napsat and psát. 
Can we agree that if they were different tenses of the same verb, they would share an infinitive?


> Is there therefore any advantage for students of these western European languages in learning extra abstract terms like "imperfective aspect" and "perfective aspect"?


Yes, I am afraid.


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## Jana337

Outsider said:


> But I also wonder if "I was eating up" would be accepted by native speakers in English, or if the concept of "eating up" excludes a continuous perspective of the action...


OK, a good point. "It was eating up a lot of my time" is definitely OK but I concede that it might sound weird with food. In that case, take my translation as rather literal, please.


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## Outsider

Jana337 said:


> Can we agree that if they were different tenses of the same verb, they would share an infinitive?


What if verbs have more than one infinitive in the language in question? 
(Latin infinitives had several forms.)


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## Jana337

Outsider said:


> What if verbs have more than one infinitive in the language in question?
> (Latin infinitives had several forms.)


Oh boy. 

OK, I was talking specifically about Slavic languages. In those I know something of, multiple infinitives do not exist. I remain convinced that tense and aspect are two independent concepts. If you tweak a definition or two (I _do _know that you are playing devil's advocate here) you can perhaps define aspects out of existence but I think something important would be lost. And learners wouldn't benefit from it for sure.


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## virgilio

Jana337,
           Thank you for your reply. Outsider has raised the objection which I was going to raise. You wrote:
"Anyway, here's a simple argument against the (implicit) claim that aspects are a way to obfuscate the fact that Slavic languages actually have many tenses:
Ha scritto/scrisse and scriveva have the same infinitive, scrivere. In Czech, napsal and psal have different infinitives: napsat and psát. 
Can we agree that if they were different tenses of the same verb, they would share an infinitive?

I don't see how we could so agree, for while the infinitive of "scriveva" is "scrivere"  the infinitive of "ha scritto" is "avere". As for "scrisse", modern Italian no longer uses the aorist infinitive of older Italian ("scripsisse") but plainly it cannot be substituted either by "scrivere" or by "avere". Latin uses for all regular transitive verbs 3 distinct true infinitives and three paraphrased on "esse" while ancient Greek used no fewer than 10 true infinitives for each regular transitive verb.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Whodunit

Jana337 said:


> In those I know something of, multiple infinitives do not exist.


 
I think that's comparable to the English _I want to have heard it_. In Latin, _to have heard_ would have its own infinitive. 



> I remain convinced that tense and aspect are two independent concepts.


 
I know that, but how would you describe an aspect to people who only speak languages that have no aspects? Somehow I understood the matter quite easily, but I can see that it may lead to confusion.


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## Outsider

virgilio said:


> I don't see how we could so agree, for while the infinitive of "scriveva" is "scrivere"  the infinitive of "ha scritto" is "avere".


That's like saying that the infinitive of "I had spoken" is "to have".



virgilio said:


> Latin uses for all regular transitive verbs 3 distinct true infinitives and three paraphrased on "esse" while ancient Greek used no fewer than 10 true infinitives for each regular transitive verb.


But I believe many of those distinct forms were inflections for case, gender and number, weren't they?


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## Whodunit

virgilio said:


> I don't see how we could so agree, for while the infinitive of "scriveva" is "scrivere" the infinitive of "ha scritto" is "avere".


 
I think Jana explained it as briefly as possible. For those who know what aspects are, Jana's explanation is quite clear, but I can see that it might still be confusing. Virgilio, you should read the entire thread (I did, so I'm not a bit more familiar with the aspects than before), and see if you still have many a question.

By the way, you should know that Jana was not referring to the *predicate*in _ha scritto_, but to the root verb, which is definitely _scrivere_, like _scribere_ is the root for _scripsi_. It's just that Latin didn't have auxiliary verbs as such (gerunds and the like are to be excluded here, and even then _scriptum est_ would have _scribere_ as the root, wouldn't it?).


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## virgilio

Outsider,
            Re:" But I also wonder if "I was eating up" would be accepted by native speakers in English, or if the concept of "eating up" excludes a continuous perspective of the action..."

Nothing wrong with "I was eating up" in English. I'm afraid I don't see what you were driving at with the difference between "to eat" and "to eat up". The second is the first modified by an adverb. I'm with you so far. Where do we go from there?
One thing I have learned from this thread: whatever else "aspects" may be, they are certainly very difficult indeed to explain - or, of course, an alternative is that I am very dim-witted - or, of course, both.

Thanks for trying.
Best wishes
Virgilio


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## virgilio

Jana337,
You wrote:"I remain convinced that tense and aspect are two independent concepts. If you tweak a definition or two, you can perhaps define aspects out of existence but I think something important would be lost. And learners wouldn't benefit from it for sure"

I feel sure that you must be right about something important being lost by 'aspects' being defined out of existence and I really would like to know in what way they - whatever they are - are distinct from the distinction between the "simple tense group" (you could re-name it the "imperfect tense group" without altering anything about it) and the "perfect tense group".
If I'm wrong, someone please tell me where! Just keep the words short, please. I'm a simple-thinking person. For example, the first thing that gives me a headache about "perfective" and "imperfective" is the "-ive" at the end.
I know enough Latin to see the "imperfect" means "unfinished" and "perfect" means "finished" - that's clear as daylight. Tenses depicting actions or states as not being finished at the time of utterance are "imperfect" and those depicted as "finished" are "perfect".
An intelligent child can see that. What I don't get is what 'extra' is implied by the "-ive" on the end. It's plainly a closely guarded secret.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## virgilio

Whodunit,
             Thanks for your reply. I'll try reading the whole thread. It might do the trick, as you say.
However re your:" By the way, you should know that Jana was not referring to the *predicate*in _ha scritto_, but to the root verb, which is definitely _scrivere_, like _scribere_ is the root for _scripsi_. It's just that Latin didn't have auxiliary verbs as such (gerunds and the like are to be excluded here, and even then _scriptum est_ would have _scribere_ as the root, wouldn't it?).

(1) In the expression "ha scritto" there is only one verb and it is "ha" (part of "avere") The "scritto" is a participle and therefore an adjective. Incidentally, the German _Mittelwort_ (middle word) for participle is - I venture to suggest - rather un-German, for it belies your nation's splendid and admirable reputation for decisiveness. It has to be decided whether it is the one thing or the other; participles are, of course, adjectives.
However, leaving that aside for the present, I deny that the verb in "ha scritto" is "scrivere".
I must also (alas!) deny that Latin does not use the so-called 'auxiliary' verbs. Here are two or three examples, from several thousand possibles:

(a) Campanorum urbs est tandem a Romanis recepta.
(b) dic nobis, Antoni, quo modo sis eos ante judices defensurus
(c) hostes sunt eo proelio a nostris fugati.

