SITUATION TYPES AND THE
PROGRESSIVE ASPECT SUMMARY
1 Important aspectual contrasts include perfectivity (viewing the event as a whole) vs imperfectivity (viewing the event as incomplete). These distinctions remain indeterminate in English in the simple Past and Present tense forms. Perfectivity then must be interpreted from the whole clause.
2 The only grammaticalized aspectual contrasts in English are the Progressive vs non-progressive and the Perfect vs non-perfect. (The Perfect is not identical to perfectivity!)
3 Progressiveness is a type of imperfectivity which focuses on the continuous ness of the internal part of the event. Another type, that of past habituality, is expressed by the lexical auxiliary used to + inf.
4 Situations (and verbs) can be classed according to their inherent aspectual meaning as states (with no internal change: It’s hot), as punctual occurrences (the cable snapped), as durative occurrences without an end-point: we walked along (activities) and as durative with an end-point: we walked home (accomplishments).
5 The Progressive and Perfect aspects add their communicative perspectives to the inherent aspectual meaning of the verb. Other factors to be taken into account, in order to understand the aspectuality of a particular verbalized situation, are the single or multiple nature of the subject and object, and the presence of Adjuncts.
