Understanding perfective aspect

[bradrn]

I feel that by now, I understand most of the essentials of linguistics. However, there is one thing I have never been quite able to fully wrap my head around: verbal aspect. Specifically, the perfective/imperfective distinction. After reading a bit about it, I feel that at the moment I have a fairly good grasp of where the ‘imperfective’ is used: it is used for actions which are treated as being extended in time. This definition is straightforwardly reflected in the various imperfective aspects: for instance, habitual aspect is (roughly) used for actions which are repeated over an extended period of time, and continuous/progressive aspect is used for actions which are in continuing progress at a particular time.

However, I feel that my grasp of the ‘perfective’ aspect is far more shaky. I’ve seen various definitions of the ‘perfective’, none of which agree with each other, and all of which have either some sort of gaping hole or are too vague to be of any practical use. For instance:

• Is it used for events which are not considered as if extended in time? But this doesn’t seem to make sense for anything other than perfectly punctual events, whereas it’s perfectly acceptable to use the perfective with non-punctual verbs,
• is it used for completed events? Then how is it different to the perfect? And additionally, if this is so, then how can it make sense to have non-past perfectives? (I am aware that some languages only have a past perfective — but there are many languages (including English) which do have non-past perfectives.)
• Is it used for events where the internal structure is ignored? That’s horribly vague — what exactly does ‘internal structure’ even mean? Yes, I sort of can understand what that means, but it would be nice to make this more precise.

So, can anyone explain to me: what is the perfective used for?

[zompist]

"Not imperfective" is a good start.

Basically it's an event seen as a whole, but not as a duration or a process:
I fell down the stairs.
I ate dinner.
Louis reigned for 32 years.
I studied at Yale, then Oxford.

Aspects are a matter of viewpoint, so the same event can be imperfective:
It felt like I was falling down the stairs forever.
I was eating dinner when the phone rang.
While Louis reigned, the cabal was plotting a rebellion.
I was studying at Yale when I discovered Sartre.

Is it used for events which are not considered as if extended in time?

No, the events can take awhile, like Louis's reign. The idea is seeing them as a single action.

is it used for completed events?

Usually, including those completed in the future ("I'll eat dinner at 4"). But the emphasis is not on completing the event (that would be a completive), or on any present consequences of completing it (that would be a perfect).

Is it used for events where the internal structure is ignored?

Pretty much. Obviously the event did begin and end, but we're not focused on that, or on internal interruptions, or on the event as a process during which other other events we're talking about happened.

how is it different to the perfect?

The usual explanation is that the perfect emphasizes the present relevance of the action. I find that unhelpful, as Grice tells us speakers always try to be relevant. So I prefer to say that it emphasizes that the action has obvious consequences in context. E.g.:

A: Want to go to a restaurant?
B: I've eaten.

The obvious consequences here are that B isn't hungry, and thus is rejecting A's suggestion.

(B could say "I just ate" or "I already ate", with the same effect. Which is just the usual in morphosyntax: the same function can be accomplished lexically rather than morphologically.)

Warning, though: the English perfect has other uses, which probably should all have been given different names.

[bradrn]

"Not imperfective" is a good start.

I was hoping it wouldn’t be that

Basically it's an event seen as a whole, but not as a duration or a process:
I fell down the stairs.
I ate dinner.
Louis reigned for 32 years.
I studied at Yale, then Oxford.

So then what about something like I can see you? That doesn’t ‘feel’ like an event being seen as a whole, in some hard-to-define way — it ‘feels’ much more like a process. (This is why I complained about definitions being vague.)

Aspects are a matter of viewpoint, so the same event can be imperfective:
It felt like I was falling down the stairs forever.
I was eating dinner when the phone rang.
While Louis reigned, the cabal was plotting a rebellion.
I was studying at Yale when I discovered Sartre.

I did realise this already. (I probably should have said so in my question, actually.)

Is it used for events which are not considered as if extended in time?

No, the events can take awhile, like Louis's reign. The idea is seeing them as a single action.

is it used for completed events?

Usually, including those completed in the future ("I'll eat dinner at 4"). But the emphasis is not on completing the event (that would be a completive), or on any present consequences of completing it (that would be a perfect).

Is it used for events where the internal structure is ignored?

Pretty much. Obviously the event did begin and end, but we're not focused on that, or on internal interruptions, or on the event as a process during which other other events we're talking about happened.

how is it different to the perfect?

The usual explanation is that the perfect emphasizes the present relevance of the action. I find that unhelpful, as Grice tells us speakers always try to be relevant. So I prefer to say that it emphasizes that the action has obvious consequences in context. E.g.:

A: Want to go to a restaurant?
B: I've eaten.