You say "gerunds and the like are to be excluded here" but in Procrustean fashion you don't say why they should be.
As for "_scriptum est_ would have _scribere_ as the root, wouldn't it?", the answer is plainly no. The root of the verb is "esse".

I'm more confused than ever.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> It's just that Latin didn't have auxiliary verbs as such [...]


Some tenses of the Latin passive voice were compound. How do you explain away that fact?



virgilio said:


> I'm afraid I don't see what you were driving at with the difference between "to eat" and "to eat up". The second is the first modified by an adverb. I'm with you so far. Where do we go from there?


You conclude that you can't do the same with every verb. You can't "love up", or "say up", or "choose up" with the same sense. Constructions like "to eat up" are idioms which apply only to a handful of verbs. They are not aspects.


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## Outsider

Jana337 said:


> Anyway, here's a simple argument against the (implicit) claim that aspects are a way to obfuscate the fact that Slavic languages actually have many tenses:
> Ha scritto/scrisse and scriveva have the same infinitive, scrivere. In Czech, napsal and psal have different infinitives: napsat and psát.
> Can we agree that if they were different tenses of the same verb, they would share an infinitive?


Jana, I've given your example some thought, and remembered that, in a sense, English also has two infinitives. For example, there is:

*to write* (--> plain, or _imperfect_ infinitive)
*to have written* --> which can be described as a perfect infinitive

Is this like what you have in the Slavic languages?


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## cyanista

Outsider said:


> Jana, I've given your example some thought, and remembered that, in a sense, English also has two infinitives. For example, there is:
> 
> *to write* (--> plain, or _imperfect_ infinitive)
> *to have written* --> which can be described as a perfect infinitive
> 
> Is this like what you have in the Slavic languages?



No, not exactly. Slavic languages (I'm not sure if all of them) have perfective and imperfective _verbs_. Most verbs form perfective-imperfective pairs. The verbs in those are distinctly independent lexical entities. There is no set method how to form a perfective verb from an imperfective one or vice versa.


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## Outsider

I see. I guess I was misled by Jana's example, where the perfective infinitive seemed to be formed by adding a prefix to the imperfective infinitive...


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## virgilio

Outsider,
            Re your:"Some tenses of the Latin passive voice were compound. How do you explain away that fact?"
 I can't see that there's anything to 'explain away'. Classical Latin in its perfect passive tenses used "esse" as what would now be called an 'auxiliary' verb. I don't see the problem; we use 'auxiliaries' ourselves.

Re "eat up", if you tell me that English people don't modify every verb by the adverb "up", I agree that that would be a remote contingency. I doubt if there is a verb in any language which could claim to be able to be modified by every adverb in the language, although the Latin verb "dare" comes fairly close.
I'm sorry but I fail to see the relevance of that fact  in this connexion. 
You say that "Constructions like "to eat up" are idioms which apply only to a handful of verbs. They are not aspects."
 OK I hear what you say but what *is* an aspect?

With best wishes
Virgilio


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## Lugubert

Outsider said:


> You conclude that you can't do the same with every verb. You can't "love up", or "say up", or "choose up" with the same sense. Constructions like "to eat up" are idioms which apply only to a handful of verbs. They are not aspects.


First, I don't dare to start a discussion on what's aspect and what's aktionsart. For our purposes, I think we can overlook any differences.

I beg to differ with the above quote. Adding 'up' gives the view/aspect of finishing.

You are eating. An ongoing action from the speaker's/writer's point of view (their aspect).  You eat. No aspect marker. Just referring to food intake in general. You eat up. The aspect maker _up_ explains that the meal will be finished.

I find it more obvious in other languages. In Chinese, _chi_ is the general notion of eating. _Chi wan_ (adding a verb) will express that the eating was/is/will be complete, stressing that the food is consumed. _Chiguo_ (adding a particle) would mean that you have had a meal, once. _Chile_ (+particle) may mean that the action is (was, will be) completed, without concentrating on the fate of the food.

Hindi has a way of adding verbs to convey various detailed aspects. Aspects can be finished (as above), pointing out that something is happening for example suddenly, or gradually, once, or habitually, for the benefit of the speaker or for the benefit of the listener etc. Again, aspects add an opinion or judgement from the narrator's side.


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## modus.irrealis

Outsider said:


> But I believe many of those distinct forms were inflections for case, gender and number, weren't they?



The infinitives aren't inflected for any of the categories -- I went and counted the infinitives from λύω 'loose' (one of the usual example verbs) and I got 11.

It's interesting though how Slavic languages seem to see verbs with different aspects as different verbs, while other languages see the different aspects as different forms of the same verb. Do Slavic languages have just one perfective verb for each imperfective verb and vice versa (for "regular" verbs), or is the relationship more complicated and you can have a group of perfective verbs corresponding to a single imperfective verb, or something like that?



virgilio said:


> Do you really mean that in the sentence above γράψει is some kind of modern Greek infinitive?



That form is often called an infinitive because it goes back, more or less directly, to Ancient Greek infinitives (the ones in -ειν), but it doesn't function as an infinitive in Modern Greek.



virgilio said:


> I feel sure that you must be right about something important being lost by 'aspects' being defined out of existence and I really would like to know in what way they - whatever they are - are distinct from the distinction between the "simple tense group" (you could re-name it the "imperfect tense group" without altering anything about it) and the "perfect tense group".



But that there is aspect -- the distinction between those simple and perfect groups would be one of aspect (although not the same distinction made in other languages, just like not every language makes the same tense distinctions). Like you say below, one refers to "unfinished" actions and the other to "finished" actions, and that's a difference in aspect and not one of tense. The point in using aspect is that it makes everything more clear and precise - think of the Latin noun, you wouldn't try to list all its forms under just one category, right? you'd say that it has both case and number, and it's a similar idea with verbs in some languages.

About the -ive, it's just that "imperfective" is the term used for aspect (and not "imperfect"). With "perfect" and "perfective" they're both used and they both mean different things, although like Outsider said in his original post, there's confusion about what means what. But I think the more common use would have, e.g., έχω γράψει being perfect and έγραψα being perfective.


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## Outsider

modus.irrealis said:


> The infinitives aren't inflected for any of the categories --


You're quite right. I was thinking of the Latin participles and the Latin gerundive.



virgilio said:


> Outsider,
> Re your:"Some tenses of the Latin passive voice were compound. How do you explain away that fact?"
> I can't see that there's anything to 'explain away'. Classical Latin in its perfect passive tenses used "esse" as what would now be called an 'auxiliary' verb. I don't see the problem; we use 'auxiliaries' ourselves.


