Perfect (retrospective) and prospective

Unlike most aspects, the perfect does not tell us anything about the internal temporal constituency of a situation. Instead, it indicates the continuing relevance of a past situation. In other words, the perfect expresses a relation between two points on the continuum of events. Linguists are not unanimous in classifying the perfect as an aspect rather than as a tense. An example of the perfect, from English: I have lost the book (perfect) versus I lost the book (non-perfect). The perfect can indicate a relation between a state in the past and an even earlier event, e.g. John had read the book; it can express a relation between a past event and the present state, e.g. John has read the book; and it can express a relation between a future state and an event that occurs prior to it, e.g. John will have read the book.

English often uses the perfect to express a situation that started in the past and continues into the present, e.g. we have lived here for a long time. Many other languages use the present tense in such sentences: French j’attends depuis trois jours, German ich warte schon drei Tage, Russian ja zhdu uzhe tri dnja ‘I have been waiting for three days.’

Because the term “perfect” is likely to be confused with “perfective,” and because its counterpart is called “prospective,” I would suggest that “retrospective” is a better name for this verb form.

The perfect verb form expresses a relation between a situation and some event that happened before it. In some languages we also find a prospective form which relates a state to some event that happens after it. In English the prospective is indicated by phrases such as “to be about to” and “to be on the point of,” as in John is about to resign from his job. In the “redneck” dialect of American English, the prospective is marked by the phrase “fixin’ to,” e.g. I was fixin’ to drive to work when I noticed a tornado comin’ toward the trailer park.

aspects that mark the duration
and stages of a situation

“Let’s start at the beginning.” Some languages can indicate the beginning of a situation with markers for an aspect called inceptive (also known as ingressive, commencative, initiative, etc.). For example, if a language has a verb that means “to be located inside something,”² the inceptive aspect form of that verb would mean “to enter, to go into, to begin to be located inside something.” Having an affix to mark the purely inceptive aspect³ would enable a language to derive many common verbs from a small number of roots. For example, “to know” plus the inceptive aspect marker means roughly the same thing as “learn, discover, begin to know,” and “to have” plus the inceptive marker means “to acquire, to begin to have.” Many of the most frequently used verbs in English are merely inceptive variants of other common verbs.

The inchoative aspect indicates the beginning of a state (as opposed to a process or activity). Keep in mind that many of the conditions which are expressed by the copula and an adjective in English, such as “to be blue” or “to be large,” are expressed by stative verbs in some other languages. The inchoative aspect of “to be blue” means “become blue, turn blue,” and the inchoative form of “to be large” would mean “become large, get big.” Esperanto marks the inchoative with -ig^-, as in li bluig^is, ‘he turned blue.’ (Unfortunately this Esperanto affix also has some other meanings; it is not semantically pure.)

The counterpart of the inceptive is the cessative (also called cessive, egressive or terminative), which indicates that a situation is ending. The cessative form of “to be located inside” would mean “to go out of, to no longer be located within,” and the cessative form of “to have” would mean “to lose, to cease having.”

Some students of the Slavic languages believe there is an aspect that means “being at or near the middle-point of a process;” this corresponds to the English set phrase “right in the middle of...” as in I was right in the middle of taking a bath when the telephone rang. I have seen this aspect called “transkursive Aktionsart” in German publications, but I do not know its English name. “Transcursive” does not seem very accurate.

The artificial language Lojban has two aspects pertaining to activities that are temporarily suspended: the pausative (indicated by de’a) and the resumptive (marked by di’a). Examples:⁴ mi pu de’a citka le mi sanmi, ‘I stopped eating my meal for a while; there was a pause in my eating of my meal’; mi pu di’a citka le mi sanmi, ‘I resumed eating my meal; I went back to eating my meal.’

Some languages mark a punctual aspect; this indicates situations that are instantaneous, i.e. they do not have any duration⁵. In Russian there are many verbs marked with the suffix -nu which are inherently punctual, e.g. kashljanut’ ‘cough,’ blesnut’ ‘flash.’

