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In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during the event ("I helped him").
In the indicative, there are five one-word forms conjugated for person and number: one for the present tense (which can indicate progressive or non-progressive aspect); one for the perfective aspect of the past; one for the imperfective aspect of the past; a form for the pluperfect aspect that is only used in formal writing; [19]: pp. 57–58 ...
Examples which combine both types of tense marking include the French passé composé, which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected past participle form of the main verb; and the Irish past tense, where the proclitic do (in various surface forms) appears in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the main verb.
The perfect tense or aspect (abbreviated PERF or PRF) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. An example of a perfect construction is I have made dinner.
The dialect uses several Tense-Aspect-Mood markers integrated into the predicate phrase, [67] including gon or gonna (future tense), done (completive aspect), be (habitual aspect, state of being), and been (durative aspect). These can function separately or in conjunction. [67]
For example, the meanings associated with the categories of tense, aspect and mood are often bound up in verb conjugation patterns that do not have separate grammatical elements corresponding to each of the three categories; see Tense–aspect–mood.
These distinctions lead to various forms related to tense and aspect. For example, a dynamic verb may be said to have a durative aspect if there is not a defined endpoint or a punctual aspect if there is a defined endpoint. Examples of dynamic verbs in English are 'to run', 'to hit', 'to intervene', 'to savour' and 'to go'.
Inflection is the process of adding inflectional morphemes that modify a verb's tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, or number or a noun's case, gender, or number, rarely affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding -s to the root dog to form dogs and adding -ed to wait to form waited.