I was replying to Whodunit, who said there were no auxiliary verbs in Latin.


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## virgilio

Spectre scolaire
                     Thanks. I think you have just managed to succeed where others -despite much patience and kind explanation - have failed. If the difference between the two 'aspects' is exemplified in the difference between the particular uses of the Greek present and the Greek aorist subjunctive (and, of course, also optative in the ancient language), described in your exegesis, then I've got it at last.
Oh I dare say that one Slavic language or another will demonstrate different facets here and there but it was the central idea that was eluding me.
Incidentally, as you will no doubt be aware, those same 'aspects' apply also to ancient Greek.
Many thanks.
Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Outsider

Lugubert said:


> I beg to differ with the above quote. Adding 'up' gives the view/aspect of finishing.


Finishing quickly/eagerly. However, it does not apply to all verbs; only a handfull of them.


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## virgilio

modus.irrealis,
  Thank you for your reply. I think that "Spectre scolaire" has managed to explain the 'aspect' thing to me at last. It was such a relief to realise that it was something we learned at school about Greek subjunctives and optatives.
 If you will excuse me being a little pedantic about something you wrote: "think of the Latin noun, you wouldn't try to list all its forms under just one category, right? you'd say that it has both case and number, and it's a similar idea with verbs in some languages."
In strict syntax a noun cannot have 'cases' - but that's another thread!

best wishes
Virgilio


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## virgilio

modus.irrealis,
                   I'm so sorry. I gave all the credit for explaining this 'aspects' thing to Spectre scolaire (who did indeed explain it) but I've just realised that you tried some time back to offer me exactly the same explanation. I must have missed it earlier. Many thanks for your explanation:
"If you think of Greek, how would you describe the difference between the present and aorist subjunctives, the present and aorist infinitives, the present and aorist imperatives, and so on? The difference is clearly not one of tense, so you really need the concept of aspect to describe it correctly."
  I am very sorry to have taken so long to read what you wrote. This 'aspect' thing all really so simple. I might even start to learn a Slavic language!

with best wishes
Virgilio


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## Jana337

Many apologies, Virgilio - I didn't have time to get back to this thread. I see that others offered wonderful explanations but I will share what has germinated in my head nevertheless.


virgilio said:


> I don't see how we could so agree, for while the infinitive of "scriveva" is "scrivere"  the infinitive of "ha scritto" is "avere". As for "scrisse", modern Italian no longer uses the aorist infinitive of older Italian ("scripsisse") but plainly it cannot be substituted either by "scrivere" or by "avere".


Fine, I abused the terminology, maybe. So let's do it this way: If I ask you to form _passato prossimo_ of _scrivere_, you will say _ha scritto_. The reverse process, whether you call it "obtaining the infinitive" or not, yields _scrivere_. Same for _scriveva_. In Czech, you will not arrive at the same infinitive.



virgilio said:


> Nothing wrong with "I was eating up" in English. I'm afraid I don't see what you were driving at with the difference between "to eat" and "to eat up". The second is the first modified by an adverb. I'm with you so far. Where do we go from there?


The "up" thingy lends the verb a sense of completion. But as I said above, there's more to it because "eat up" can be both perfective and imperfective.



virgilio said:


> Jana337,
> You wrote:"I remain convinced that tense and aspect are two independent concepts. If you tweak a definition or two, you can perhaps define aspects out of existence but I think something important would be lost. And learners wouldn't benefit from it for sure"
> 
> I feel sure that you must be right about something important being lost by 'aspects' being defined out of existence and I really would like to know in what way they - whatever they are - are distinct from the distinction between the "simple tense group" (you could re-name it the "imperfect tense group" without altering anything about it) and the "perfect tense group".
> If I'm wrong, someone please tell me where! Just keep the words short, please. I'm a simple-thinking person. For example, the first thing that gives me a headache about "perfective" and "imperfective" is the "-ive" at the end.
> I know enough Latin to see the "imperfect" means "unfinished" and "perfect" means "finished" - that's clear as daylight. Tenses depicting actions or states as not being finished at the time of utterance are "imperfect" and those depicted as "finished" are "perfect".


Modus.irrealis has already explained that but let me try as well: I am not a native speaker of English, so I am not in a position to assess why -ive can irritate you. In Czech, we call the verbs _dokonavá _and _nedokonavá_. _Dokonat _- to finish, to complete, to accomplish.

Perfective verbs ("verbs of completion") inform you that the respective action was/will be completed. 
Imperfective verbs ("verbs of duration") do NOT inform you that the action was not completed/will not be completed (the negation of perfective verbs does this). They do not trasmit that piece of information at all. Instead of the result of an action, they focus on the process, on the fact that it took/will take place (or not).



Outsider said:


> Jana, I've given your example some thought, and remembered that, in a sense, English also has two infinitives. For example, there is:
> 
> *to write* (--> plain, or _imperfect_ infinitive)
> *to have written* --> which can be described as a perfect infinitive
> 
> Is this like what you have in the Slavic languages?


No, as Cyanista explains:


cyanista said:


> No, not exactly. Slavic languages (I'm not sure if all of them) have perfective and imperfective _verbs_. Most verbs form perfective-imperfective pairs. The verbs in those are distinctly independent lexical entities. There is no set method how to form a perfective verb from an imperfective one or vice versa.


However, (at least in colloquial Czech) we can form a literal translation of "to have written" and we use it exactly like the English present perfect. It only works for perfective verbs.



Outsider said:


> I see. I guess I was misled by Jana's example, where the perfective infinitive seemed to be formed by adding a prefix to the imperfective infinitive...


Sometimes a prefix, sometimes a change in the stem, sometimes both. Occasionally two unrelated words. 



virgilio said:


> You say that "Constructions like "to eat up" are idioms which apply only to a handful of verbs. They are not aspects."
> OK I hear what you say but what *is* an aspect?


Aspect is a property of verbs that says whether the action was completed (perfective) or whether that piece of information is being withheld/not expressed (imperfective). 

