In the few examples in which the
perfective aspect is used, it occurs with discrete or dense continuous verbs, never with compact continuous verbs or with the progressive aspect.
For example, narratives of all kinds are typically formulated in past tense,
perfective aspect, and realis modality, whereas expository, argumentative, or descriptive texts rely mainly on the timeless present, generic aspect, and irrealis modality (Longacre 1996, Ragnarsdottir et al.
Events reported in the imperfective aspect are described as ongoing more frequently than events reported in the
perfective aspect (Madden & Zwaan, 2003).
Ergative Case is assigned to the agent subjects of transitive verbs in past tense or
perfective aspect. Consider the following example:
This form, which shows up in language as the contrast of progressive and
perfective aspect, lets us think change or movement.
With nauciti, the prefix encodes the entirety of the situation; that is, the situation viewed inside its endpoints (which is the core meaning of the
perfective aspect).
Dahl applies these criteria to both telic and atelic verbs in all five moods of the present, aorist, and perfect stems (indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, and injunctive) as well as to their participles and concludes that the present system possesses neutral aspect, the aorist
perfective aspect, and the perfect anterior aspect.
In Awa Pit (17) declaratives can make a distinction between imperfective and
perfective aspect (17a vs.
When it combines with
perfective aspect the inherently stative verb dyum provides a shade of the meaning that is typically associated with grammatical aspectual category of perfective.
According to Comrie (1976), Dowty (1979), and Klein (1994), among others, the
perfective aspect in (lb) entails that the event of drawing a flower is complete; on the other hand, the imperfective aspect in (la) remains neutral about the completion of the event, which Wagner (2002: 122) terms "a lack of entailment".
An aspectual future based on
perfective aspect markers could not develop in English.
Our evidence at this stage is scanty and, although results point in the direction just indicated, unclonclusive since the verb caure [fall] is also used at the time in the present tense to express that he does not want something to fall down, which seems to indicate that it is not exclusively linked to a
perfective aspect. Cortes and Vila (1991), in a study of a monolingual Catalan child and two bilingual Spanish/Catalan ones, acknowledge the same initial tendency to associate activity verbs with imperfective or progressive forms and achievement or accomplishment verbs with perfective tenses in their subjects.