The Perfect Continuous aspect

The Continuous aspect

The Perfect aspect

Arrive, come, leave, find, start, stop, conclude

The Category of Aspect in English. Aspective Subclasses of verbs in Russian and in English.

Every action is characterised not only by the time of its occurrence but also by the manner of its performance. The grammatical category describing the manner of the action is called the aspect. The aspect shows whether the action is represented as process, result, whether it was in duration for a certain period of time (from the point of view of its progress & completion).

It can be expressed by lexical means (subclasses of verbs): groups of limitive&unlimitive verbs (terminative & durative) and the perfective & the imperfective (in Russian).

MIND the cross-language difference:

1) In MEANING: Limitive verbs denote an action implying a certain limit. Unlimitive don’t imply any such limit.

to find – to search

to look – to see

Perfective verbs denote actions that that are viewed as having reached its limit (побелить). Imperfective – actions that might be limitive but still in development (белить) or unlimitive (спать).

2) In Russian the two aspects are rigidly opposed and obligatory realized. In English there are no such clear-cut distinctions.

According to aspective characteristics English verbs can be:

Limitive verbs present a process as potentially limited, unlike the term terminative suggests!!!

Unlimitive verbs (durative) imply no limit in their semantics (move, continue, live, sleep, work, behave).

Verbs of double aspective nature (understand, исследовать) - meaning depends on the context.

English lexical aspect expresses a potentially limited or unlimited process, whereas the Russian aspect expresses the actual conclusion (the perfective, or terminative aspect) or non-conclusion (the imperfective, or non-terminative aspect) of the process in question.

Unlike their Russian absolutely rigid counterparts, are but loosely distinguished and easily reducible.

instantaneous (momentary),

ingressive (starting),

supercompleted (developed to the extent of superfluity),

undercompleted (not developed to its full extent)

Generally acpective verbal classes express the relation of the verbal semantics to the idea of a processual limit.

In English unlike Russian aspect is inseparately connected with the tense form (conjugated categories). It is a morphological category, while in Russian it is a lexico-grammatic category.

Traditionally there are 4 aspects:

4) the Indefinite or the Simple aspect. Some scholars say that the Indefinite aspect has the zero meaning of the aspect because it only indicates the time of an action. For this reason this aspect is called Indefinite or Simple Tenses.

Дата добавления: 2015-03-29