Aspect: aspect
| Values: | Imp | Perf |
Aspect in Modern Greek specifies the point of view the speaker adopts, that is, whether he views the event as a completed whole or he focues on the temporal structure of the event (continuation, duration, iteration). Modern Greek verbs do not provide different lemmas for their two morphologically distinct aspectual types.
Imp: imperfect aspect
The event is viewed from within: it took / takes / will take some time span and there is no information whether and when it was / will be completed.
Examples
- γράφω “I write or I am writting”
- θα γράφω “I will be writting”
- έγραφα “I was writing”
- κοιμάμαι “I sleep or I am sleeping”
- θα κοιμάμαι “I will be sleeping”
- κοιμόμουνα “I was sleeping”
- ψήνομαι “I am baked or I am being baked”
- θα ψήνομαι “I will be being baked”
- ψηνόμουνα “I was being baked”
Perf: perfect aspect
The event is viewed as a (completed) whole. The verb form that combines perfect aspect and past tense is independent. All other verb forms that bear the feature-value pair Aspect=Perf should be supported by an auxiliary, namely έχω or θα.
Examples
- έγραψα “I wrote” (past, perfect)
- θα γράψω “I will write”
- έχω γράψει “I have written”
- κοιμήθηκα “I slept” (past, perfect)
- θα κοιμηθώ “I will sleep”
- έχω κοιμηθεί “I have slept”
- ψήθηκα “I was baked” (past, perfect)
- θα ψηθώ “I will be baked”
- έχω ψηθεί “I have been baked”
References
Georgios I. Xydopoulos. 1996. Tense, aspect, and adverbials in Modern Greek. PhD Thesis. University College London
Aspect in other languages: [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [bor] [cs] [el] [eme] [ga] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [hyw] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [la] [mdf] [myu] [myv] [nci] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [say] [sl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl] [yrl]