What makes it really difficult is that there are several intervowen levels:
The "up-ness" - this is conceptually a step in the right direction. You need to realize that it rounds off an action. Granted, this doesn't work for all verbs as others pointed out. That's because there's no algorithm whereby you could map Slavic aspects into English. If you want to express our tenses in English, you need either tenses or adverbs (or other types of words), and in many cases you simply do not have a way to express them explicitly; either it follows from the context or not. As I said above, however, "eat up" can be both perfective and imperfective in Czech. This is where another level of analysis comes into the picture:
Result vs. progress. Let's take a typical perfective verb, "dopsat" (psát - write), which means "to finish writing", and its imperfective brother, "dopisovat", which means something like "to be finishing writing".
Please notice how tricky this gets: You take an imperfective verb _psát_, add a prefix and get a perfective verb _dopsat_, manipulate its stem and get another imperfective verb again - _dopisovat_. ​Past:
Perfective: Dopsal jsem dopis. - I finished the letter.
Imperfective: Došel mi inkoust, když jsem dopisoval dopis. - I ran out of ink when I was finishing the letter.
Future:
Perfective: Po večeři ten dopis dopíšu. - I will finish the letter after dinner.
Imperfective: Neruš mě prosím po večeři. Budu dopisovat ten dopis. - Please do not disturb me after dinner. I will be finishing the letter.​I can well see why Virgilio was confused about tenses vs. aspects. This level is indeed similar to both Romance languages and English tenses. The difference is that we have two verbs, each for one aspect, and you have one verb and two types of tenses (simple/progressive).​
One-time action and repetition. The same pair I used above, dopsat and dopisovat, can also mean a one-time action and a repeated action, respectively. Again, this should ring a bell if you speak a Romance language.
I tried to give some example in my posts 8 (focus on completeness/progress) and 9 (focus on one-time/repeated). Here are more examples with contrasting uses.



modus.irrealis said:


> It's interesting though how Slavic languages seem to see verbs with different aspects as different verbs, while other languages see the different aspects as different forms of the same verb. Do Slavic languages have just one perfective verb for each imperfective verb and vice versa (for "regular" verbs), or is the relationship more complicated and you can have a group of perfective verbs corresponding to a single imperfective verb, or something like that?


Typically, you have one base imperfective words from which you can form several perfective verbs that have different shades (e.g. _jíst _- to eat; _sníst _stressed that the food ends up inside you, _najíst _se implies that you have eaten your fill, _dojíst _underlines eating up, _pojíst _means that you have eaten/had something to eat etc.) but as I demonstrated above with _psát - dopsat - dopisovat_, for each of them, you can create an imperfective word that means either action in progress (the second bullet) or repetition (the third bullet).

Edit: This could be illuminating.


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## modus.irrealis

Jana337 said:


> Typically, you have one base imperfective words from which you can form several perfective verbs that have different shades (e.g. _jíst _- to eat; _sníst _stressed that the food ends up inside you, _najíst _se implies that you have eaten your fill, _dojíst _underlines eating up, _pojíst _means that you have eaten/had something to eat etc.) but as I demonstrated above with _psát - dopsat - dopisovat_, for each of them, you can create an imperfective word that means either action in progress (the second bullet) or repetition (the third bullet).



Ah, thanks. I was kind of suspecting something like that, i.e. a more intricate relationship between the aspects, and I can see why you'd have the two aspects be different verbs. With Greek, for example, a regular verb will have only one perfective form and one imperfective form, and even when they're obviously not related ('say' has perfective past _ipa_ and imperfect past _elega_), they're still considered forms of the same verb.


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## virgilio

modus.irrealis,
                  You wrote"With Greek, for example, a regular verb will have only one perfective form and one imperfective form, and even when they're obviously not related ('say' has perfective past _ipa_ and imperfect past _elega_), they're still considered forms of the same verb."
 Just what I was thinking. Is it not possible that part of this 'problem' is a purely lexicographical one, with some Slavic lexicographers separating perfective and imperfective verb-forms, whereas Greek and other western languages would tend to list them under single headwords?
May it not be in fact little more than a cultural distinction between Eastern Europe and Western Europe with Greece - may God bless her! - the mediatrix?
Just a thought.
Virgilio


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## Outsider

Jana337 said:


> Edit: This could be illuminating.


Thank you, Jana. As you say, it's similar to the Romance languages in many ways, but then starkly different in others. For example:



> P. Remember, you can use the perfective aspect only when you are questioning if part C has taken place. The question,
> 
> 4. Have you ever read _Doctor Zhivago_? (A,B,C,)​
> asks if the "total" act has taken place, therefore you would use the imperfective aspect.


In all the Romance languages that I'm familiar with, you would use the perfective here.


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## modus.irrealis

virgilio said:


> Just what I was thinking. Is it not possible that part of this 'problem' is a purely lexicographical one, with some Slavic lexicographers separating perfective and imperfective verb-forms, whereas Greek and other western languages would tend to list them under single headwords?



Yes, it does seem like Slavic grammarians have a higher awareness of aspect, but that's largely because many Western European languages are organized so that their grammarians can get away with ignoring aspect -- the main distinction of perfective vs. imperfective either doesn't occur at all (like in German) or only in the past as the difference between the simple past and the imperfect (French, for example). There's also the perfect but that seems to be tense-like enough that you can fit it into a system that just includes tenses without really losing anything (in my opinion). Then again, there's languages that have progressive "tenses" and it's odd that the aspect terminology does not seem to be catching on -- especially with English, where the progressive vs. non-progressive distinction is so crucial -- at least that's my impression from the English grammar sites on the web.

But with Greek, where every time you use a verb (except the future in Ancient Greek) you need to specify the aspect, it's kind of surprising that an awareness of aspect didn't arise within its grammatical tradition. I really wonder how grammarians in ancient Athens explained the difference between the imperatives γράφε and γράψον, a difference that I don't think occurs in any Western European language (unless people go around saying things like "be writing"). But I do agree that Greek does somewhat seem like it's in between the Slavic and Romance languages in this (I'm really tempted to say aspect here ).


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> Thank you, Jana. As you say, it's similar to the Romance languages in many ways, but then starkly different in others. For example:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> P. Remember, you can use the perfective aspect only when you are questioning if part C has taken place. The question,4. Have you ever read _Doctor Zhivago_? (A,B,C,)​asks if the "total" act has taken place, therefore you would use the imperfective aspect.
> 
> 
> 
> In all the Romance languages that I'm familiar with, you would use the perfective here.
Click to expand...




Hm... that webpage says about the above example: _[If] you were to use the perfective aspect, it would imply that you, the person asking the question, know that the listener has been reading the novel, and you only want to find out if the listener has finished reading it.

_In Croatian, we have the same verb _čitati_ (= _to read_) and its perfective cousin _pročitati_ as in Russian, and I'm pretty sure that these work the same way in both languages. And the above statement isn't really true for Croatian; the actual situation is much more complex and harder to explain. 