The obvious consequences here are that B isn't hungry, and thus is rejecting A's suggestion.

(B could say "I just ate" or "I already ate", with the same effect. Which is just the usual in morphosyntax: the same function can be accomplished lexically rather than morphologically.)

I think you may have misinterpreted me here. I wasn’t asking about the validity of those definitions — I was just saying that those are all definitions I’ve seen before and found unhelpful.

Warning, though: the English perfect has other uses, which probably should all have been given different names.

This sounds interesting! Could you give some examples?

[zompist]

So then what about something like I can see you? That doesn’t ‘feel’ like an event being seen as a whole, in some hard-to-define way — it ‘feels’ much more like a process. (This is why I complained about definitions being vague.)

Aspects all get weird in the present, and aspectual systems do too. The present is a point in time, or we deem it to be one, so it's hard to fit a whole event in there.

I think it's best to say that the English simple present is protoypically habitual. That's easiest to see with sentences like "I read linguistics" or "I live in Barcelona."

We can still make a morphological distinction ("I'm seeing a problem" / "I see you") but I think the semantic difference is very low, and doesn't resemble the perfectivity we get in the past or future.

Warning, though: the English perfect has other uses, which probably should all have been given different names.

This sounds interesting! Could you give some examples?

Sure. One is the perfect of experience: "I've been to Barcelona." (= I have been there at least once.) Another is the past anterior: "I had only just finished cooking when she knocked at the door."

[Kuchigakatai]

Pretty much. Obviously the event did begin and end, but we're not focused on that, or on internal interruptions, or on the event as a process during which other other events we're talking about happened.

I would like to point out that, in the case of perfectives, there is quite often a focus on the fact the event ended or will end (You finally gave up!, When/Once they arrive, they'll be helping us), even if it isn't always the case, e.g. the use of a perfective in I ran for three hours, they built the entire thing in the course six months which focus more on the adverbial duration.

The usual explanation is that the perfect emphasizes the present relevance of the action. I find that unhelpful, as Grice tells us speakers always try to be relevant. So I prefer to say that it emphasizes that the action has obvious consequences in context. E.g.:

A: Want to go to a restaurant?
B: I've eaten.

The obvious consequences here are that B isn't hungry, and thus is rejecting A's suggestion.

(B could say "I just ate" or "I already ate", with the same effect. Which is just the usual in morphosyntax: the same function can be accomplished lexically rather than morphologically.)

I think it is often worth it when dealing with these concepts to point out that languages (or dialects...) differ on what is worth counting as having obvious consequences for the present moment. (This is true of anything, I know, but I feel we often forget that when learning new linguistic concepts...)

I'd like to add that besides examples like yours, the perfect is often used to express having had a certain experience before, which has an obvious consequence for something you're about to do. I've eaten bare garlic before (therefore doing it again now won't shock me). Or events that are breaking news for the listeners. (In a sword-and-sandal movie) The Romans have razed Jerusalem! Or events that started in the past and are expected to keep going. I've conlanged (or: I've been conlanging) for 12 years.

I'd like to mention, too, that the perfect often doesn't exist in contrast to the perfective, but exists in a different axis, or its uses are a subset of the perfective. Some languages will basically arguably contrast them with somewhat dedicated different patterns, but it doesn't have to be the case. The perfect in Mandarin is constructed with a verb marked with the perfective verb particle plus the sentence-final particle of change-of-state (V了...了, [verb]-le ... le, homophones/homographs).


In terms of language learning, I think the category of stative verbs often gives greater trouble to English speakers when grasping the imperfective vs. perfective distinction. Verbs like "to be", the existential "there be", "to have", various verbs of desire ("wish/want/desire") or evaluation ("love/like/hate"). Contrast I knew all about his problems, and at the time I was working for him (perfectly fine) vs. I knew all about his problems, and at the time I was hating him (terrible; intended: hated him, used to hate him, generally hated him).

In real-world past-tense contexts, 'to be' is probably in the imperfective more often than not, but in the perfective it expresses that whatever was something at the time stopped being so. In Spanish, imperfective él era un buen chico 'he was a good boy' makes you sound like you're reminiscing of the extent of those good old days, how being with him day after day was enjoyable; perfective él fue un buen chico implies that he died (he stopped 'being') or otherwise clarifies a moment eventually happened where your time with the guy ended (maybe because he moved to another city, or was unjustly fired, etc.).



Also, talking about past backgrounds in general is a source of trouble for distinguishing the perfective vs. imperfective, because English often uses the simple past for that ("did").

