Abstract
English offers a consistent, obligatory choice of viewpoints in all tenses. The perfective viewpoint is available for all situation types and is therefore the dominant viewpoint in the language. The value of the perfective varies with situation type. The perfective presents events as closed and states as open, accordanted with each. The progressive is the main imperfective viewpoint; it is available neutrally only for nonstative sentences. There is also a limited resultative imperfective, which appears with verb constellations of the position and location classes.1
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Smith, C.S. (1997). The Aspectual System of English. In: The Parameter of Aspect. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5606-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5606-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-4659-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-5606-6
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