Using the perfective aspect wouldn't necessarily imply that the listener has been reading the novel, but merely that the topic of the novel is already relevant or remarkable at the moment when it enters the conversation, for whatever reason. The reason can, but doesn't have to be that the listener is known to have been reading it previously.  For example, here are a few scenarios that illustrate this difference:


(1) You're walking with a friend down the street and you see a copy of _Anna Karenina_ in a bookstore window. This suddenly makes you curious about whether he's ever read this novel and what he might think about it. Thus, the topic of this novel enters the conversation without having any previous relevance for the listener (as far as you know). You ask him:

_Jesi li ti *čitao [*__*read-imperf.]*_ Anu Karenjinu_?_
_Have you [ever] read__ Tolstoy's _Anna Karenina_?_


(2) A few weeks ago, your friend told you that he was starting to read _Anna Karenina_, but he hasn't mentioned it since. You're curios if he's finished reading it, and you ask:

_Jesi li [ti] *pročitao* *[read - perf.]* _Anu Karenjinu_?_
_Have you finished reading _Anna Karenina_?

_This is identical to the example "C" from the above quoted webpage. (And trust me, you don't want to get into the question of why dropping the pronoun sounds better in this example than in the previous one. )


(3) You and your friend are classmates who have a habit of neglecting the reading assignments for your literature class, one of which was _Anna Karenina_. You're curious about whether he's read this novel or skipped it (for all you know, maybe he never even looked at it). Since the topic of the novel enters the conversation as something that's already recognized as relevant (unlike in example 1), you use the perfective form:

_Jesi li [ti] *pročitao* *[read - perf.]* _Anu Karenjinu_?_
_Have you read _Anna Karenina_?


_(4) There are also gray areas where both forms would sound OK. For example, you're browsing through the book collection of your friend's family, and you don't know if your friend has ever shown any interest in any of these books. He happens to be standing nearby, and you point at a copy of _Anna Karenina_ on the shelf and ask him if he's ever read it. In that sentence, you could use either aspect with the same meaning:

_Jesi li ti __*čitao/*__*pročitao* ovu knjigu__?_
_Have you read this book?

_The only difference is that a simple answer "yes" or "no" would technically have different implications. Answering "yes" to the perfective form would mean that you've read all of it, and answering "yes" to the imperfective form would strictly imply only that you were reading it at some point. This is however a technicality; answering just "yes" to the imperfective form if you haven't actually read all of it would be perceived as deceitfully omitting the fact that you were unable to finish it. So the questions would be equivalent for all practical purposes.


If all this sounds impossibly complicated, that's because it is.  The Slavic verb aspect is one of those things that take years of practice to get even approximately right, and even very advanced fluent speakers often make mistakes with it. Its use is impossible to describe with any reasonably large set of prescriptive rules. On the brighter side, missing the right aspect wouldn't really be a huge mistake in any of these examples (including the one from the quoted webpage). 


[By the way, all of my examples are in standard, i.e. highly bookish Croatian; this isn't exactly how friends would realistically talk to each other.  However, the points I made about the aspects still hold for the colloquial language.]


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## Athaulf

virgilio said:


> Is it not possible that part of this 'problem' is a purely lexicographical one, with some Slavic lexicographers separating perfective and imperfective verb-forms, whereas Greek and other western languages would tend to list them under single headwords?



Not really. As a Slavic speaker, I find the idea of aspectual _pairs _as quite unnatural; this isn't how the system really works. A typical Slavic verb root will have a basic imperfective form, from which several perfective forms are formed with different prefixes, thus obtaining perfective verbs that often have no straightforward, context-independent English translations. Those perfective verbs can then form further prefixed imperfective verbs by changing their stem. All these forms often also have reflexive versions, and sometimes only those. The system is akin to a tree of verbs stemming from a single root, rather than a set of aspectual pairs. 

For example, take the Croatian verb _rasti_ (=_ to grow_, _to increase_). It's imperfective, and it has a bunch of prefixed perfective forms:

_prerasti = to overgrow__;
narasti = to increase in size;
__izrasti = to grow to a remarkable level of size or maturity, to grow as an extension of something else;
__srasti = to coalesce; 
porasti = to increase or intensify;_ 

None of these can serve as the universal, context-independent perfective form of _rasti_. For example, you would say:
_
Njihova kćer *raste *brzo. = Their daughter is growing rapidly.
Temperatura *raste *brzo. = The temperature is growing rapidly.

_BUT:

_ Njihova kćer __je *narasla *__pet centimetara. = Their daughter has grown five centimeters.
Temperatura je *porasla* za pet stupnjeva. = The temperature has grown by five degrees._

(Admittedly, you could mix up these two perfective forms, and it still wouldn't sound too bad.)

Furthermore, some of these prefixed perfective forms can change their stem and thus form further prefixed imperfective forms, for example _izrasti_ -> _izrastati_. When to use this latter form instead of the original imperfective _rasti_ -- that's a complicated question. I won't even try to formulate a logical rule for that choice. 

There's no way you could ever shoehorn this mess into a neat system akin to Germanic or Romance conjugation tables.


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## Jana337

Outsider said:


> Thank you, Jana. As you say, it's similar to the Romance languages in many ways, but then starkly different in others. For example:
> 
> In all the Romance languages that I'm familiar with, you would use the perfective here.


Indeed, this one (have you read) is very difficult for learners. It's not like we couldn't use the perfective aspect but it would unequivocally mean that the person has actually finished the book, whereas the imperfective leaves that open. It would be very unnatural to ask how many books by Shakespeare you have finished for it would imply that I assume that you have tried many but gave up because reading Shakespeare was very laborious.



Athaulf said:


> Could you please give an example of this? I'm really curious how something like this would work in a Slavic language.


Moved here.


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## ireney

modus.irrealis said:


> But with Greek, where every time you use a verb (except the future in Ancient Greek) you need to specify the aspect, it's kind of surprising that an awareness of aspect didn't arise within its grammatical tradition. I really wonder how grammarians in ancient Athens explained the difference between the imperatives γράφε and γράψον, a difference that I don't think occurs in any Western European language (unless people go around saying things like "be writing"). But I do agree that Greek does somewhat seem like it's in between the Slavic and Romance languages in this (I'm really tempted to say aspect here ).




I guess they didn't think it necessary  Taking the example of Anna Karenina used by Athaulf, I can say that the same applies to Greek too (ancient and modern). And, to be fair "did you read Anna Karenina" does convey a different meaning from "have you read Anna Karenina" although I admit that the distinction may not be as clear (I don't speak any Slavic language after all). I had to explain γράφε and γράψε (no need to look at ancient Greek for such examples eh?  ) to people learning Greek and, since very few Westerners (and it just so happened that all were Westerners) know much about aspect I just described the function of aspect without using any special terminology. I guess that's what most Greek scholars (not of Greek) did.
Maybe the reason is that you need to know a lot of terminology when it comes to Greek anyway so why use more? I bet they explained γράφε and γράψου to non Greek speakers with out anything more complicated perhaps than πράξις τελεία or something of the kind.


