Grammatical marking of how an event unfolds — whether it is ongoing, completed, repeated or just beginning.
In precise terms
A category concerning the internal temporal constituency of a situation, independent of its location in time. Common oppositions include perfective versus imperfective, and progressive versus habitual.
An example
Я читал книгу. / Я прочитал книгу.
I was reading the book. / I read the book (finished it).
What is going on here
Both Russian sentences are past tense. The difference is aspect: the imperfective 'читал' presents the reading as ongoing or unbounded, the perfective 'прочитал' as a completed whole. Russian requires the speaker to choose on every past-tense verb.
Why this matters when you are learning a language
Aspect is the category English speakers most often fail to notice, because English marks it less obligatorily than tense. In Slavic languages it is not optional, and choosing wrongly is a grammatical error rather than a stylistic one.
Across languages
Slavic languages pair almost every verb into perfective and imperfective partners. Mandarin marks aspect with particles such as 了 and 着 while marking no tense. Spanish splits its past into preterite and imperfect, which is an aspectual distinction inside a tense.
Related terms
- TenseBeginner — Grammatical marking that locates an event in time — past, present or future.
- VerbBeginner — A word for an action, event or state — what is happening.
- Grammatical moodIntermediate — Verb marking showing whether something is stated as fact, wished for, commanded or hypothetical.
- ReduplicationAdvanced — A word-building pattern that copies all or part of a form to express a grammatical or lexical contrast.
Where to go next
- Language guides — See grammatical and lexical categories used in context.
- Terminology quiz — Test the terms on this page.