The category of aspect

The category of aspect is a grammatical category showing the manner in which the action is either performed or represented. In English this category consists of two constituents, the common and the continuous aspects. They form a binary opposition, the unmarked member of the opposition (common aspect) being opposed to the marked member (continuous aspect): call - ------ + be calling. The categorical meaning of aspect indicates that the speaker wants to attract attention to the process/state described in the sentence itself. The strong member of the opposition is the continuous form, which presents an action as a process developing at a certain moment or a limited period of time: These flats are being built so fast that they are changing the profile of the city. The common aspect just names the action: Look at the way he walks. Marked synthetically (ending) and analytically (is)

Some linguists don’t find any aspective meaning in the common (indefinite) form and consider the continuous form to be one of the tense forms, which marks an action as simultaneous to some other action or time. Continuous – action to be unlimited, developing at a certain moment. Always, continuously – strong emotional colouring (Rose is always wanting Jim to retire).

As a rule the continuous form is not used with verbs, denoting abstract relations, such as belong, and those denoting sense perception or emotion, e.g. see, hear, hope, think, love. But there are numerous examples of their usage in the continuous form. In this case they change the meaning of the verb which comes to denote either an activity (I am thinking of him. – I think, you’re right) or the temporary character of the state. (You’re being silly!).

G.O. Curme (A Grammar of the English Language) distinguished 4 aspects: durative aspect, point-action aspects which he subdivided into ingressive and effective, terminative aspect and iterative aspect.

Durative aspect represents the action as continuing. He is eating. correspond to continuous!

Point-action aspects call attention, not to an act as a whole, but to only one point, either the beginning or the final point. The ingressive type is often expressed by begin, start, in connection with an infinitive or get, grow, fall, turn, become, run, set, take in connection with a predicate adjective, participle, noun or a prepositional phrase. He awoke early. He often gets sick.

Effective type of point-action aspect directs the attention to the final point of the activity or state. The two friends fell out. He knocked him out. Finish doing something!

Terminative aspect indicates an action as a whole. He handed me a book. I overlooked this item in my calculation.

Iterative aspect indicates an indefinitely prolonged succession. He pooh-poohs at everything. He threw his head back and haw-hawed.

In Russian 2 aspects – perfective (написал) and imperfective (closer to continuous) – писал