This category used to raise a lot of disputes among grammarians. This term came into Germanic languages from Slavonic ones where they distinguish the category of aspect represented by the opposition

Verbal categories.

1.The Category of aspect

This category used to raise a lot of disputes among grammarians. This term came into Germanic languages from Slavonic ones where they distinguish the category of aspect represented by the opposition of the interminative (несовершенный) and terminative (совершенный) aspects. According to the old definition the category of aspect expresses the way the action takes place or the aspects of the action. Old Russian grammarians used to distinguish a lot of aspects such as

- начинательный вид –побежать.

-завершительный вид, т.е. -прибежать

-одноразовый вид – подпрыгнуть

-ограничительный вид – послать погулять

- дуративный вид – спать, лежать, стоять.

-дистрибутивный вид – захаживать, почитывать

All this aspects are expressed by means of affixation. This affixes are treated by the majority of grammarians as derivational morphemes, word-building ones. And they have nothing to do, they said, with grammar. By the analogy of Russian language old British grammarians, George Curme, Henry Poutsma, Otto Gesperson, distinguish the following aspects in English:

- In the inchoative aspect (начинательный вид) expressed by such verbs as to begin, to start, to commence, to initiate;

- Durative aspect – (дуративный вид) – expressed by to continue, proceed, keep on doing smth, to be doing smth etc.;

- The terminative aspect – (терминативный) – expressed to cease, finish, end, terminate, graduate,;

- Momentary aspect – expressed by to glance, to jump, to give a shudder, to give a cry etc.

As we see both in Russian and in English they mentioned about the aspective meanings are mostly expressed lexically and by meanings of word-building affixes. But a grammatical category must be expressed by grammatical forms, that is by means of abstract synthetic and analytical morphemes. This was one of the reasons why the Swedish linguist Segued Agreel suggested separating semantic categories from grammatical ones. And he suggested calling all those meanings expressed by verbs and with the help of word-building affixes t he semantic category of the manner of action. Later on by the analogy of the Russian aspects that is совершенный и несовершенный виды, British grammarians made an attempt two aspects in English – the interminative, and terminative. This opposition was built by two classes of verbs, those of unlimitive and limitive ones. BUT the meanings of limitevens and unlimitiveness are included in the semantic structures of verbs, they are not expressed grammatically,-example – to live, spend, love, hate, have, etc.

Limitive verbs have a meaning of a boarderline beyond which the action can not be continued. – to come, break, fall – if we say – he came home late. The action expressed by the verb COME is finished as soon as the person approaches the house. This was one of the reasons why the german linguist Max Deutschbein suggested calling this category built up on the opposition of the classes of limitive and unlimitive verbs, the lexico-grammatical category of the aspective character of the verb.

Among Russian grammarian there is no a unanimous approach to the category of (совершенный и несовершенный вид). Melaslavsky, for one, considers that the category of aspect in Russian is not a grammatical one either, since the meanings of terminative and inteminative aspects are included in the semantic structures of verbs or they are expressed with the help of word-building affixes. Modern British and Russian grammarians distinguish two indisputable aspects in English – the indefinite aspect (the unmarked member of the opposition), and the continuous aspect (the marked member of the opposition) which is expressed analytically with the help of a discontinuous morpheme be+ing, but the aspective states of the indefinite form is not clearly expressed. According to professor Ivanova it is very difficult to find out whether the indefinite forms belong to aspect or tense forms. There are two more forms in the system of English verbs – the perfect and the perfect continuous forms. There are different approaches to them among grammarians:

- The perfect forms are aspect forms. This view point is supported by professor Voronzova, Zonanshine, Deutschbein. Voronzova calls this aspect the transmissive aspect (преемственный). Since they express the effects of actions which have taken place before the moment of speech or certain moments in the past and future. Smirnitzky, the famous soviet linguist, treated the perfect forms as neither tense, nor aspect forms. He called this category the category of time relation. But later on this term was changed into the category of time correlation. This view point is still supported by many grammarians in our country namely by Bloch but he calls it the category of retrospective coordination. According to him Smirnitzky underestimated the aspective nature of perfect forms. Old grammarians such as Henry Sweet, Otto Gesperson and many others used to treat the perfect forms as tense forms. H.Sweet included them into the class of definite tenses. The well-known and famous linguist Achmanova and her followers Alexandrova, Komova, treat the perfect forms as the forms of the category of taxes, that is the category which establishes the order of events within a certain period of time, that is the proceedings of actions to some other actions. Especially in sense the past perfect forms. Some grammarians Joose treat the perfect forms as the forms of the category of phase. But in the majority of modern British and American books perfect forms are treated as aspect forms, thus the generic category of aspect in English is represented by the opposition of four specific categories, those of the indefinite, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous ones. Thus the term aspect is applied in English to pure grammatical forms and is treated as a grammatical one, but the term aspectuality includes both the grammatical category of aspect, the lexico-grammatical category of the aspective character of the verb, which is build up by the classes of unlimitive and limitive verbs, and at last it includes the semantic category of the manner of action, which is represented by the lexico-semantic groupings of inchoative, durative, momentary, terminative etc. verbs. This system can be presented as a kind of a system called the functional-semantic field of aspectivity.

We can altogether deny that the perfect forms perform two functions in English. They express the category of aspect, showing the consequences and the results actions expressed by perfect forms. They also express the category of taxes showing that one of the actions in the past or the future proceeds another action. For example –taxes - he approached to the house where he had been brought up ten years before.

Aspective meaning – he told me he had divorced his wife and was homeless now.

Besides the aspect forms express one more category - the category of evidentuality, which divides the aspective forms into two opposed classes and forms, those of expressing indefinite actions, (expressed by the indefinite form), and those expressing definite actions (expressed by continuous, perfect and perfect continuous forms.)

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