Talk:Lexical aspect

Cleanup needed
The content of this article is remarkably out of date and does not reflect the contemporary understanding of aktionsart. Vendler classified verbal phrases, but it is common knowledge that this keeps on being misunderstood. Neither the article nor the further reading addresses the well known aktionsart scheme X---, that is, initio-transformatives. (I’d argue that this class has to be divided into at least three further classes, but that’s only becoming consensus now.) The level on which aktionsart exists and affects grammatical meaning as presented in this article would represent a mono-stratal theory of aspectuality. While such theories fail to explain the available data, it cannot be denied that they still exist, but a dual concept of aspectuality should be the prevailing opinion nowadays. Finally, this article confuses lexical properties of verbs and aktional phrasal aktionsart and fails to clarify the additional concept of morphological aktionsart. (As reference for my critique, take Johanson 2000: Viewpoint markers … and Sasse 2001: Recent activity …) A clean-up would really be in its place. G Purevdorj (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that some cleanup is needed. POV, however, is not the right tag; the article is out-of-date, not non-neutral.  Also, a lot of the things you have mentioned are deep theoretical issues that don't even need to be included in the article, as this article is just meant to be an introduction for a lay reader who doesn't really know anything about aspect.  (There's no point writing an article that caters to experts syntax/semantics/event-structure experts, since those people would never be using a Wikipedia article to find information anyway). &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 19:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe I could do this sometime, but your new tag on Converb addresses the second problem that would be associated with doing so. The article is well-referenced, as I didn’t quote the Mongolian sentence from some scientific literature, but just took it from some internet text and used it to illustrate some points that in principle could be attributed to most of Mongolistic, Turkologic and Tungusologic philology and linguistics. But I’m not aware of any article that would compare the very problematic view of Haspelmath 1995 and König 1995 that has become quite influential with the view that emerged from these disciplines. It would be easy enough to present examples quoted from scientific literature, but it would be far less straightforward and easy to comprehend. If I would have to address aktionsart, taking one of the more advanced models and presenting it to the reader would be the easiest approach, but extremely one-sided. The next idea would be a discussion of some of the available literature, addressing such problems as I mentioned and beyond. You’re probably right that this isn’t the way to go either. So how to approach this matter? G Purevdorj (talk) 20:40, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

As a "lay" reader I found the article both informative and well written —Estudiarme 00:12, 16 November 2008 (PST)

