Editing Grammatical aspect (section)

{{Short description|Grammatical category expressing how a verb extends over time}}
{{distinguish|Lexical aspect}}
{{more footnotes|date=March 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Grammatical categories}}

In [[linguistics]], '''aspect''' is a [[grammatical category]] that expresses how a [[verb|verbal]] action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, [[perfective aspect]] is used in referring to an event conceived as [[boundedness (linguistics)|bounded]] and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during the event ("I helped him"). [[Imperfective aspect]] is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or habitually as time flows ("I was helping him"; "I used to help people").

Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish [[stative verb|states]] and ongoing actions ([[continuous and progressive aspects]]) from repetitive actions ([[habitual aspect]]).

Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation between the time of the event and the time of reference. This is the case with the [[Perfect (grammar)#Perfect as aspect|perfect aspect]], which indicates that an event occurred prior to but has continuing relevance at the time of reference: "I have eaten"; "I had eaten"; "I will have eaten".<ref>Henk J. Verkuyl, Henriette De Swart, Angeliek Van Hout, ''Perspectives on Aspect'', Springer 2006, p. 118.</ref>

Different languages make different grammatical aspectual distinctions; some (such as [[Standard German]]; see [[#German vernacular and colloquial|below]]) do not make any. The marking of aspect is often conflated with the marking of [[grammatical tense|tense]] and [[grammatical mood|mood]] (see [[tense–aspect–mood]]). Aspectual distinctions may be restricted to certain tenses: in [[Latin]] and the [[Romance languages]], for example, the perfective–imperfective distinction is marked in the [[past tense]], by the division between [[preterite]]s and [[imperfect]]s. Explicit consideration of aspect as a category first arose out of study of the [[Slavic languages]]; here verbs often occur in pairs, with two related verbs being used respectively for imperfective and perfective meanings.

The concept of grammatical aspect (or '''verbal aspect''') should not be confused with [[perfect (grammar)|perfect]] and [[imperfect]] ''verb forms''; the meanings of the latter terms are somewhat different, and in some languages, the common names used for verb forms may not follow the actual aspects precisely.