Some linguists say there is a durative aspect indicating that a situation occupies a specified amount of time. Comrie gives the Russian example ja postojal tam chas ‘I stood there for an hour.’

The delimitative aspect indicates that the situation lasts for a brief period. Sentences such as let’s take a little walk and he talked a bit about the war contain this aspect, although English lacks an affix or inflection to mark it and therefore must use vague phrases which could also have other meanings.

The perdurative indicates that a situation lasts for a long period, perhaps longer than expected, for example conflict between Esperantists and Idists rages on and on. It is possible to make a distinction between the perdurative and a protractive aspect which means “for a much longer period of time than is normally implied by the root verb, perhaps indefinitely.” By having a marker for this aspect, a language can convert the verb “to have” into a verb that means “to keep, to retain, to go on having,” and the verb “to be located at” can be converted to a verb that means “to remain, to stay, to linger at.”

Lojban uses za’o to mark another aspect which Lojbanists call superfective; this identifies an activity that continues beyond its natural ending point, e.g. le xirma pu za’o jivna bajra, literally ‘the horse [past tense] [superfective aspect] compete-type-of run,’ loosely ‘the horse kept on running the race after the race was over.’

The iterative aspect indicates that an action is done repeatedly, many times, over and over again. (Esperanto’s -ad- sometimes has this meaning, as in pafado and frapadi.) Some linguists call the iterative “frequentative,” while others distinguish the frequentative from the iterative by saying that the frequentative indicates an action done often, with high frequency. To increase the usefulness of a marker for these aspects, an artificial language can add an affix that means “regularly, rhythmically, at predictable intervals” and another that means “intermittently, irregularly, at unpredictable intervals.”

The semelfactive aspect indicates that there is only one “stroke” of a normally iterative situation, e.g. a single knock at the door. The simulfactive indicates that a normally time-consuming or multi-stage situation is compressed, and occurs “all at once” or “in one fell swoop.”

Mental aspects

The experiential aspect emphasizes the idea that a person has had the experience of doing something at least once prior to the time mentioned. There is more to the experiential aspect than the dry fact that something happened; the subject of an experiential verb is almost always a being which is capable of ‘having an experience.’ English doesn’t have a single distinct marker for this aspect, so we turn to Mandarin Chinese for examples; the experiential is marked by the suffix -guo in the neutral tone: ni chi-le yúchì méi-you ‘did you eat the shark’s fin?’ versus ni chi-guo yúchì méi-you ‘have you ever eaten (ever had the experience of eating) shark’s fin?’, likewise wo méi qù hen duo guójia ‘I did not visit many countries (during a certain trip or period of time)’ versus wo méi qùguo hen duo guójia ‘I haven’t visited (have never had the experience of visiting) many countries.’

Indicating that action is performed in an intentional manner might be classified as an aspect, although some might call it a modality. Adding the intentional aspect to the verb “to see” produces a word that means roughly the same thing as “to look at,” and adding the intentional to the concept “be aware of” produces the concept “pay attention to.”

The counterpart of the intentional is, of course, the unintentional or accidental. If we start with a verb that means “to hold something in one’s hand,” add the cessative marker to create a verb meaning “cease to hold,” and then add the unintentional marker, we now have a verb that roughly equals the English expression “to drop or let go of something (accidentally).” Similarly, if our artificial language has a verb meaning “to be in a sitting position,” we can add the inceptive aspect marker to create a verb meaning “to begin to sit,” and then we can add the unintentional aspect marker to create a word that corresponds to the English phrase “to (accidentally) fall on one’s butt, to fall on your arse.”

Tamil has an aspectual verb (vai, ve-) which indicates an aspect of future utility. Its meaning is something like “doing X for future use” or “considering the future consequences of the action.” Here are two examples:⁶ tanniirek kuticcu veppoom, ‘we will tank up on water, i.e. we will drink a lot of water now in order to avoid being thirsty in the near future’; pooliiskitte edeyaavadu olari vekkaadee ‘don’t go blabbing things to the police (because doing so might get you into even more trouble later).’