We also need to know the etymology of "aktionsart" & "aktionsarten".70.73.145.207 (talk) 10:29, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I checked Wiktionary for "aktionsart" to find the etymology, and found no entry. When a person familiar with the subject finds and includes the etymology here, please consider adding an entry in Wiktionary. Sorry I can't do it myself, but this page makes my eyes cross. :) --Geekdiva (talk) 19:27, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not that you couldn't find an etymology of "Aktionsart" in the literature (though I have none at hand), but the word is quite transparent as it is, isn't it? Die Art einer Aktion, you could also say die Sorte einer Handlung, in English kind of action, that is, you have to differentiate between different kinds of action. Any native of German (or indeed anyone with the basics of that language) should be able to get this meaning. Notably, the word isn't limited to time stucture proper, though some linguists (those who insist to keep on using that word, except Johanson who uses it as a category merely for non-temporal aktionsart) choose to use it that way. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:11, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Why the "factual accuracy disputed" tag should remain in place
If we make up verb classes, it must be possible for foresee ambiguities that will appear in certain syntactic environments. That's certainly not the case with Vendler, and that is not even the case for a fairly elaborate system of aktionsart classes (that might contain the 8 or 9 classes that circulate in literature but have not yet been integrated into one system). Then, are we talking about verbs or about events? I'm all for events, eg Johanson (2000): Viewpoint markers..., but this would have to be distinguished more properly. If we're indeed talking about events (like for someone to draw a circle), this is not "lexical" anymore, so even the article title goes amiss. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * PS: It would be fairly easy to write a factual accurate article that points out the undisputed mistakes in some older literature, but a lexicon article should give an overview over this area of research (history of aspect and aktionsart, different approaches within formal semantics, bidimensional theories of aspectuality, aktionsart and real word classes), and THAT is difficult. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it, you objection is that Vendler and Comrie are incorrect. This is not the business of wikipedia. Wikipedia merely reports what is said in reliable sources. Vendler and Comrie are the standard references for aktionsart. The question is whether wp's representation of the work of Vendler and Comrie is incorrect. As I see it, this is not the case. Therefore, there is no need for the tag. If you want to argue that Vendler and Comrie are wrong, wikipedia is the wrong place for that; there are specialised journals for that kind of research. Jasy jatere (talk) 14:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm with Jasy jatere on this one. Lexical aspect is just a theory, albeit a widely used one; if this article misrepresents the theory, then we can tag it with .  If the only problem is that the theory itself is disputed, then there's no need for a tag.  Maybe it would help if the intro made it clearer that lexical aspect is something proposed by these people, and necessarily a real thing (although, then again, you could say that about just about everything in linguistics&mdash;even the reality of "nouns" and "verbs" is disputed). r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 14:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * 1. While Comrie 1976 is unfortunately still used as a standard reference work, it is hopelessly out of date and not part of ongoing discussions about the nature of aspect. Would you quote from a book from 1850 on race and say, well, there is some later research on this topic as well, but we must start somewhere? Not likely. So up-to-date content does matter. 2. I don't have Vendler at hand, but while his work is often perceived as pertaining to lexical aspect, it is better unterstood as addressing sentence types. He didn't classify "verbs", and he (as far as I can remember) didn't say so. Of course, many subsequent researchers assumed that he classified verbs. To explain this, the reception of Vendler in linguistic circles would have to be detailed upon. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And I want to say that I'm a bit irritated about referring me to original research. The work of researchers like Johanson, Behrens, even Krifka would for example be suitable to back up what I said. It should not be surprising that I'm not the only one who thinks that 30 to 50 years of research matter. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the theory itself is doubtful, but there must be (and usually is) a device for reclassifying verbs, verbal phrases and finally sentences in any theory of aspectuality, and excluding this by simply mixing up verbs and verbal phrases and verbal phrases with arguments or spatial limitations misrepresents what is known about lexical aspect today. I originally had tagged this article as disputed, but this wouldn't serve my second point well, and I couldn't find a template for "out of date". G Purevdorj (talk) 15:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Can we agree on the statement that the views of Comrie and Vendler are correctly represented (even if now superseded)? Views by other researchers should of course be added. Furthermore, it seems to be that we agree that the current template is not the right one. It should be possible to create a template {{out-of-date} }, or ask for it to be created at a relevant place. This is not a reason to mis-tag this article. I would support such a tag on the current article Jasy jatere (talk) 16:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If the text in the article was changed to "Zeno Vendler (1957) classified verbs OR PREDICATIONS" (which is not the most precise way to put it - but the precise way would be much more complicated), I would agree to drop the current tag and use an out-of-date tag. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, Vendler's four classifications are classifications of "events" or VPs...it just so happens that the examples of "states" are usually single words and the examples of "accomplishments" are verb-object phrases, but that's not really necessary to the definition (and, in fact, you can manipulate the aspectual nature of the event by adding or changing the object or some adjuncts, or with be + ing, etc.). So we can probably clear up most of that issue by, as you suggested, clarifying the wording in the article to say that lexical aspect is a feature of events or of verb phrases, rather than just of verbs. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 17:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * excuse my momentary ignorance, but was the whole thing not about "state-of-affairs"? Thus 'Vendler classified states-of-affairs into four blabbla'. IIRC Van Valin uses that term, based on Vendler, but I would have to check thatJasy jatere (talk) 19:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Semelfactives
It seems to me that the description of semelfactives as 'atelic' is mistaken. Atelic refers to eventualities which could in principle continue indefinitely. Semelfactive, from the Latin semel factus 'done once', refers to single actions conceived as instantly completed which therefore cannot continue indefinitely since they are started and completed in the same action. Might I suggest that the confusion here is from the fact that most semelfactive verbs, in English at least, such as 'blink', 'knock', 'flash' and so on, also have an iterative sense, ie not just a single action but the single action repeated again and again in a way which could in principle continue indefinitely. In other words a single flash is telic since it can be completed, whereas flashing on and off is atelic since it is ongoing but this is not a semelfactive sense of the word. Would someone please clear this up; I didn't want to interfere with the table. Thanks.81.141.162.168 (talk) 19:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comrie 1976: 44-48 does not seem to discuss any semelfactives in his section on telicity, and he doesn't say anything on telicity in his section on duration. If I understand this correctly, Comrie doesn't endeavour to systematize aktionsart in this fashion. The distinction made in the table is that of Smith, and she does claim that semelfactives are atelic. That might well be wrong, but it is the weakness of this article that it only contains literature of yore. (By the way, Johanson might also doubt that achievements are telic (instead of boundary-oriented).) G Purevdorj (talk) 20:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Semelfactive verbs can indicate either a single action (telic) or repeated actions (atelic). You may say that the verb 'to blink' can be used as a verb of Accomplishment (a single action, telic) or of Activity (repeated actions, atelic). However, since the progressive form "She is blinking." always means that "She blinks repeatedly." instead of "She is in the process of a blink.", I favor the establishment of the category Semelfactive. In my opinion, telicity is not relevent to Semelfactive.TokioSkytree (talk) 09:10, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Article definitely falls short
Someone said that this article was very informative. Having looked at this article, the article on grammatical aspect, telicity, etc. I must say that I came away rather confused. One problem is the concentration on English in some articles, which is fine if you want to understand aspect in English, but not fine if you want a wider perspective. The different classifications used, the distinction between lexical and grammatical aspect, etc., all left me in a state of confusion. The article on grammatical aspect lists a whole slew of aspects -- durative, protractive, punctual, progressive, etc. etc. etc, while this article lists only semelfactive, achievement, accomplishment, and activity. Couldn't a more explanatory and comprehensive approach be adopted so that readers can at least come away with something more than a welter of shifting categories?

