Editing Lexical aspect (section)

{{Short description|Semantic way in which a verb is structured in relation to time}}
{{distinguish|Grammatical aspect}}
{{Grammatical categories}}
{{Update|date=July 2019|1=work since the 2000s}}

In [[linguistics]], the '''lexical aspect''', '''situation type''' or '''Aktionsart''' ({{IPA|de|ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaːɐ̯t}}, plural ''Aktionsarten'' {{IPA|[ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaːɐ̯tn̩]}}) of an event is part of the way in which that event is structured in relation to [[time]]. For example, the [[English language|English]] verbs ''arrive'' and ''run'' differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which [[Telicity|has a natural endpoint]] while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from [[grammatical aspect]] in that it is an inherent [[semantic property]] of a [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]], while grammatical aspect is a [[Syntax|syntactic]] or [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] property. Although lexical aspect need not be marked morphologically, it has downstream grammatical effects, for instance that ''arrive'' can be modified by "in an hour" while ''believe'' cannot.