grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. For example, in English the difference between I swim and I am swimming is a difference of aspect.Aspect, as discussed here, is a formal property of a language. Some languages distinguish a large number of formal aspects (see the list below), while others distinguish none at all. Even languages that do not mark aspect formally, however, can convey such distinctions, if important, by the use of adverbs, phrases, serial verb constructions or other means.
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