Bathrobe (talk) 06:43, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The situation is weird. Punctual (while an inferior terminology) is almost the same as achievement, while the inclusion of durativity and protractivity into aspectuality proper belongs to the history of linguistics, but is mere misinformation as far as the current stage of research is concerned. I would immediately be able to present my favourite theory here and relate some other theories to it as inferior, but that is not what a lexicon is about. For writing a lexicon article one not only needs to know all of the research history, but needs to have the respective literature at hand. (There are some histories of aspect such as Binnick 1990, but they stop short of getting to the heart of the matter, so I wouldn't rely on them.) That is VERY much work, which can also be done from Europe or maybe the US. So I fear just advising you about how you should understand aspectuality (which I could easily do) is not something that you may ask from Wikipedia at the time being. (I for my part am only hanging on to see that this article doesn't get worse than it already is.) G Purevdorj (talk) 08:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I second Bathrobe's motion. This, like many other articles in linguistics, is so confusing as to be useless. What I expect from an encyclopedia is that every article have a dictionary definition of its headword in the first paragraph (restricted to the sense used in the article). The historical context might follow in the same or next paragraph. This article begins with a definition, which is not too clear. I would expect an article such as this to continue with a list of the different lexical aspects, each defined fairly precisely, with explanations and examples. Instead, we only have a list of how pairs of aspects differ, which could be useful, but should follow the definitions and examples; the way it is written now is inherently confusing. The next-to-last section could be a brief history of the idea – this seems to be important to some of the writers on this talk page. The last section should be a critique presenting very briefly claims by other linguists that the theories of lexical aspect and aktionsart are inadequate, or out of date, or hooey, or whatever; this last section should be referred to in the first or second paragraph (by way of warning the reader). — Solo Owl (talk) 13:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I have not claimed that they are out of date (nor do other people claim that in a very strong fashion in writing), but that the theories currently presented in this article are out of date. And you will not get any nice clear-cut definitions if you try to describe all of these, though one might summarize something. G Purevdorj (talk) 02:32, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Only five lexical aspects
I was rather surprised to find that there are exactly five. I was disappointed with their names – the common English words state, accomplishment, achievement, and activity seem to be given technical meanings here, but precise definitions are not given. (It unfortunate that the originators of the theory chose these names – they will certainly confuse people – in everyday use achievement and accomplishment are synonyms!) And I learn from the talk page that the meaning of semelfactive (good choice of name) is disputed (some say it is atelic, some say it should be telic, or am I confusing things?). If there are truly five lexical aspects, then one might expect to see at least fifteen grammatical aspects occuring in different languages (no language can have all fifteen). A table of correspondences between lexical and grammatical aspects could be useful. — Solo Owl (talk) 13:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly five? Never. If we take a component theory, only three elements are needed to built up these five, and if we don't but still believe in a number of meaningful, distinct classes, it will be no less than six (while possilby not including "semelfactives"). Other approaches are doing away with the dichothomy between aspect and aktionsart or accepting a much larger set of classes. Among those who work with a true dichothomy, assuming a Wesensgleichheit between aspect and aktionsart is not so widespread. But this (in Breu's work) would result in the same number of aspect types and primitive aktionsart classes (allowing for complex classes as well). I am not aware of anybody who tried to account for aspect types by multiplying aktionsarten. (Granted, you can look at what happens if you combine a given aspect with a given aktionsart, but the multiplying is only inherent in the heuristics, not in the resulting theory. G Purevdorj (talk) 02:27, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