"In the 1980s, people wore (IMPFV, ~used to wear, often wore) their hair that way --at that time it really seemed (IMPFV, throughout the course of that time) normal to us. But then the fashion changed (PFV), and we began (PFV, at the point of change) wearing it down. Some people even liked (IMPFV, ~generally liked during that time, often liked, used to like) to intentionally make it greasy too."

Of course, here I have to clarify what my intended meaning is, because changing the aspect of a bunch of these verbs doesn't produce nonsense, but rather just a different meaning. Changing "began" to IMPFV would express a period of a gradual takeover of the new fashion, as opposed to mentioning the adoption simply happening. Changing "liked" to PFV would express that the event of people learning to like the new fashion simply happened, as opposed to saying many people generally liked the new fashion during much of the length of 1990s.

So then what about something like I can see you? That doesn’t ‘feel’ like an event being seen as a whole, in some hard-to-define way — it ‘feels’ much more like a process. (This is why I complained about definitions being vague.)

I'd say it can possibly go either way. Notice the more imperfective notion of "I can see you, I'm watching you right now, so stop doing that", and the more perfective one of "I can see you, I can finally see you now!" which expresses the current end of a change of state, from "not seeing you" to "seeing you". In some languages, the latter could be in a perfective sort of form or construction. Honestly, thinking of perfective type of events that are in the present tense is a very awkward thing though, as zompist just said. Perfectives are mostly in the past or the future.

This sounds interesting! Could you give some examples?

My list above would be partly it. Experientials (I've eaten bare garlic before), past-to-future continuatives (I've been conlanging for 12 years, and expect to keep going), past-to-present perfectives (I've conlanged for 12 years but I'm deciding to stop right now), and other such uses...

[KathTheDragon]

It might be helpful to seek out a copy of Aspect by Comrie.

[bradrn]

So then what about something like I can see you? That doesn’t ‘feel’ like an event being seen as a whole, in some hard-to-define way — it ‘feels’ much more like a process. (This is why I complained about definitions being vague.)

Aspects all get weird in the present, and aspectual systems do too. The present is a point in time, or we deem it to be one, so it's hard to fit a whole event in there.

I think it's best to say that the English simple present is protoypically habitual. That's easiest to see with sentences like "I read linguistics" or "I live in Barcelona."

We can still make a morphological distinction ("I'm seeing a problem" / "I see you") but I think the semantic difference is very low, and doesn't resemble the perfectivity we get in the past or future.

So is it at all possible to get a present perfective in any language, or is this totally impossible? And more generally, how do aspectual systems work in the present? (I’m already aware of tripartite present/past imperfective/past perfective systems, but I believe Dahl (1985) implies that those are rather rare outside Europe.)

Warning, though: the English perfect has other uses, which probably should all have been given different names.

This sounds interesting! Could you give some examples?

Sure. One is the perfect of experience: "I've been to Barcelona." (= I have been there at least once.) Another is the past anterior: "I had only just finished cooking when she knocked at the door."

Thanks!

I'd like to mention, too, that the perfect often doesn't exist in contrast to the perfective, but exists in a different axis, or its uses are a subset of the perfective. Some languages will basically arguably contrast them with somewhat dedicated different patterns, but it doesn't have to be the case. The perfect in Mandarin is constructed with a verb marked with the perfective verb particle plus the sentence-final particle of change-of-state (V了...了, [verb]-le ... le, homophones/homographs).

Yes indeed — this is exactly why I don’t particularly like thinking of the perfect as an aspect. Another thing in the same category is the prospective: the opposite of the perfect, expressing an event in the future. Dahl (1985) argues that English going to/gonna is a prospective rather than a future tense, and I agree, as it can co-occur with both tense and aspect being explicitly specified: I was going to be working.

In real-world past-tense contexts, 'to be' is probably in the imperfective more often than not, but in the perfective it expresses that whatever was something at the time stopped being so.

How do you come to this conclusion? In English at least, I use perfective to be far more than imperfective is being. (Maybe it’s different in Spanish.)

It might be helpful to seek out a copy of Aspect by Comrie.

I’ve already read it. It didn’t help very much.

[Ares Land]

One way to look at it, which is probably inaccurate, but serviceable:

Think of it as telling or writing a story.
If what you're doing is description of background events, use the imperfective. For the main action use the perfective.

[bradrn]

One way to look at it, which is probably inaccurate, but serviceable:

Think of it as telling or writing a story.
If what you're doing is description of background events, use the imperfective. For the main action use the perfective.

I’ve been (very slowly) reading through Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics & Pragmatics, in the hope that it might help me understand this stuff, and that’s pretty much what it’s said so far. (Alternatively: perfective is used for sequential events, imperfective is used with events which are not sequenced.) But that’s no help if e.g. I’m writing something in the Conlang Fluency Thread and I want to know whether to translate it using the perfective or the imperfective.

