Last time we looked at tense - the grammatical feature that locates in events in time.
This time let's look at aspect - the grammatical feature that tells us how an event relates
to the flow of time or, in fancy linguist speak, it tells us something about the internal
temporal consistency of an event.
At the highest level, we have the opposition between the perfective aspect and imperfective
aspect.
The perfective aspect presents an event as an instance in time - a simple unanalyzed
whole.[1] Whereas the imperfective aspect treats an event as a process with beginning,
duration and end.[2] Oftentimes, though not always, the perfective emphasises completion
and the imperfect emphasises incompletion.
Russian features such an opposition.
For every english verb[3] there are two Russian verbs which differ only in aspect.
One is perfective[4] the other imperfective[5].
The perfective form, in keeping with our definition, is used for completed events, events that
occur once, and when the result of an event is relevant.
The imperfective form is used for events that are repeated, have duration, are incomplete
or are in progress.
Both aspects can be applied across the past[6], present[7], and future[8] tenses.
Albeit Russian forbids the present perfective which kinda makes sense; the present is an
ongoing process centred on the now and the perfective is synonymous with completion – the
two don't really mix.
Now given that, by definition, there is more to say about the imperfective, some languages
split it up into the habitual aspect and continuous aspect.
The habitual aspect, think ‘used to’, tells us that event occurs habitually ‘I
used to walk to work’ or that it is characteristic of the time period being talked about ‘this
building used to be a shop’.
The continuous aspect, on the other hand, tells that an event is ongoing but not habitual.
‘He sees it’ in Quechua[9] translates literally as he is in the process of seeing
it.
We can go down another level on the aspect tree and sub-divide the continuous aspect
into the progressive and non-progressive aspect.
The progressive aspect tells us an event is an ongoing dynamic process ‘I was walking,
I am eating, I will be learning’ whereas the non-progressive tells us the event is
an ongoing static state.
Analogs in English are ‘I love, I know, I understand’.
Then there's the perfect which doesn't neatly fit into the aspect tree.
It tells us that an event has present relevance or put another way it highlights the consequences
of an action.
'Want some dinner?
No thanks, I have eaten?'
The event: the eating.
The consequence: I'm too full have dinner right now.
Now, I'm not pointing any fingers here, linguists, but next time maybe don't give almost identical
labels to utterly different concepts.[10] Just a thought...
Anyways, English deploys the majestically named perfect aspect in a number of cool ways.
There's the Perfect of Result ‘Steven has arrived’ which implies an event still holds.
Steven arrived and is still here.
The Experiential Perfect ‘Steven has been to Beach City’ tells us the event has occurred
at least once.
The Perfect of Persistence ‘Pearl has lived here for many years’ emphasises continuity
from past to present.
And the Perfect of Recency ‘I've just seen Opal’ highlights recency as the important
point in a statement.
With all that in the bag, let's talk about how to apply aspects to our conlangs.
First decide if you even want aspect.
Yoruba lacks tense and instead relies on a ton of aspects to convey temporal information.[11]
[12] German on the other hand doesn't really bother with aspect.
Context[13] and adverbs[14] suffice in German.
Assuming you do want aspects, pick from this set.[15] Be minimal and for the most part
think in oppositions: perfective vs imperfective, perfective vs habitual and continuous on so
on, and then decide how your aspects will be marked - with inflectional morphology like
in Russian, or through auxiliary verbs and periphrasis like in English, or maybe you
could just make up different verbs for each aspect.[16]
FYI periphrasis is the use of separate words to convey a grammatical relationship that
otherwise would be conveyed by inflection.
Couple of extra pointers though.
In English, we can say ‘I used to work here’ but not ‘I will used to work here’.
That is, the habitual aspect can't be applied to the future, only the past.
This is common.
Past tenses tend to have more aspectual distinctions than other tenses so think about mimicking
this in your conlang.
Also, try to combine tense and aspect markers.