aktionsart
The term 'Aktion' is unfortunate, because it can be quite specific, e.g. its meaning of 'shop sale'. 'Handlung' is not specific and refers only to do doing or acting.

'For example, eat an apple differs from sit in that there is a natural endpoint or conclusion to eating an apple.' The 'natural endpoint' to sitting is not sitting, a change of position, such as standing or lying.

In some languages, such as Classical Greek, the tense known as the Imperfect can be inchoative or iterative, e.g Xenophon of Ephesus Book 5, 5 the wife of Polyidos 'ebouleueto', which means not that she 'took' counsel' but rather 'started to take counsel'. This has little or nothing to do with 'lexical' meaning but has a lot to do with how something is done.Pamour (talk) 22:55, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Disputed to Update
As can be seen in the sections above, editors added a Disputed template in 2008, based on the belief that the sources cited do not give a sufficient understanding of the semantics of human language. I have removed that template and replaced it with an Update template. It appears to me that this accurately summarizes the sources that is cites; however, more work has been done since those pieces appeared. The most recent work cited is from 2004, and that appears to be cited mainly for its explanation of Vendler (1957). Expanding the article by describing more recent secondary or tertiary sources will, I think, improve the explanation both of the current literature in linguistics and philosophy of language, and of human language as such. Cnilep (talk) 00:56, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

German and French versions of this article are good sources
Both give more detail about the many different categories that linguists have used in analyzing Aktionsart. They also have many more examples from multiple languages. In addition, there are a number of diagrams that are often given in linguistics texts about Aktionsart and aspect. Some offer a tree structure to help suggest the relationships among the different classes of verbs, while others attempt to indicate how a verb relates to time, including whether it starts gradually or punctually, whether it continues, and the way the actions or processes end. These should be taken into account for updating this article. Nlight2 (talk) 12:34, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

“Run” can be modified by “in an hour”
If it’s used in the imperative, “in an hour” modifies “run,” telling the listener when they should run. 2600:1004:B10F:FC88:84EF:2495:C0AE:2615 (talk) 04:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)