[Ares Land]

One way to look at it, which is probably inaccurate, but serviceable:

Think of it as telling or writing a story.
If what you're doing is description of background events, use the imperfective. For the main action use the perfective.

I’ve been (very slowly) reading through Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics & Pragmatics, in the hope that it might help me understand this stuff, and that’s pretty much what it’s said so far. (Alternatively: perfective is used for sequential events, imperfective is used with events which are not sequenced.) But that’s no help if e.g. I’m writing something in the Conlang Fluency Thread and I want to know whether to translate it using the perfective or the imperfective.

If you have a few examples of problematic sentences, maybe we could try figuring out aspects for these?

[akam chinjir]

I would like to point out that, in the case of perfectives, there is quite often a focus on the fact the event ended or will end

Some languages get described as having perfectives that focus the beginning of the event, fwiw. I'm thinking especially of Komnzo as described by Döhler. E.g., a perfective imperative can direct you to start doing something, while an imperfective one can direct you to keep doing something you're already doing. (Hmm, though maybe that particular example maybe comes from Evans describing a related language.) You can get that in English too: "The police came, so we ran."

So then what about something like I can see you?

Surely that's stative, thus imperfective.

How do you come to this conclusion? In English at least, I use perfective to be far more than imperfective is being. (Maybe it’s different in Spanish.)

Are you thinking of the verb in "I am happy," say, as perfective? It's not, it's just not progressive. (Like the last example, it's stative.)

[vegfarandi]

So then what about something like I can see you?

Surely that's stative, thus imperfective.

Yep. Ignoring TAM, "I can see you" could be perfective if there was some kind of result from it, "I can see you exiting the government agency, so I'll go ahead and diffuse the bomb"

"I can see you" without context will be seen as an unending state, atelic and unbounded.

In fact, boundedness I would say is the number one characteristic of perfective. Bounded and unbounded might almost be better terms than perfective and imperfective. Perfective/bounded means the event in question is conceptualized as having a beginning, middle and end – i.e. bounded in time, a whole event. Imperfective/unbounded means you're not thinking of it that way. You're thinking of it as a) part of an event, something ongoing, most likely a part of the middle of the event, perhaps while something else was happening; b) as a state, a description of a general truth/state; or c) as something habitual, something that happens again and again. With the habitual sense, it's really a sequence of perfective events, but the focus isn't on them as bounded events but the fact that it keeps happening, almost like a segmented stative, so again, a description of a general truth/state.

Semantically, some verbs are ill suited to perfective aspect and others ill suited to imperfective aspect. For example, semelfactive verb (i.e. a verb that refers to an instantaneous action, something that takes seconds or less) is generally not used as imperfective except maybe in the habitual sense. So "kick," "slap," "break," "let out a cough" will most likely always or nearly always be perfective. In English, you can imperfectivize these but this implies rapid, ongoing repetition. "I'm kicking him" means that I have kicked him several times, I'm still kicking him, and I haven't stopped yet. In many other languages, the verbs semantically refer to a single action so this kind of meaning has to be achieved with some other mechanism than a simple imperfective aspect, maybe a pluractional verbal number, frequentative derivation etc.

In languages that make a distinction between continuative/progressive (the ongoing a) sense above) and stative; any lexical stative usually can't be in the progressive aspect. Until fairly recently, clauses such as "I'm loving it," "I'm not understanding it" were ungrammatical in English. The recent expansion of the progressive aspect to statives like this is quite interesting (nerdy sidenote: it has been aerially borrowed into Icelandic in the last 20 or so years), but it conceptualizes the statives as something that will have an end. "I'm loving it" implies that at some point, this sensation may lose relevance, it's a satisfied craving (hence it's use in McDonald's commercials). Similarly, "I'm not understanding it" implies hope that at some point you will get it.

[Kuchigakatai]

And more generally, how do aspectual systems work in the present? (I’m already aware of tripartite present/past imperfective/past perfective systems, but I believe Dahl (1985) implies that those are rather rare outside Europe.)

I think aspect in the present mostly shows up as habitual (I do exercise every day) vs. present state (I am angry, I feel angry) vs. present ongoing action (I'm working on it). Maybe also a resultative if you're willing to count that as present-tense (my dreams are (now) ruined, the project is done, my grandma is gone) --some languages make more use of this than English (Spanish and está + past participle).

Some languages don't have any aspect distinctions in the present tense to speak of. I'd count French and the neutral-high register of Standard Arabic in there.

