HABITUALITY: PAST HABIT OR STATE
Progressiveness is considered here as a type of imperfectivity, or incompletion. Other types of imperfectivity include habituality and iterativity. Habituality is, as we have seen, expressed by both present and past tenses in English. Present tense uses are almost invariably imperfective, the only perfective uses being performatives (e.g. I promise not to be late) and the others classed as ‘instantaneous present’. Past habit or state is expressed by the lexical auxiliary used to + infinitive as in the following examples. There is a strong pragmatic implication that the state or event no longer holds:
He knew he used to speak too fast.
We used to see each other quite often.
There used to be trees all round this square.
Used to avoids the temporal indeterminacy of the past tense (e.g. visited = on one occasion or on many occasions) by making clear the habitual. Compare:
She visited us. (perfective or imperfective)
She used to visit us. (imperfective only)
Furthermore, although a time expression such as not any longer may be added, the implicit meaning of discontinued habit is so strong that an additional expression is unnecessary.
‘He’s the top tennis player,’ Westfield said, ‘the grand slammer. He’s played in all the big places.’
‘He used to. Doesn’t play anymore.’
Used to + infinitive is not to be confused with be used to + -ing ‘be accustomed to’ + -ing as in: He is not used to working late hours.
Iterativity is interpreted from the progressive with punctual verbs, and also from keep on/continue+ -ing (kept on shouting) and from the phrasal verb particle away (he hammered away). As regards perfectivity, ingressive aspect focuses on the initial point of a situation and egressive aspect on the end-point. These are not expressed by inflections in English, but by combinations such as (start to rain/raining) and phrasal verb particles (e.g. She came to, We ended up exhausted).
Summary of certain aspectual distinctions realized in English
in the lexico-grammar
Prospective: I am going to write a note
Immediate prospective: I am about to write a note
Ingressive: I started to write a note Progressive: I am/was writing a note Iterative: I kept writing notes
Habitual in the past: I used to write notes
Egressive: Finish writing the note
Retrospective, Recent Perfect: I have just written a note
Retrospective, Perfect: I have written a note.
