DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

MORPHOLOGY 1 Lecture 6 M. A. Snezana Kirova

1. Grammatical aspect There are two grammatically marked aspects in English:

progressive aspect ( be + - ing ) perfective aspect ( have + past

participle).

Aspect in a verb shows whether the action or

state is complete or not. It refers to how an event or action is to be viewed with respect to time, rather than to its actual location in time. We can illustrate this using the following examples: [1] David fell in love on his eighteenth birthday. In [1], the verb fell tells us that David fell in love in the past, and specifically on his eighteenth birthday. This is a simple past tense verb.

[2]David has fallen in love .

In [2] also, the action took place in the past, but it

is implied that it took place quite recently. Furthermore, it is implied that it is still relevant at the time of speaking -- David has fallen in love, and that is why he is behaving strangely. It is worth noting that we cannot say *David has fallen in love on his eighteenth birthday. The auxiliary has here encodes what is known as PERFECTIVE ASPECT, and the auxiliary itself is known as the PERFECTIVE AUXILIARY.

 [3] David is falling in love. In [3], the action of falling in love is still in progress --

David is falling in love at the time of speaking. For this reason, we call it PROGRESSIVE ASPECT, and the auxiliary is called the PROGRESSIVE AUXILIARY. Aspect always includes tense. In [2] and [3] above, the aspectual auxiliaries are in the present tense, but they could also be in the past tense: David had fallen in love -- Perfective Aspect, Past Tense David was falling in love -- Progressive Aspect, Past Tense

 The perfective auxiliary is always followed by a

main verb in the -ed form, while the progressive auxiliary is followed by a main verb in the -ing form. We exemplify these points in the table below:
Perfective Aspect Progressive Aspect

Present Tense Past Tense

has fallen had fallen

is falling was falling

*While aspect always includes tense, tense can occur without aspect (David falls in love, David fell in love).

2. Lexical aspect
In addition to the grammatical marking of the aspect, the lexical meaning of the verb may convey aspectual meaning. This is called lexical aspect. The verbs can be divided as follows according to their aspectual meaning:
I. Stative verbs II. Dynamic verbs

I. Stative verbs Cognition verbs: believe, hate, know, like, enjoy, understand, want Relations verbs: be, belong, contain, have, own, resemble II. Dynamic verbs Punctual verbs Acts: hit, jump, eat, kick, stab, strike, throw, cough Durative verbs Activities: eat, run, swim, walk, work, write / Processes: become, change, flow, grow, harden,

The verbs denoting stative concepts tend not

to be used with progressive forms. After buying a house, English speakers are not likely to tell people I'm having a house now, because that would suggest a process rather than a fixed state. The progressive aspect used with a stative verb often signifies a temporary state: You're being foolish. I'm having a bad day.

The verbs that typically signify punctual

concepts, describing momentary acts, have a slightly different meaning in the progressive form: He's kicking the box, She's coughing. These are interpreted as repeated acts, not as single acts. Dynamic verbs used in the progressive aspect typically signify ongoing activity.

The perfective aspect used with stative verbs

typically signify pre-existing states (that may continue): He has believed in Allah all his life. We have known Fred for many years. I have been ill.
The perfective aspect used with dynamic

verbs, on the other hand, often indicates completed actions: We have baked the cake (would you like to taste it). I have written some notes (you can read them here).

Statistically, verb phrases marked for

aspect are in the minority (only 10% of all the verbs in the corpus used for the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English); in the same corpus perfect(ive) aspect was slightly more common than the progressive aspect.