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Standard Japanese uses the same grammar form to form the progressive and the continuous aspect, specifically by using the -te iru form of a verb. Depending on the transitivity of the verb, they are interpreted as either progressive or continuous. For example: Intransitive: ペンが鞄に入っている。 Pen ga kaban ni haitte iru.
Sometimes, English has a lexical distinction where other languages may use the distinction in grammatical aspect. For example, the English verbs "to know" (the state of knowing) and "to find out" (knowing viewed as a "completed action") correspond to the imperfect and perfect forms of the equivalent verbs in French and Spanish, savoir and saber ...
Examples of nonfinite constructions marked for the various aspects are given below. Bare infinitive: You should have left earlier. (perfect infinitive; for similar constructions and their meanings see English modal verbs) She might be revising. (progressive; refers to an ongoing action at this moment) He must have been working hard. (perfect ...
For more examples of the above types of construction, see Uses of English verb forms § Perfect and progressive non-finite constructions. Perfect infinitives are also found in other European languages that have perfect forms with auxiliaries similarly to English. For example, avoir mangé means "(to) have eaten" in French.
A regular English verb has only one principal part, from which all the forms of the verb can be derived.This is the base form or dictionary form.For example, from the base form exist, all the inflected forms of the verb (exist, exists, existed, existing) can be predictably derived.
The perfect form is much rarer than in English. The non-past perfect form is a true perfect aspect as in English. In addition, all the basic forms (past and non-past, imperfective and perfective) can be combined with a particle indicating future tense/conditional mood.
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English is an example of a language with no general imperfective. The English progressive is used to describe ongoing events, but can still be used in past tense, such as "The rain was beating down". Habitual situations do not have their own verb form (in most dialects), but the construction "used to" conveys past habitual action, as in I used ...