(Linguists sometimes love to mention the construction être en train de + infinitive (je suis en train de faire), which emphasizes that someone is carrying out a continuous action, but my response is that it's not mandatory to use it for such notions, and that it contains the copula in the present tense too. Whether something like it will likely be mandatory in Future French soon enough, or already is in some dialects like IIRC Louisiana French, that's another matter. The French typical equivalent of the perfect also uses a present-tense verb, but unlike other TAMs it practically needs an adverbial, with depuis 'since'... I wouldn't count it either.)

(As for Standard Arabic, I'm talking about the regular style in which the present participle as predicate (1SG work.PRES.PTCP-SG.MASC.NOM there, 'I'm working there'), is not used much to express present continuous actions. This is so much the case in the regular register that reference grammars often simply omit this construction altogether, or mention it only in passing. Lower forms of Standard Arabic that approach modern spoken Arabic, and ironically also very archaizing ones, have it though.)

I'd like to mention, too, that the perfect often doesn't exist in contrast to the perfective, but exists in a different axis, or its uses are a subset of the perfective. Some languages will basically arguably contrast them with somewhat dedicated different patterns, but it doesn't have to be the case. The perfect in Mandarin is constructed with a verb marked with the perfective verb particle plus the sentence-final particle of change-of-state (V了...了, [verb]-le ... le, homophones/homographs).

Yes indeed — this is exactly why I don’t particularly like thinking of the perfect as an aspect.

And that's probably fine. The perfect is often a mixed bag of different uses anyway. It's more of a term of convenience because many languages do have a particular construction that means something around "I have done it, or have been doing it, for some time", but how that gets used in a given language varies a lot. The perfect is often used to express the experiential (having had an experience with sth before) in English and Spanish, but it isn't in French which arguably doesn't have a perfect construction in the first place (the "compound past", typically a past perfective, plus an adverbial handle the experiential: je l'ai (déjà) fait avant with 'before' and 'already'), nor Mandarin either (which has a dedicated morpheme for experientials instead: the verbal particle 過 -guo).

In real-world past-tense contexts, 'to be' is probably in the imperfective more often than not, but in the perfective it expresses that whatever was something at the time stopped being so.

How do you come to this conclusion? In English at least, I use perfective to be far more than imperfective is being. (Maybe it’s different in Spanish.)

It's just a vague impression on how often I see era vs. fue in Spanish. The distinction in Spanish corresponds somewhat well to one of imperfective vs. perfective aspect. I should've emphasized my use of 'probably'. (It's not exact though. Given enough context, like a funeral, you could say era un alma tan preciosa 'she was such a beautiful soul!' with perfective aspect, focusing on the fact the man's life ended. The use of era would be basically just respectful, as if you were supposedly talking of the course of his life not caring whether it's ended. Fue would sound a bit distant and rude IMO.)

I really think it's a mistake to think of was as "perfective" and was being as "imperfective". As I mentioned above in my first post, English treats a number of highly stative verbs like "to be/have/want/love/hate" differently from other verbs in the past tense, highly limiting the the "was" + ing-participle construction. "Perfective" and "imperfective" are supposed to be semantic concepts that can be applied regardless of what languages actually do morphosyntactically.

If you're talking about once having often been in a frequent state of desiring to obtain more money for a range of time (let's say years), you can't say *I was only wanting more money (if anything, this would be 'to want' in the older sense of 'to lack', nothing to do with feelings!). To express the feeling, you have to say I only wanted more money, even though we're not focusing on whether that ended (or began) at all, because the intention in this context is imperfective. This is the limitation that English has in highly stative verbs that I'm talking about.

It might be helpful to seek out a copy of Aspect by Comrie.

I’ve already read it. It didn’t help very much.

A bit surprising. The book is entitled "Aspect" but most of what Comrie does is talk about imperfective vs. perfective ad nauseam (I'm only kidding, except not really!). Maybe you could provide us with an example of what kind of thing you struggle with? Maybe their generalities and ours are not concrete enough, and what you need is a discussion of examples. A lot of the time you can use either aspect, they just mean different things.

Some languages get described as having perfectives that focus the beginning of the event, fwiw. I'm thinking especially of Komnzo as described by Döhler. E.g., a perfective imperative can direct you to start doing something, while an imperfective one can direct you to keep doing something you're already doing. (Hmm, though maybe that particular example maybe comes from Evans describing a related language.) You can get that in English too: "The police came, so we ran."