Like how the Italian Imperfetto[17], conveys the past tense, habitual aspect and progressive
aspect all at once in a single affix[18].
Combining tense and aspect is naturalistic[19], marking them seperately is not.[20]
Now, these are beginner level guidelines but the more advanced amongst may wish to go a
little deeper.
Buckle in folks...it's about to get dense.
Thus far we've only talked about grammatical aspect but there's also lexical aspect - the
phenomenon whereby verbs themselves are inherently temporal.
Such verbs come, at least in English, in five flavours.
An Activity, like ‘to walk’, is defined as being a dynamic, atelic, durative event.
Dynamic meaning the event is an ongoing process which requires continuous input.
Atelic means the event has no clear endpoint; stop walking at any time and the statement
‘I walked’ holds true.
And durative means the event is conceived of as lasting in time.
An Accomplishment, like ‘to build a bridge’, is defined as being a dynamic, telic, durative
event.
It's a process, it has a clearly defined end point; the bridge is either built or not,
you can't cut off construction at a point and say the bridge is built.
And it has duration.
A Semelfactive, like ‘to hiccup’, is a dynamic, atelic, instantaneous event.
It's a process, it has no clear end-point, and it occurs instantaneously - or at least
we conceive of it as being an instantaneous event.
An Achievement, like ‘to reach to a summit’, is defined as being a dynamic, telic, instantaneous
event.
It's a process, it has a clear end point and it occurs instantaneously - one moment the
summit has not been reached and the next it has.
And a Stative, like ‘to know’, is defined as being durative and static.
It has duration but is a changeless state - once you know something it holds over time
with no further input.
I bring all this up to say that a conlanger should be aware that the lexical aspect of
a verb can affect which grammatical aspect the verb can take.
In English, ‘I am walking’ is grammatically correct but ‘I am knowing’ is incorrect.
Meaning English allows the progressive aspect to couple with activities but not with states.
Think about this with your lang.
Finally, no talk of aspect would be complete without mentioning Navajo.
In blatant disregard for my guidelines, Navajos aspect system features … wait for it … seven
modes, twelve primary aspects and ten sub-aspects.
All of which combine with each other in various complex ways.
The modes are: imperfective, perfective, progressive, future, usitative, iterative, optative.
They're called modes but apart for the future (a tense) and the optative (a mood) they're
actually aspects.
The usitative aspect tells us that an event takes place customarily whereas the iterative
aspect tells us that an event takes place repeatedly.
Which, I know, sounds like tomato-tomato but take a sentence like this:
Hastiin ná'ádlį́į́hgo, ch'ínáshdááh[21]
The first part is iterative; the implication is that the husband has been known to drink
on several occasions.
And the second part is usitative; leaving is the customary response to the husbands
drinking.
Then we got the primary aspects: momentaneous, continuative, durative, repetitive, conclusive,
semelfactive, distributive, diversative, reversative, conative, transitional, and cursive.
Here's what they all do[22], links in the description.
Some of my favourites are the semelfactive aspect, which kinda like before tells us that
an event is a single act in a repeated series of acts[23]; the conative aspect, which tells
is that an event was attempted[24]; and the cursive aspect, which tells us an event progresses
in a line through time and/or space.
Think 'along'[25]
On to the subaspect: completive, terminative, stative, inceptive, prolongative, seriative,
inchoative, reversionary, semeliterative.
Again here’s what they do[26].
The seriative aspect is cool.
It tells us that an event occurs in sequence[27].
And so is the semeliterative aspect, which tells us that an event occurs one more time[28].
But the prize for best aspect has got to go to Hopi and it’s segmentative aspect.
Brace yourself for this one … the segmentative aspect takes the thing conveyed by a verb,
repeats it, and stretches it out into a series of interconnected segments in a single dimension,
regardless of time or space or both.
It forms an acute angle[29] turns into it is zigzagging[30].
Trippy, right?!
And I could go on and on[31] but this video is getting long.
Links in the description … Laters.