Perfective aspect

English has neither a simple perfective nor imperfective aspect; see imperfective for some basic English equivalents of this distinction. When translating into English from a language that has these aspects, the translator sometimes uses separate English verbs. For example, in Spanish, the imperfective can be translated "I knew" vs. the perfective "I found out", "I was able to" vs. "I succeeded", "I wanted to" vs. "I tried to", "I did not want to" vs. "I refused". The Polish perfective aspect is translated into English as a simple tense and the imperfective as a continuous; for example the imperfective is translated into "I was watching", while the perfective is translated into "I watched". Such distinctions are often language-specific. == Marking ==

Languages may mark perfective aspect with morphology, syntactic construction, lexemes/particles, or other means. • Older Germanic languages: the aspect prefixes (in Old English), (in Old Saxon and Old High German), and (in Gothic) indicate perfective aspects of verbs. • Thai: the aspect marker , grammaticalized from the word for "ascend," indicates a certain type of underconstrained perfective aspect when it follows a main verb • Hindi: the perfective aspect is marked using the perfective aspect participle. The perfective participle is constructed as shown in the table below, the consonant () is added to the perfective suffix when the verb root ends in a vowel. ==Perfective vs. perfect==

The terms perfective and perfect should not be confused. A perfect tense (abbreviated ' or ') is a grammatical form used to describe a past event with present relevance, or a present state resulting from a past situation. For example, "I have put it on the table" implies both that I put the object on the table and that it is still there; "I have been to France" conveys that this is a part of the speaker's experience as of the spoken moment; and "I have lost my wallet" implies that this loss is troublesome at the present moment. A perfect tense does not necessarily have to be perfective in aspect. For example, "I have been waiting here for an hour" and "I have been going to that doctor all my life" are perfect but also imperfective in aspect. There are some languages, however, such as Modern Greek, in which the perfect tense is always perfective. == Examples ==

Hindustani Hindustani (aka Hindi-Urdu) has 3 grammatical aspects: Habitual, Perfective and Progressive. Each aspect is constructed from its participle and a number of auxiliary verbs can be used with the aspectual participles such as: (to be, to happen), (to stay, to remain), (to go), (to come), and (to do). These verbs themselves can be made into aspectual participles and can be used with the default auxiliary verb (to be), hence forming sub-aspects that combine the nuance of two aspects. The auxiliary (to stay) gives a nuance of continuity of the perfective state, (to go) is used to construct the passive voice (in its habitual subaspect) and also shows that the action is completed (in its perfective subaspect), (to do) gives the nuance that the perfective action is repeated habitually. : 1 The auxiliary (to go) can only be used with the perfective aspect participle if the verb is transitive, or intransitive but volitional. So, is not valid construction. (to die) is intransitive but it's a volitional action and hence is a valid construction. : Note: Most nuances generated by the auxiliaries are not uniquely expressed in English and hence many verbs above have the same translation in English but don't have the same nuances in Hindi-Urdu. Conjugating the auxiliary verbs which are in the infinitive form above into their aspectual forms using the auxiliary (to be) gives the following subaspectual forms of the perfective aspect in their infinitive form: ==See also==