Marking of the temporal structure of an event.
5
votes
2answers
162 views
Is there a difference between a preterite and an aorist?
I am reading about aorist and preterite verb forms. It seems that they are both forms which express perfective aspect and past tense. Is the difference between them simply in differing terminology or ...
5
votes
1answer
91 views
How do languages with imperfect aspect typically convey distinctions between habitual, iterative, and progressive aspects?
How does languages with imperfect aspects typically convey distinctions between habitual, iterative, and progressive aspects?
In English, which does not mark its verbs for imperfect aspect, we have ...
3
votes
0answers
63 views
Do languages with high use of grammatical aspect generally lack grammatical tense?
From my understanding of Chinese, the language lacks any sort of grammatical tense but is instead very aspect driven when describing actions.
Is this a reoccurring pattern among languages with a high ...
4
votes
0answers
108 views
PIE Aspect: (Im)perfective or (Non-)progressive?
According to Wikipedia Proto-Indo-European had four tense-aspects, the first being stative and the latter three being eventive: stative aspect, perfective aspect, and past and present tense of ...
2
votes
2answers
103 views
What's the best term for the group of concepts pertaining to verbs which includes tense, mood, and aspect?
There are many named concepts which relate to verbs across many languages.
The three most well known would be tense, aspect, and mood. But person, number, and voice are others, and there must be many ...
6
votes
1answer
102 views
What is permansive aspect?
I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding an adequate definition of "permansive aspect" on the web. I know what aspect is, more or less, but the meaning of the term "permansive" eludes me.
5
votes
2answers
93 views
How does aspect condition an ergative split?
I've never heard of a natural language that has ergative-absolutive marking alone. From what I've read, languages with said marking also have nominative-accusative marking, with the choice or ...
9
votes
3answers
254 views
Do Spanish speakers prefer certain words for certain aspects, like in Russian?
In an effort to clearly delineate durar and tardar to my Spanish students, I have been searching for some usage notes and I was not satisfied with anything I found.
Instead, I was wondering if these ...
10
votes
0answers
184 views
Is there any language that doesn't express Tense but allows “aspectual coercion”?
Mandarin Chinese appears to be a language that may not express tense (at least in the way I will define below), and it does not seem to allow aspectual coercion.
By not expressing Tense I mean, such ...
4
votes
2answers
161 views
How did English and Portuguese develop the construction “have+pp”?
Native Portuguese speakers (myself included) often have a hard time dealing with the English present perfect tense-aspect.
In English, the present perfect is used for expressing past actions with ...