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## cyanista

Athaulf said:


> As a Slavic speaker, I find the idea of aspectual _pairs _as quite unnatural; this isn't how the system really works. A typical Slavic verb root will have a basic imperfective form, from which several perfective forms are formed with different prefixes, thus obtaining perfective verbs (with different shades of meaning -C.) that often have no straightforward, context-independent English translations. Those perfective verbs can then form further prefixed imperfective verbs by changing their stem.(In Russian mostly through suffixation.-C.) All these forms often also have reflexive versions, and sometimes only those. The system is akin to a tree of verbs stemming from a single root, rather than a set of aspectual pairs.



A very good description. 

Talking about pairs is indeed inaccurate and misleading; clusters, or trees, as Althaulf puts it, would be much more appropriate.

 Sorry for adding to the confusion.


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## virgilio

modus.irrealis, 
Re:"But with Greek, where every time you use a verb (except the future in Ancient Greek) you need to specify the aspect, it's kind of surprising that an awareness of aspect didn't arise within its grammatical tradition. I really wonder how grammarians in ancient Athens explained the difference between the imperatives γράφε and γράψον, a difference that I don't think occurs in any Western European language (unless people go around saying things like "be writing"). But I do agree that Greek does somewhat seem like it's in between the Slavic and Romance languages in this (I'm really tempted to say aspect here"

But an 'awareness of aspect' did arise, as one became more and more familiar with ancient literature. What has surprised me in all the posts about "aspect"is the importance which seems to be attached to what one might call all the "small print" of the difference. When we learned Greek at school,  the term 'aspect' was not used but we were taught about the difference between the non-indicative modes of the present and aorist tenses. We made mistakes, of course, and were corrected and after a while we got the hang of the thing. None of our teachers - as far as I can recall - considered that making an 'aspect' mistake was nearly so bad as, for example, using a subjunctive where we should have used an optative.
My point is that -in this thread at least and unless I think I have understood what I have not understood - we seem to be making a mountain out of a mole-hill.
Wouldn't you agree?
Best wishes
Virgilio

By the way: I have heard English 'continuous' imperatives, such as "be starting!" - not so common, of course, as "get starting" but considering that "to get"(intransitive) and "to be(come)" are just about semantic equivalents, that hardly matters.
Moreover the fact that English often doesn't bother to indicate changes of function by alterations of form does not imply in any way that English speakers are unaware of those changes.
Consider, for example, the past tense "went" in its two different 'aspects' in these two sentences.
(1) Last night I went to the theatre.
(2) As a child I went to the theatre every Friday with my father.

Subtle alterations of function do not always need to be indicated externally in order to be perceived.


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## modus.irrealis

ireney said:


> I had to explain γράφε and γράψε (no need to look at ancient Greek for such examples eh?  )



Of course, but I do not what say, Plato, would have said about γράψε .



> to people learning Greek and, since very few Westerners (and it just so happened that all were Westerners) know much about aspect I just described the function of aspect without using any special terminology. I guess that's what most Greek scholars (not of Greek) did.
> Maybe the reason is that you need to know a lot of terminology when it comes to Greek anyway so why use more? I bet they explained γράφε and γράψου to non Greek speakers with out anything more complicated perhaps than πράξις τελεία or something of the kind.


But I'm not sure you need more terminology -- you can just reinterpret the terminology we have. I mean we already say present vs. aorist subjunctive, present vs. aorist imperative, and so on, so why not just reinterpret "present" and "aorist" as referring to aspect and then you only have to explain the difference once. The weird thing is that the names for the future (μέλλοντας διαρκείας and στιγμαίος μέλλοντας) are basically aspect-based (but because I can't resist complaining about the terminology as much as possible  -- στιγμαίος? what about something like θα ζήσω άλλα εκατό χρόνια?, where I'm sure you can't say ζω), but why not be consistent and see that the difference between αόριστος and παρατατικός is the same (aspectual) difference as the one between those two futures (and say something like μέλλοντας του αορίστου and του ενεστώτα). Anyway, that's just rambling thoughts.



virgilio said:


> My point is that -in this thread at least and unless I think I have understood what I have not understood - we seem to be making a mountain out of a mole-hill.
> Wouldn't you agree?



I would probably disagree -- it's almost like minimizing differences in Greek just because English doesn't express those differences in the same way. In fact, these differences should be corrected more carefully because they can change the meaning, e.g. ὅταν ἔλθῃς vs. ὅταν ἔρχῃ. Or to put it another way, if people speaking a language that didn't have tenses were learning English, would you think it would be right for their teacher to not correct mistakes like "I watch tv yesterday?"



> By the way: I have heard English 'continuous' imperatives, such as "be starting!" - not so common, of course, as "get starting" but considering that "to get"(intransitive) and "to be(come)" are just about semantic equivalents, that hardly matters.


That's a good point -- that "get Xing" does have a continuous feel to it, although I'm not quite sure it's the same feel as a Greek present imperative. But "be starting" still sounds odd -- maybe this is like the other cases where "get" substitutes for "be", e.g. where you have to say "I have been getting attacked" and not "I have been being attacked."



> Subtle alterations of function do not always need to be indicated externally in order to be perceived.


I agree with that -- different languages express the same things differently, but I'm not sure what to conclude. To go back to tense-less languages (which obviously can express differences of time), it doesn't mean that tense in English is subtle or that it's terminology that we can ignore without losing anything. Personally I just think that if a language makes heavy use of something, it's clearer if the terminology used in explaining that language takes it into account.


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## ireney

But modus irrealis from what I've noticed from people studying Greek (of any kind) the lack of specific terminology and/or persistence in the aspect of tenses while teaching Greek hasn't make things more complicated for them.  (And στιγμιαίος is only a misnomer if you use a rather narrow definition of the term  ). Just as learning Present Continuous didn't seem complicated to me.
I am not sure what you mean by μέλλοντας του αορίστου though. Do you mean something like εξακολουθητικό παρελθόν for παρατατικός (whose name says it all really) ?

All languages express aspect in a more or less prominent way whether in the verb form or the overall context it doesn't matter. Since people are familiar with the "reality" of aspect terminology is of a secondary importance. Grammar is a toolbox to help us learn a language. If one of the tools is not needed it should stay in the box.

