aspectmarked

Aspectmarked is a term used in linguistic typology to describe languages or constructions in which aspect is morphologically marked on the predicate, typically on the main verb or on an auxiliary. Aspect marks encode the internal temporal structure of an event—whether it is ongoing, completed, habitual, or iterated—distinct from tense, which locates an event in time. In a broad sense, aspectmarked forms signal how an event unfolds rather than when it occurs.

Realization of aspect marking can take many forms. It may involve infixes, prefixes, suffixes, or clitics on the verb, or periphrastic constructions with auxiliary verbs. It often interacts with tense and mood, and many languages organize aspect into pairs or triplets such as perfective and imperfective, or into more fine-grained distinctions like habitual or progressive. The exact realization is strongly language-internal; some languages fuse aspect into the main verb stem, while others rely on separate particles or auxiliary verbs.

Usage and scope: The term is used chiefly in typological description and is not universally standardized. It highlights languages in which aspect marking is a central feature of the verbal system, as opposed to languages where aspect is less overt or conveyed primarily through context. Examples commonly cited include Russian and other Slavic languages with robust aspect pairs, East Asian languages such as Chinese with aspectual particles, and various languages around the world that employ explicit aspect markers.

See also: aspect, tense, mood, verb morphology, grammatical category.