Aspect

Aspect is a verbal feature indicating the temporal status of an event. It is commonly closely associated with tense and mood in natural languages—sometimes the term TAM "Tense-Aspect-Mood" is used to describe all three at once.

Aspect marking is used to differentiate actions seen as completed (perfect), actions seen as in progress (progressive), actions seen as beginning to happen (inceptive/inchoative), etc. (See Wikipedia:Aspect for a list of aspects.)

English tends to mark aspect analytically: ate, has eaten, was eating. (Some?) Slavic verbs have perfect stems and an imperfect stem, variously derived...

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