Definition of Aspect
Aspect is a grammatical term that has to do with how an action, state of being, or event unfolds in relation to time. The greatest distinction is made between the perfective aspect, which focuses on actions and events as whole elements, and the imperfective aspect, which deconstructs how an event is structured and located in time.
While other languages may mark the difference with an inflected verb form, English instead relies on a combination of particles, verbs, verb phrases, and lexical clues to determine whether the overall meaning of the action is perfective or imperfective.
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect highlights actions, states, or events as a whole, presenting the actions from an outside perspective as complete, bounded events.
The perfective aspect is encountered in all of the tenses—past, present, and future—but it is easiest to illustrate in the past. For example:
• “I went to the supermarket yesterday.” (past simple tense)
• “She sang in the choir.” (past simple tense)
• “We had eaten already.” (past perfect tense) In all of the above examples, the action is presented as a complete event in the past. We are simply told that the event occurred, with no clues as to how often the actions happened or how long they took.
As mentioned, the perfective aspect also occurs in other tenses. For example:
• “I have a dog.” (present simple tense)
• “She’ll be there soon.” (future simple tense)
• “They will have finished by then.” (future perfect tense)
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective aspect, on the other hand, is used when we focus on the internal structures of an action, state, or event as it relates to time, such as being continuous or habitual (repeating). Again, this has nothing to do with when the event occurs, and, as with the perfective, there is no separate verb form in English for the imperfective aspect.
Instead, it is expressed through different grammatical structures, which change depending on what we are saying about the temporal structure of the action.
We sometimes classify these structures as the continuous aspect and the habitual aspect, both of which are subclasses of the imperfective.
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Aspect