SITUATION TYPES AND THE
PROGRESSIVE ASPECT
THE MEANING OF ASPECT
While tense is used to locate events in time, aspect is concerned with the way in which the event is viewed with regard to such considerations as duration and completion when encoded by a verb. This is sometimes defined as the internal temporal contour of the event. Compare, for instance, the following representations of a situation:
1a He locked the safe. 1b He was locking the safe.
As regards tense, both are the same – the Past. They both locate the situation in past time. The difference is one of aspect, expressed by the verbal form was locking as opposed to the ordinary past locked. What we have is a difference of viewpoint and of focus of attention.
A basic aspectual distinction is that of perfectivity vs imperfectivity:
• Perfective: the situation is presented as a complete whole, as if viewed externally, with sharp boundaries, as in 1a. (Note that perfectivity is not the Perfect aspect!)
• Imperfective: the situation is viewed as an internal stage, without boundaries and is conceptualized as ongoing and incomplete; the beginning and end aren’t included in this viewpoint – we see only the internal part, as in 1b. The Progressive is thus a kind of imperfectivity.
In many languages the perfective/imperfective pairs are related morphologically. Having fewer aspectual inflections, English has fewer grammaticalized aspectual choices than some languages. Take for instance the following examples containing the verb speak, together with their Spanish counterparts:
2a He stopped and spoke to me in English. (Spanish habló)
2b He spoke English with a Welsh accent. (Spanish hablaba)
The Past tense in English does not distinguish formally between the single event represented in 2a, whose counterpart in Spanish is marked as perfective (habló), and the habitual event represented in 2b, which is marked as imperfective in Spanish (hablaba).
In other words, the Past tense in English is indeterminate between a perfective and an imperfective interpretation. This distinction is captured inferentially by speakers according to the relevance of one meaning or other within a context, but is not grammaticalized.