Anyway, no matter how clear the distinction is and no matter what terminology we use it all comes down to usage and sometimes usage defies "categories".


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## Athaulf

Jana337 said:


> Indeed, this one (have you read) is very difficult for learners.



And to make things truly nightmarish, even if the learner perfectly understands this example, the use of (_pro-)čitati_ doesn't always generalize to other similar verbs, even when the analogy between the activities that they describe is perfect. Often there are incredibly complex subtleties peculiar to each particular verb. In fact, the example with (_pro-)čitati_ was probably selected by the author of that online lesson because it's unusually simple and free of complications!

For example, take the Croatian verbs _gledati_ (= _to watch, to look at_) and _slušati_ (= _to listen_). One might think that these verbs and their perfective forms would be used when talking about watching a movie or listening to a CD in exactly the same way as (_pro-)čitati_ is used when talking about reading a book; the analogy certainly seems perfect. Alas, it's not so. Both these verbs actually have two perfective forms each, formed with prefixes _po-_ and _od-_, each carrying its own subtle semantic shades (the _po-_ forms are used more frequently and have an overtone of having fun, whereas the _od-_ forms might suggest that the watching or listening was tedious). Even the cases when the original imperfective forms are used aren't exactly analogous to the use of _čitati_. 

And as the final straw, the perfective verbs _pogledati_ and _poslušati_ can have additional meanings in other contexts, different from the original imperfective verbs (e.g. _poslušati _can mean_ to heed_, and _pogledati_ can mean _to glance_). 

I'm really fascinated by the fact that we've actuallly managed to learn all this stuff as kids.


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## virgilio

ireney said:


> All languages express aspect in a more or less prominent way whether in the verb form or the overall context it doesn't matter. Since people are familiar with the "reality" of aspect terminology is of a secondary importance. Grammar is a toolbox to help us learn a language. If one of the tools is not needed it should stay in the box.
> 
> Anyway, no matter how clear the distinction is and no matter what terminology we use it all comes down to usage and sometimes usage defies "categories".



Ireney, Well said! You have expressed my thoughts about this 'aspect' business
Virgilio


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## modus.irrealis

Irene,

I understand your point and obviously people learn a language (well) by exposure to usage and not through memorizing a grammatical description, but that would apply to the terminology of any part of a language, whether it's aspect or tense or whatever. But in the back of my head I do have the idea that different terminologies might help or hinder people. Imagine, say, if people said that άνθρωπος was the nominative άνθρωποι was the subjective -- that might be accurate in its own way, but it would be shouting out for the words to be relabeled to take into account that these two words share something (case) and differ in something else (number). That's sort of how I see the Greek (and English) terminology sometimes when it comes to aspect -- why not bring out the fact that what certain verb forms share between them is aspect, which is basically orthogonal to other categories like tense? But again, I do realize this isn't the most important thing in the whole world .



ireney said:


> (And στιγμιαίος is only a misnomer if you use a rather narrow definition of the term  ).



Very true, and in the end labels are just labels.



> I am not sure what you mean by μέλλοντας του αορίστου though. Do you mean something like εξακολουθητικό παρελθόν for παρατατικός (whose name says it all really) ?


I just meant it as an example of a terminology where everything that had a perfective aspect had the word αόριστος (but στιγμιαίος would work just as well) in it somehow. And yes εξακολουθητικό παρελθόν would be perfect, and then if everything with the same aspect were labelled the same way (εξακολουθητική υποτακτική and so on), I'd be happy .


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## virgilio

modus,
Re your: 
"I understand your point and obviously people learn a language (well) by exposure to usage and not through memorizing a grammatical description, but that would apply to the terminology of any part of a language, whether it's aspect or tense or whatever. But in the back of my head I do have the idea that different terminologies might help or hinder people. Imagine, say, if people said that άνθρωπος was the nominative άνθρωποι was the subjective -- that might be accurate in its own way," 

But most languages already suffer from this kind of inappropriate terminology without too many ill effects, from what I can see. A superb example is the apparent failure to notice that - in inflected languages - substantives are nouns only when they are nominative. People still refer to accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases and so forth as nouns, when they plainly aren't and yet - such is the inherent intelligence of humans - it doesn't seem to get in the way of any linguists who don't happen to be particularly interested in syntax or symbolic logic.
In can even produce a little harmless humour. If you want a chuckle, have a look at the definition of "preposition" in most English dictionaries (the OED included, as far as I recall)!
And surely wrong labelling is worse than absent labelling.

Best wishes
Virgilio


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## Outsider

Here's an interesting discussion about aspect in Spanish. I thought you might find it interesting.


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## karuna

virgilio said:


> But most languages already suffer from this kind of inappropriate terminology without too many ill effects, from what I can see. A superb example is the apparent failure to notice that - in inflected languages - substantives are nouns only when they are nominative. People still refer to accusative, genitive, dative, ablative cases and so forth as nouns, when they plainly aren't and yet - such is the inherent intelligence of humans - it doesn't seem to get in the way of any linguists who don't happen to be particularly interested in syntax or symbolic logic.



Could you explain this more? Why nouns are not nouns when inflected? As I understand the difference between nouns and substantives is something else -- adjectives acting as nouns, for example, "*the poor". *See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_substantive Although the wikipedia article seems very English centric because I think that most languages have no articles.


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## virgilio

karuna,
          Thank you for your reply. I use Latin as my language 'testbed' and Latin is, of course, an inflected language.
It seems to me clear that the "cases" (literally the 'fallings-away') are for those words which do not, so to speak, quite make the grade as "nouns" and so have to be satisfied with the lesser syntax functions of adjective or adverb.
It follows from the above, of course, that the nominative is *not* itself a "case", since to call it "case" would imply noun-deficiency.
Accordingly, the Latin cases are:
accusative  (adverb)
genitive      (adjective)
dative         (adverb)
ablative       (adverb).

Some people find difficulty - for some reason - in accepting that verb-object accusatives are adverbs but the evidence seems to me conclusive, particularly the evidence provided by German.

Naturally all of this demands some kind of definitions. I suggest the following:
NOUN: a word which mysteriously compenetrates with a verb, thereby producing a sentence.
ADJECTIVE: a word with describes or identifies a nominal.
ADVERB: a word which asks or tells when, where, how, or why a noun-verb compenetration takes place.
NOMINAL: a word which when and only when it is nominative is a noun and when it is in one of the "cases" is either adjective or adverb.

I hope this may be of some help in clarifying what I meant.

