aspect

Definition:

The verb form that adds time meanings to those expressed by tense. The two aspects in English are perfect and progressive.

Etymology:

From the Latin, "how [something] looks"

Examples and Observations:

• Perfect Aspect, Present Tense:
  "History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created."
  (William Morris)



• Perfect Aspect, Past Tense:
  "At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice."
  (Maya Angelou)



• Progressive Aspect, Present Tense:
  "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
  (Bill Cosby)



• Progressive Aspect, Past Tense:
  "I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything."
  (Steven Wright)



• "The perfect aspect most often describes events or states taking place during a preceding time. The progressive aspect describes an event or state of affairs in progress or continuing. Perfect and progressive aspect can be combined with either present or past tense. . . .
  
  "Verb phrases can be marked for both aspects (perfect and progressive) at the same time:
  • present perfect progressive:
    God knows how long I've been doing it. Have I been talking out loud?
  • past perfect progressive:
    He had been keeping it in a safety deposit box at the Bank of America.
    For months she had been waiting for that particular corner location.
  The perfect progressive aspect is rare, occurring usually in the past tense in fiction. It combines the meaning of the perfect and the progressive, referring to a past situation or activity that was in progress for a period of time."
  ((Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, and Geoffrey Leech, Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Longman, 2002)