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‘Aspect’ (lit., ‘perspective’) refers to the way in which verbs, VPs, and sentences (‘predicates’) present the temporal course of a state of affairs (e.g., a state or an event). Major aspectual distinctions include dynamic development (e.g., run) vs. stative situation (e.g., be in the pub), inherent boundaries or no such boundaries (e.g., run vs. run a mile), change of state (run to the store introduces such a change while run a mile does not), or punctuality (punctual predicates can refer to extremely short states of affairs, e.g., flash but not build a house). Such aspectual classes are reflected in the structure of the semantic contributions of predicates. Aspect shows up in selection restrictions, e.g., the progressive cannot be combined with stative predicates (*I am being in the pub is unacceptable, but I am running is not), and durative adverbials (for five hours) are only compatible with unbounded predicates (run for five days but not die for five days is acceptable). Aspectual classes are also very important for the temporal ordering of the different states of affairs in a narration (bounded expressions move the time of the narration forward, unbounded ones do not, they offer background information). |
