Basic English Syntax with Exercises

lexical aspect

5.1 Event Structure and Aspect

Turning now to aspect. Again this is a semantic property of verbs which has to do with the process involved and its relationship to the progression of time. This is not tense, however, which situates an event at a particular place in time with respect to some other point, the time at which a sentence is uttered, for example. With aspect time is important with respect to the internal aspects of the event itself. For example, the end point of the event seen with respect to its starting point and what goes on between the two. It is important to distinguish between two types of aspect, one which is internal to the meaning of the verb, which we might refer to as lexical aspect, and one which is to do with the interpretation of a particular event described by a sentence, which we call grammatical aspect. Lexical aspect is also sometimes called aktionsart.

5.1 Event Structure and Aspect

With lexical aspect we can distinguish between those verbs which describe events which have a natural end point and those which do not. Consider the difference between eat and sit. Eating involves a process which if it continues long enough must come to a natural end determined by the extent of the thing being eaten: one can only eat an apple until it is all gone! Sitting, on the other hand, can continue indefinitely and will only come to an end when something else happens to stop it, the person stands up or the chair breaks, for example. By contrast, grammatical aspect looks at end points of an event from the perspective of the situation being described. Compare: