Aspect: aspect
| Values: | Hab | Imp | Iter | Perf | Prog | Prosp | Frus | Freq | Freq |
Cross-linguistically, aspect is typically a feature of verbs. In Nheengatu, it also occurs with other parts of speech, e.g., nouns, subordinating conjunctions, adverbs, and specially particles.
Aspect is a feature that specifies duration of the action in time, whether the action has been completed etc. In some languages (e.g. English), some tenses are actually combinations of tense and aspect. In other languages (e.g. Czech), aspect and tense are separate, although not completely independent of each other.
In Czech and other Slavic languages, aspect is a lexical feature. Pairs of imperfective and perfective verbs exist and are often morphologically related but the space is highly irregular and the verbs are considered to belong to separate lemmas.
Imp: imperfect aspect
The action took / takes / will take some time span and there is no information whether and when it was / will be completed.
Examples
- [cs] péci “to bake” (Imp); pekl chleba “he baked / was baking a bread”
Perf: perfect aspect
The action has been / will have been completed. Since there is emphasis on one point on the time scale (the point of completion), this aspect does not work well with the present tense. For example, Czech morphology can create present forms of perfective verbs but these actually have a future meaning.
Examples
- [cs] upéci “to bake” (Perf); upekl chleba “he baked / has baked a bread”
Prosp: prospective aspect
In general, prospective aspect can be described as relative future: the action is/was/will be expected to take place at a moment that follows the reference point; the reference point itself can be in past, present or future. In the English sentence When I got home yesterday, John called and said he would arrive soon, the last clause (he would arrive soon) is in prospective aspect. Nevertheless, English does not have overt affixal morphemes dedicated to the prospective aspect, and we do not need the label in English. But other languages do; the -ko suffix in Basque is an example.
Note that this value was called Pro in UD v1 and it has been renamed Prosp
in UD v2.
Examples
- [eu] Liburua irakurriko behar du. lit. book-a read-Prosp must AUX “He must go to read a book.”
Prog: progressive aspect
English progressive tenses (I am eating, I have been doing …) have this aspect. They are constructed analytically (auxiliary + present participle) but the -ing participle is so bound to progressive meaning that it seems a good idea to annotate it with this feature (we have to distinguish it from the past participle somehow; we may use both the “Tense” and the “Aspect” features).
In languages other than English, the progressive meaning may be expressed by morphemes bound to the main verb, which makes this value even more justified. Example is Turkish with its two distinct progressive morphemes, -yor and -mekte.
Examples
- [tr] eve gidiyor “she is going home (now)”
- [tr] eve gitmekte “she is going home (now)”
- [tr] eve gidiyordu “she was going home (when I saw her)”
- [tr] eve gimekteydi “she was going home (when I saw her)”
Hab: habitual aspect
English simple present has this aspect.
Examples
- [en] he attends classes of Japanese
Iter: iterative / frequentative aspect
Denotes repeated action. Attested e.g. in Hungarian.
Iteratives also exist in Czech with this name but their meaning is rather habitual.
They can be formed
only from imperfective verbs and they are usually not classified as a separate
aspect; they are just Aspect=Imp.
Note: This value is new in UD v2 but a similar value has been used in UD v1
as language-specific for Hungarian, though it was called frequentative there
(Freq).
Examples
- [hu] üt “hit”, ütöget “hit several times”
Frus: frustative aspect
“Frustrative is a grammatical marker that expresses the non-realization of some expected outcome implied by the proposition expressed in the marked clause.” (Overall 2017)
“The frustrative is a functional element found in a number of languages which expresses, in its typical use, that an action did not have its intended consequences […]” (Salanova)
‘The frustrative particle in Kimaragang marks unrealized expectations or intentions, counter-actuals, etc.” (Kroeger 2017)
References
Kroeger, Paul. 2017. Frustration, culmination, and inertia in Kimaragang grammar. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1): 56. 1–29, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.146
Overall, S. (2017). A Typology of Frustrative Marking in Amazonian Languages. In A. Aikhenvald & R. Dixon (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics, pp. 477-512). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316135716.015
Salanova, Andrés Pablo. A semantics for frustratives. https://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/files/linguistics/a_semantics_for_frustratives.pdf
Examples
Examples cited by Avila (2021) (our English translations):
- [yrl] Indé rewewé yepé kutara […] “You were flying fast in vain […]” (Casasnovas, 93)
- [yrl] Apurakí-putari yepé, ixé se maraari. “I wanted to work, but I’m tired.” (Magalhães, 96, adap.)
Freq: frequentative aspect
The frequentative aspect is marked in Nheengatu with the suffixes -wara and -wera. These suffixes attach to verbs or nouns, adverbs, etc. conveying the clause predicate, see Avila (2021, p. 809-810 and p. 824-825). They express that a state or event holds on continually or occurs repeatedly with a very high frequency. While -wara applies to predicates denoting present events, -wera specify that the event is located in the past. Typically, -wara translates as always in English.
References
van Geenhoven, Veerle. 2005. Atelicity, pluractionality, and adverbial quantification. In H. J. Verkuyl, H. de Swart & A. van Ho out (Eds.), Perspectives on Aspect (Studies In Theoretical Psycholinguistics, pp. 107-124). Dordrecht: Springer.
Examples
Examples cited by Avila (2021) (our English translations):
- [yrl] Ikewara aikú, reyuri ramé, resika se piri. “I’m always here, when you come, come visit me.”
- [yrl] Amanduariwara ne resé. “I always remember you.”
- [yrl] Ixé se rukawara aikú, ti xinga asemu kwá suí. “I’m always at home, I hardly leave here.”
- [yrl] Ta upukawera tẽ paá, ma ti ta umaã tá resé. “They actually laughed, but didn’t look at them.”
Compl: completive aspect
Following Avila (2021, p. 586), the completive aspect is marked in Nheengatu with the particle pawa (often reduced to páu or pá), which Cruz (2011, p. 396) analyses as incorporation of the homonymous verb meaning ‘to finish’. The completive aspect indicates “that an action has been performed thoroughly or to completion” (Bybee; Perkins; Pagliuca, 1994, p. 18). Nheengatu sentences with the completive aspect often correspond to English translation equivalents with adverbs such as “completely”. In other situations, completion of the event expressed by the clause main predicate denotes involvement of all members of a plural group referred to by the subject in case of an intransitive verb or the object in case of a transitive verb (Bybee; Perkins; Pagliuca, 1994, p. 57).
References
Bybee, J., Perkins, R., Pagliuca, W. 1994. The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: Univesity of Chicago Press.
Examples
Examples cited by Avila (2021) (our English translations):
- [yrl] Usú pawa, ti ana umanduári umunhã aintá ruka. “They all go, they no longer remember to make their houses.”
- [yrl] Ape Pirá-itá Manha umukanhemu pawa aintá suí maã uxari waá kwera aintá supé. “Then the Mother of Fishes made disappear everything she had given them.”
- [yrl] Remaã yuíri mayé ií umuyasuka pawa se awa-itá pixunasawa! “See also how the water washed away all the blackness from my hair!”
- [yrl] Pepuri pawa paraná upé. “Everyone jump into the river.”
- [yrl] Uka aíwa ukukúi pá wã. “The old house has already completely collapsed.”
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]