Editing Grammatical aspect (section)

===Romance languages===
Modern Romance languages merge the concepts of aspect and tense but consistently distinguish perfective and imperfective aspects in the past tense. This derives directly from the way the [[Latin language]] used to render both aspects and ''[[consecutio temporum]]''.

==== Italian ====
Italian language example using the verb ''mangiare'' ("to eat"):
{| class="wikitable"
| colspan="4" |'''Mood: ''indicativo'' (indicative)'''
|-
|'''Tense'''
|'''Italian'''
|'''English'''
|'''Explanation'''
|-
|''Presente''<br>(Present)
|io mangio 
|"I eat", "I'm eating"
|merges habitual and continuous aspects, among others
|-
|''Passato prossimo''<br>(Recent past)
|io ho mangiato
|"I ate", "I have eaten"
|merges perfective and perfect
|-
|''Imperfetto''<br>(Imperfect)
|io mangiavo
|"I was eating", "I usually ate"
|merges habitual and progressive aspects
|-
|''Trapassato prossimo''<br>(Recent pluperfect)
|io avevo mangiato
|"I had eaten"
|tense, not ordinarily marked for aspect
|-
|''Passato remoto''<br>(Far past)
|io mangiai
|"I ate"
|perfective aspect
|-
|''Trapassato remoto''<br>(Far pluperfect)
|io ebbi mangiato 
|"I had eaten"
|tense
|-
|''Futuro semplice''<br>(Simple future)
|io mangerò
|"I shall eat"
|tense
|-
|''Futuro anteriore''<br>(Future perfect)
|io avrò mangiato 
|"I shall have eaten"
|future tense and perfect tense/aspect
|}
The ''imperfetto''/''trapassato prossimo'' contrasts with the ''passato remoto''/''trapassato remoto'' in that ''imperfetto'' renders an imperfective (continuous) past while ''passato remoto'' expresses an aorist (punctual/historical) past.

Other aspects in Italian are rendered with other periphrases, like [[prospective aspect|prospective]] (''io sto per mangiare'' "I'm about to eat", ''io starò per mangiare'' "I shall be about to eat"), or [[Continuous aspect|continuous]]/[[Progressive aspect|progressive]] (''io sto mangiando'' "I'm eating", ''io starò mangiando'' "I shall be eating").