With best wishes
Virgilio


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## karuna

Thanks, Virgilio, for your explanation. It will probably take some time for me to fully understand this. I don't really understand the part of "lesser syntax functions" because I see the other way arround: syntax rules require nouns to take certain cases.  Maybe except in the vocative case.


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## Alijsh

Ok. Let me classify and expand what I had written at #40. 

{
raftan: to go -> past stem: raft -> past participle: rafté
budan: to be -> past stem: bud -> past participle: budé
dâštan: to have -> past stem: dâšt -> past participle: dâšté

acute accent indicates stress position
conjugations are in 3rd person singular
}

past simple: raft
|- imperfective: miraft (past imperfect)
|- progressive: dâst miraft (past progressive)
|- perfective: rafté-ast (present perfect; ast is enclitic)
|--- imperfective: mirafté-ast (imperfective present perfect)
|--- progressive: dâste mirafté-ast (present perfect progressive)

pluperfect (past perfect): rafté bud
|- imperfective: mirafté bud (imperfective pluperfect)
|- progressive: dâšt mirafté bud (pluperfect progressive)
|- perfective: rafté budé-ast (Apparently passé surcomposé. What to call this in English?)
|--- imperfective: mirafté budé-ast (imperfective passé surcomposé)
|--- progressive: dâšte mirafté budé-ast (progressive passé surcomposé)

NOTES
» All of these 12 tenses are conjugated regularly.
» The progressive forms are only used in spoken Persian. In written Persian, we use the imperfective forms. In addition, these forms of expressing progressive are specific to the Iranian Persian. 
» The progressive forms don't have negative form. We use them only when an action has happened. I mean, we don't use the progressive to say "I wasn't writing a letter" but the imperfective form.
» The auxiliary for perfective is always budan (e.g. French, Italian has both avoir and être). rafté budam (I had gone) literally means <'I was' gone>.
» The imperfective form is made by adding imperfective prefix "mi".


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## virgilio

karuna,
         Do take your time. The conclusions I have outlined above (along with several others) I arrived at over a period of about 40 years contemplating and mentally trying to construct what seemed to me the hypothetical system of syntax which best ordinated and 'managed' the linguistic phenomena of the languages I had observed over that time. (Latin, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Turkish, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Arabic and English).
Naturally I had the time to become reasonably fluent in only a few of those languages but colloquial fluency is not so important for the student of syntax.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that any system of syntax worth the name had to be "logocentric", by which I mean that each of the premisses upon which the system is based must be defined in terms of single words (and not phrases).
 Looking round I found that our ancestors had already been there! The 'parts of speech' I had learned about at primary school could not - with one single exception - be improved upon. (I decided that "interjection", although undoubtedly a part of "speech", had no place in a system of syntax, since it represented an emotional outburst rather than a rational utterance.)
I notice that many modern linguists seem not to care for this 'logocentric' approach. I may be wrong but I feel that their personal systems of syntax must consequently suffer from a certain lack of elegant simplicity.
I would be very grateful for any comments or corrections.

With best wishes
Virgilio


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## Erutuon

There's been some confusion on whether the English perfect tense is an example of perfective aspect. The way I've learned it, there are two different aspects here:
perfective: an action as a simple whole
perfect: an action finished but with continuing effects on the time one is speaking about (i.e., present, past, or future)
This is very confusing terminology, perfective and perfect, but the concepts are pretty distinct. These two correspond to the Greek aorist and perfect, the Latin historical perfect and present perfect, and (less neatly) the English simple past and perfect.


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## MarX

Hi!

I'd like to give my contribution concerning Indonesian, but I'm afraid I don't know what exactly this thread is all about?
Is there any specific question at all?
I don't want to be off topic in replying.

Salam


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## Jana337

This thread is a spin-off. There's no question in the usual WR sense of the word. It is a comparative thread about aspects - how, if at all, they are used in various languages. It was created to enlighten speakers of languages like English, who find it difficult to capture the concept.


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## MarX

Thank you Jana!

In that case I'd belong to the ones who need to be explained about aspects, since I don't think we have such things in Indonesian.
We have no tenses nor aspects. 

Salam,


MarX


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## Encolpius

Spectre scolaire said:


> *This is an important discussion about a phenomenon which exists in most of the world’s languages, but which does not have a morphological expression in most of the languages that are normally being taught in Western Europe.... *



That is my observation as well. In Hungarian perfective verbs are usually formed with verbal prefixes. 

Egész délután *tanultam*, de nem *tanultam meg* a leckét. 
tanulni - to learn
megtanultam - have learnt 
(egész delután - the whole afternoon, lecke - homework)


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## Awwal12

I'm getting a feeling that perfectives begin to be mixed with perfects in this thread. Even though perfective verbs can be potentially used in the perfect meaning (i.e. to describe some current state resulted from previous events), it is by no mean their main use and they don't necessarily imply that - i.e. saying "я сделал это" (perf.) doesn't mean that I have some result at hand; it simply means that there was a single event of me successfully completing something, but nothing tells us if the result actually exists at the moment, and most Slavic languages don't even have any grammatical means to specify that.


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## Encolpius

Yes, Awwal, it is possible, but what's the practical difference between perfectives and perfects?


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## Awwal12

Just as I said: perfects basically describe the situation resulted from some previous actions. So the English (or the Old Church Slavonic) present perfect is, indeed, basically a *present* tense describing the current situation. Perfectives, on the other hand, describe just single, indivisible, point-like actions/events (the aorist being a particular case of them), and the respective verbs normally don't even have present tense forms (a point-like event on the timeline is necessarily in the past or in the future).


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## Encolpius

Those scholastic, historical and other sophisticated  explanations are interesting but as you know e.g. in Hungarian the tense and aspect is similar to that one in Slavic languages, so I have never seen any *practical *difference between those things.


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Those scholastic, historical and other sophisticated  explanations are interesting but as you know e.g. in Hungarian the tense and aspect is similar to that one in Slavic languages, so I have never seen any *practical *difference between those things.


The practical difference is that certain languages can have *the both*.  And if they don't, there is no direct correspondence between perfects and perfectives at all.
E.g.:
Eng. "I've done it" > Rus. "я сделал это" (perf.) *or* "я делал это" (imp., like "I've done it many times"; the aspectual features of the activity are irrelevant for English here, only the result is, but it's the other way around for most Slavic languages, which don't have the perfect tense).
Eng. "I did it" > Rus. "я сделал это" (perf., like in "I did it once") *or* "я делал это" (imp.).


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## Daniel.N

I have written an introduction to Croatian aspect here, if anyone is interested. I've used some ideas from this forum. I don't know if anyone is following this, but just in case someone will make use of it:
37 Complete Reading: Perfective Verbs


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