Yeah, I've thought about that ambiguity before, it's a bit amusing. In a sentence like "I hired him", said with perfective aspect (as in, "I interviewed him and quickly made my decision: I hired him"), you could be focusing on the fact you moved the guy from a state of "jobless" to "employed" (focusing on the beginning, as you say), but in another context, you could use "I hired him" and be focusing on the entire time he worked for you as a single event, from the time he came in to the time he stopped working for you ("I hired him for a one-year project one time, and I found he was pretty good").

[Richard W]

I think it's best to say that the English simple present is protoypically habitual. That's easiest to see with sentences like "I read linguistics" or "I live in Barcelona."

I think it's more useful to note that the English progressive tenses are 'marked', so a verb can have the 'perfective' form simply because making it progressive doesn't add anything to the meaning. This then covers the reluctance of the 'stative' verbs to take a progressive, and eases the fact that whether 'to be good' uses the progressive depends on its meaning. There are a few idioms that require the progressive, and they mess up the test for an English verb being stative.

Thus, if one wants to think of the 'simple' forms in English as 'perfective', defining the 'perfective' as 'not imperfective' makes very good sense. Note also that different languages use the imperfective for different meanings.

[bradrn]

One way to look at it, which is probably inaccurate, but serviceable:

Think of it as telling or writing a story.
If what you're doing is description of background events, use the imperfective. For the main action use the perfective.

I’ve been (very slowly) reading through Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics & Pragmatics, in the hope that it might help me understand this stuff, and that’s pretty much what it’s said so far. (Alternatively: perfective is used for sequential events, imperfective is used with events which are not sequenced.) But that’s no help if e.g. I’m writing something in the Conlang Fluency Thread and I want to know whether to translate it using the perfective or the imperfective.

If you have a few examples of problematic sentences, maybe we could try figuring out aspects for these?

Good idea! Here’s a few from the Conlang Fluency Thread which I was struggling with:

(Context: Qwynegold suggested I get rid of ⟨q⟩ in an orthography.)
I’m not getting rid of ‘q’.

(Context: Imralu got a new plant.)
May we see it?

(Context: Imralu proposed making a new translation challenge.)
I want one too!

(It’s worth noting that the conlang I translated those into has imperfective rather than perfective as the unmarked aspect. I’m not entirely sure exactly how this will affect the aspect assignments, though I’m certain it will.)

In fact, boundedness I would say is the number one characteristic of perfective. Bounded and unbounded might almost be better terms than perfective and imperfective. Perfective/bounded means the event in question is conceptualized as having a beginning, middle and end – i.e. bounded in time, a whole event. Imperfective/unbounded means you're not thinking of it that way. You're thinking of it as a) part of an event, something ongoing, most likely a part of the middle of the event, perhaps while something else was happening; b) as a state, a description of a general truth/state; or c) as something habitual, something that happens again and again. With the habitual sense, it's really a sequence of perfective events, but the focus isn't on them as bounded events but the fact that it keeps happening, almost like a segmented stative, so again, a description of a general truth/state.

I actually really like this way of looking at it! I’m not too sure about unbounded=imperfective, but bounded=perfective does make sense to me.

(nerdy sidenote: it has been aerially borrowed into Icelandic in the last 20 or so years)

Do you mean areally?

And more generally, how do aspectual systems work in the present? (I’m already aware of tripartite present/past imperfective/past perfective systems, but I believe Dahl (1985) implies that those are rather rare outside Europe.)

I think aspect in the present mostly shows up as habitual (I do exercise every day) vs. present state (I am angry, I feel angry) vs. present ongoing action (I'm working on it). Maybe also a resultative if you're willing to count that as present-tense (my dreams are (now) ruined, the project is done, my grandma is gone) --some languages make more use of this than English (Spanish and está + past participle).

Thanks! That really helps.

Some languages don't have any aspect distinctions in the present tense to speak of. I'd count French and the neutral-high register of Standard Arabic in there.

As I said, I thought this was reasonably common in Europe. Is this incorrect?

I'd like to mention, too, that the perfect often doesn't exist in contrast to the perfective, but exists in a different axis, or its uses are a subset of the perfective. Some languages will basically arguably contrast them with somewhat dedicated different patterns, but it doesn't have to be the case. The perfect in Mandarin is constructed with a verb marked with the perfective verb particle plus the sentence-final particle of change-of-state (V了...了, [verb]-le ... le, homophones/homographs).

Yes indeed — this is exactly why I don’t particularly like thinking of the perfect as an aspect.

And that's probably fine. The perfect is often a mixed bag of different uses anyway. It's more of a term of convenience because many languages do have a particular construction that means something around "I have done it, or have been doing it, for some time", but how that gets used in a given language varies a lot. The perfect is often used to express the experiential (having had an experience with sth before) in English and Spanish, but it isn't in French which arguably doesn't have a perfect construction in the first place (the "compound past", typically a past perfective, plus an adverbial handle the experiential: je l'ai (déjà) fait avant with 'before' and 'already'), nor Mandarin either (which has a dedicated morpheme for experientials instead: the verbal particle 過 -guo).

