Imperfective aspect

The imperfective (abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used for ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether they are in the past, present, or future. Many languages have a general imperfective; others have distinct aspects for specific roles such as progressive, habitual, and iterative. The imperfective contrasts with the perfective, which is used for actions as a complete whole.

English

English has no general imperfective. The English progressive is used to describe ongoing events, but can also be used in past tense, such as "The rain was beating down". Habitual situations do not have their own verb form (in most dialects), but the construction "used to" conveys past habitual action, as in I used to ski. The simple past tense can be used for situations presented as ongoing, such as The rain beat down continuously through the night.

The progressive and imperfective contrast in stative verbs. Stative verbs, such as know, do not use the progressive (*I was knowing Ada), while in many languages with an imperfective (for instance, French), they do (je connaissais Ada).

Indo-Aryan languages

Verbs in Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) have their grammatical aspects overtly marked. Periphrastic Hindi-Urdu verb forms (participle verb forms) consist of two elements, the first of these two elements is the aspect marker and the second element (the copula) is the common tense-mood marker. There are two independent imperfective aspects in Hindi-Urdu: Habitual Aspect, and Progressive Aspect. These two aspects are formed from their participle forms being used with the copula verb of Hindi which is होना honā (to be). However, the aspectual participles can also have the verbs रहना rêhnā (to stay/remain), आना ānā (to come) & जाना jānā (to go) as their copula. The table below shows three verbs होना honā (to be), करना karnā (to do), and मरना marnā (to die) in their aspectual infinitive forms using different copulas.

{| class="wikitable"

! rowspan="2" |Simple

Aspect

! colspan="6" |Imperfective Aspect

! colspan="4" |Habitual

Aspect

! colspan="2" |Progressive

Aspect

|होना

honā

to be

|होता होना

hotā honā

to happen

|होता रहना

hotā rêhnā

to keep happening

|होता जाना

hotā jānā

to keep on happening

|होता आना

hotā ānā

to have been happening

|हो रहा होना

ho rahā honā

to be happening

|हो रहा रहना

ho rahā rêhnā

to stay happening

|करना

karnā

to do

|करता होना

kartā honā

to be doing

|करता रहना

kartā rêhnā

to stay doing

|करता जाना

kartā jānā

to keep doing

|करता आना

kartā ānā

to have been doing

|कर रहा होना

kar rahā honā

to be doing

|कर रहा रहना

kar rahā rêhnā

to stay doing

|मरना

marnā

to die

|मरता होना

martā honā

to be dying

|मरता रहना

martā rêhnā

to stay dying

|मरता जाना

martā jānā

to keep dying

|मरता आना

martā ānā

to have been dying

|मरा रहा होना

mar rahā honā

to be dying

|मर रहा रहना

mar rahā rêhnā

to stay dying

Some translations are approximate, and the nuance cannot be expressed exactly in English. Some aspectual forms also have the same translations in English but are not interchangeable in Hindi-Urdu.

Now, these copula verbs (besides होना honā) can themselves be converted into their participle forms and put into one of the three different aspects of Hindi-Urdu, which are habitual, progressive, and perfective aspects, hence generating sub-aspectual infinitive forms.

suffixes can turn perfectives into imperfectives.

The non-past imperfective form is used for the present, while its perfective counterpart is used for the future. There is also a periphrastic imperfective future construction.

Other languages

The imperfective aspect may be fused with the past tense, for a form traditionally called the imperfect. In some cases, such as Spanish and Portuguese, this is because the imperfective aspect occurs only in the past tense; others, such as Georgian and Bulgarian, have both general imperfectives and imperfects. Other languages with distinct past imperfectives include Latin and Persian.

Perfective

The opposite aspect is the perfective (in Ancient Greek, generally called the aorist), which views a situation as a simple whole, without interior composition. (This is not the same as the perfect.) Unlike most other tense–aspect category oppositions, it is typical for a language not to choose either perfective or imperfective as being generally marked and the other as being generally unmarked. This is the essence of the perfective aspect: an event presented as an unanalyzed whole.

'Was reading', however, is different. Besides being the background to 'entered', the form 'reading' presents "an internal portion of John's reading, [with] no explicit reference to the beginning or to the end of his reading."

Here each sitting is an unanalyzed whole, a simple event, so the perfective root of the verb 'sat' is used. However, the clause as a whole describes an ongoing event conceived of as having internal structure, so the imperfective suffix -eshe is added. Without the suffix, the clause would read simply as In the evening he sat on the veranda.

Imperfective aspect

English

Indo-Aryan languages

Other languages

Perfective

References

External links