I find this pretty interesting — I had thought that the experiential is always one of the core meanings of the perfect across all languages.

In real-world past-tense contexts, 'to be' is probably in the imperfective more often than not, but in the perfective it expresses that whatever was something at the time stopped being so.

How do you come to this conclusion? In English at least, I use perfective to be far more than imperfective is being. (Maybe it’s different in Spanish.)

It's just a vague impression on how often I see era vs. fue in Spanish. The distinction in Spanish corresponds somewhat well to one of imperfective vs. perfective aspect. I should've emphasized my use of 'probably'. (It's not exact though. Given enough context, like a funeral, you could say era un alma tan preciosa 'she was such a beautiful soul!' with perfective aspect, focusing on the fact the man's life ended. The use of era would be basically just respectful, as if you were supposedly talking of the course of his life not caring whether it's ended. Fue would sound a bit distant and rude IMO.)

I really think it's a mistake to think of was as "perfective" and was being as "imperfective". As I mentioned above in my first post, English treats a number of highly stative verbs like "to be/have/want/love/hate" differently from other verbs in the past tense, highly limiting the the "was" + ing-participle construction. "Perfective" and "imperfective" are supposed to be semantic concepts that can be applied regardless of what languages actually do morphosyntactically.

If I shouldn’t think of was as "perfective" and was being as "imperfective", then how else am I supposed to think about those?

It might be helpful to seek out a copy of Aspect by Comrie.

I’ve already read it. It didn’t help very much.

A bit surprising. The book is entitled "Aspect" but most of what Comrie does is talk about imperfective vs. perfective ad nauseam (I'm only kidding, except not really!). Maybe you could provide us with an example of what kind of thing you struggle with? Maybe their generalities and ours are not concrete enough, and what you need is a discussion of examples. A lot of the time you can use either aspect, they just mean different things.

I can’t really remember what my problem with it was… I read it several months ago. I do remember that one of my problems with it was that it talks a lot about European languages, but barely mentions non-European languages. But you’re right that having some concrete examples would help me a lot — see my reply to Ars Lande above.

I think it's best to say that the English simple present is protoypically habitual. That's easiest to see with sentences like "I read linguistics" or "I live in Barcelona."

I think it's more useful to note that the English progressive tenses are 'marked', so a verb can have the 'perfective' form simply because making it progressive doesn't add anything to the meaning. This then covers the reluctance of the 'stative' verbs to take a progressive, and eases the fact that whether 'to be good' uses the progressive depends on its meaning. There are a few idioms that require the progressive, and they mess up the test for an English verb being stative.

Thus, if one wants to think of the 'simple' forms in English as 'perfective', defining the 'perfective' as 'not imperfective' makes very good sense. Note also that different languages use the imperfective for different meanings.

Does this mean that, in a language where perfective is marked (like my conlang), stative verbs will usually get the imperfective rather than the perfective?

[zompist]

I think it's best to say that the English simple present is protoypically habitual. That's easiest to see with sentences like "I read linguistics" or "I live in Barcelona."

I think it's more useful to note that the English progressive tenses are 'marked', so a verb can have the 'perfective' form simply because making it progressive doesn't add anything to the meaning. This then covers the reluctance of the 'stative' verbs to take a progressive, and eases the fact that whether 'to be good' uses the progressive depends on its meaning. There are a few idioms that require the progressive, and they mess up the test for an English verb being stative.

You're quite right about the importance of markedness. And languages can handle this differently: in English and French, the imperfective is marked; in Russian, the perfective is marked.

Thus, if one wants to think of the 'simple' forms in English as 'perfective', defining the 'perfective' as 'not imperfective' makes very good sense. Note also that different languages use the imperfective for different meanings.

Well, in theory they shouldn't; they're supposed to be inter-linguistic semantic descriptors.

There's two big sources of confusion. One is that linguists refined the terms relatively recently, and older sources name things using older meanings. The other is that any given paradigm will have several meanings, so the morphology and semantics get out of whack.

I wish we could (say) mark the morphological uses with an _m or something, so it's clear when we're using them to refer to a set of lexical forms rather than an aspect. Then we could say that e.g. "the French imperfect_m can be used as an irrealis in questions: Si on allait?"

[Richard W]

I wish we could (say) mark the morphological uses with an _m or something, so it's clear when we're using them to refer to a set of lexical forms rather than an aspect. Then we could say that e.g. "the French imperfect_m can be used as an irrealis in questions: Si on allait?"

But when it comes to how a language works, the usage of set of lexical forms is more relevant than how linguists divide things up. This isn't entirely circular, as in a healthy language there's a bunch of learners trying to infer how the language works.

[Kuchigakatai]

Some languages don't have any aspect distinctions in the present tense to speak of. I'd count French and the neutral-high register of Standard Arabic in there.

As I said, I thought this was reasonably common in Europe. Is this incorrect?

I have no idea. English often makes it mandatory to use the present progressive_m, and in Spanish that I speak, this is also often the case with the progressive_m construction (present estoy + gerund), even if using the simple present_m would also be a valid, though less common, option. I am well aware that much of Spanish wasn't like this until some pretty recent century.

If I shouldn’t think of was as "perfective" and was being as "imperfective", then how else am I supposed to think about those?

You guide yourself by the meaning. These narrow definitions of the semantic concepts of perfective vs. imperfective are supposed to work regardless of what the morphosyntax actually shows up with. Do they produce grey areas? Yeah, they should do so some of the time, also producing grey answers...

I think it's more useful to note that the English progressive tenses are 'marked', so a verb can have the 'perfective' form simply because making it progressive doesn't add anything to the meaning. This then covers the reluctance of the 'stative' verbs to take a progressive, and eases the fact that whether 'to be good' uses the progressive depends on its meaning. There are a few idioms that require the progressive, and they mess up the test for an English verb being stative.

Thus, if one wants to think of the 'simple' forms in English as 'perfective', defining the 'perfective' as 'not imperfective' makes very good sense. Note also that different languages use the imperfective for different meanings.

That's a nice thing to point out, that the progressive tenses_m are marked with longer morphosyntax, and saying the statives simply don't pointlessly use it is a nice way to explain what I was talking about "to be/have/want/love/etc.". Saying that different languages "use the imperfective for different meanings" is odd though: specific languages' traditions generally use the terms "imperfect_m/perfect_m" instead, maybe those are what you meant? Imperfective/perfective are mostly used in general linguistics, in their pure semantic sense. (Chinese languages are one of the few language groups where "perfective_(m)" is a normal term...)

Does this mean that, in a language where perfective is marked (like my conlang), stative verbs will usually get the imperfective rather than the perfective?

I'd say yes, using "imperfective_m" as the name of a word form (or syntactic construction).

EDIT:

But when it comes to how a language works, the usage of set of lexical forms is more relevant than how linguists divide things up. This isn't entirely circular, as in a healthy language there's a bunch of learners trying to infer how the language works.

That is very much true too. Also true of conlangers. In the end the peculiarities of how a natlang or conlang do the morphosyntax matter more. The divisions of linguists are mostly useful to be able to get ideas across between languages' unique traditions.

[zompist]

I wish we could (say) mark the morphological uses with an _m or something, so it's clear when we're using them to refer to a set of lexical forms rather than an aspect. Then we could say that e.g. "the French imperfect_m can be used as an irrealis in questions: Si on allait?"

But when it comes to how a language works, the usage of set of lexical forms is more relevant than how linguists divide things up. This isn't entirely circular, as in a healthy language there's a bunch of learners trying to infer how the language works.

If you're studying a language, you can of course use the usual terms... if they exist. But that covers, what, a few dozen languages?

Probably "perfect/imperfect" should have been left to the grammarians, and new terms invented to describe the ideal aspects. This is how alignment was handled... imagine trying to explaining ergativity if we had to use "nominative" to mean both "nominative case" and "semantic agent".

[Ares Land]

Good idea! Here’s a few from the Conlang Fluency Thread which I was struggling with:

(Context: Qwynegold suggested I get rid of ⟨q⟩ in an orthography.)
I’m not getting rid of ‘q’.

This one, I believe, is perfective, despite the fact that English uses the present progressive.
This about getting or not getting rid of a letter, the actual process is irrelevant.

I think English uses the progressive because of semantic drift, but I'm not quite sure of my theory...
I will (not) do something (future) > I will (not) do something soon > I'm (not) doing it right now.

(Context: Imralu got a new plant.)
May we see it?

(Context: Imralu proposed making a new translation challenge.)
I want one too!

The difficulty with these two is that they're using modals, which don't really fit the action/description metaphor. I'd say the first one is perfective (There's nothing relevant there with the process or the ongoing state of being allowed to see sth, or with the ongoing state of seeing the plant).
You could make a case for using either a perfective or imperfective with the second one: maybe you want to stress that you've been wanting a TC for quite some time (ie, an ongoing state of wanting something > want-IPFV).