Unit 7: aspects in English

aspect

This Unit will be hard to understand unless you have already worked through Unit 6 which is concerned (mostly) with the most critical tense forms.
In that unit, aspect was explained like this:
Aspect is a key concept in understanding English tenses because the language depends heavily on forms of the verb to signal how the speaker feels about the tense. We will use two of the most important aspects of English tense forms to exemplify what is meant:

I can, for example, say:
John thinks he is Napoleon
and am making a statement about a present condition.
However, I can also say:
Shush. John is thinking
and now I am signalling the fact that I am talking about an action in progress. That's why it is called the progressive aspect.
If I say:
John has arrived
then what I am saying is that although John's arrival is finished, the relevance of it to the present is clear to me and I want to communicate it. What English has done with this form of the verb is embed a past event in the present to make it clear that the past event has changed the way I view the present.
I might, therefore, go on to say:
... so now we can eat
or express whatever else in the present has been affected by John's past arrival.
This is called the perfect aspect of the tense in English.

There are other aspects which English does not signal with changes to the verb phrases but which it can express and we will come to those later.
For now, it's enough to know that other languages handle aspect very differently and some, such as German, arguably don't bother with it at all.

Here's the menu and, as usual, clicking on the yellow arrow at the end of any section will return you to it.

Section	Looking at:
A	Primary auxiliary verbs The verbs we use to make aspects and some of their other uses.
B	Progressive and continuous aspects And the difference between them.
C	Perfect aspects Relating events in time.
D	Other aspects. Which are less well known.

Section A: Primary auxiliary verbs

The verbs

There are four primary auxiliary verbs and one other arguable case.
The guide (linked below) to the verbs explains what they all do but here we are concerned with just two of them:

The verb be which serves to signal a progressive aspect of a verb and also signals the passive voice (as you saw in Unit 3).
The verb have which signals the perfect aspect (and also makes a kind of passive called a causative, which does not concern us here).

The other two primary auxiliary verbs are do which, as we saw, is used to form negative and questions forms with the simple present and simple past and get which also makes passive and causatives.

The arguable case is the verb will because as we saw in Unit 6, that verb combines with others to make a future form and also works to show willingness (in which form it is considered a modal auxiliary rather than primary auxiliary verb and discussed in Unit 8).

The forms of main that these two auxiliary verbs combine with are different:

The verb:	combines with	to make, for example
be	the -ing form	She is going home They are swimming Are we inviting the neighbours? She wasn't working too hard
*have*	the past participle	I have finished She had arrived by then Have they joined us? He hasn't begun

(For simplicity's sake here, we are referring to the progressive form with the verb be being following by an -ing form but you may prefer to call it a present participle. It is just that but -ing forms also perform other functions which are not present participles.)

We can also, as we shall see in a bit more detail, combine aspects like this, for example:
    Has she been running?
    I have been working on this for two days
    We hadn't been enjoying the party up till then
all of which combine the perfect aspect (using have) with the progressive aspect (using be).

The form

Both verbs are irregular so learners need to have memorised the forms before they can make a correct tense structure.
It isn't particularly difficult to do so because, as we note elsewhere, English is not rich in verb inflexions.
They work like this:

*be + -ing*
Present	Past	Future	Present perfect aspect	Past perfect aspect	Future perfect aspect
I am You are He / She / It is We are They are	I was You were He / She / It was We were They were	I will be You will be He / She / It will be We will be They will be	I have been You have been He / She / It has been We have been They have been	I had been You had been He / She / It had been We had been They had been	I will have been You will have been He / She / It will have been We will have been You will have been

have + past participle
Present	Past	Future
I have You have He / She / It has We have They have	I had You had He / She / It had We had They had	I will have You will have He / She / It will have We will have They will have

The perfect forms do not need to be repeated in both tables because they are, naturally, the same.
In English, when aspects are combined, the perfect always precedes the progressive so we say, e.g.:
She has been working
not
*She has being worked
Other languages may have different rules.

Learners of English need to memorise the past participle forms of irregular verbs and be able to form and pronounce the regular forms (which take -d or -ed).
There is no problem with -ing forms, apart from some simple spelling changes, because there are no irregular forms in English.

Here is the same table of verb forms that we had at the beginning of Unit 6 but with only the aspectual tense forms included:

Tense	Main uses	Examples
Present progressive	Current events	He is writing a letter
	Current (background) events which may not be occurring now	He is writing a book He is studying French
	Currently arranged future	I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow
Past progressive	Interrupted past action	I was eating when he rang
	Progressive action at a particular time	I was eating at 7
	Discontinued or temporary past habit	I was walking to work in those days
	Parallel past events or events	It was raining and the wind was blowing hard I was eating while she was watching television
Present perfect	A past embedded in the present which changes it	I have spoken to him (so now he knows) I have learnt French (so now I can speak it) He has broken the pump (so now we can't use it)
Present perfect	To describe past experiences which change the present	I have been to America (so I can speak about it)
Present perfect progressive	To emphasise the duration of a long event embedded in the present which changes it	I've been waiting for hours (and am really cold)
	Events embedded in the present which change it and are still current (this is actually continuous, not progressive)	She's been looking unwell for some time (and still is)
	A series of repeated past events embedded in the present which change it	He's been stealing money from his employer
Past perfect	Completed events before others embedded in the past which explain it	I had already spoken to her before he asked
Past perfect	Completed long events before others embedded in the past which explain it	It had rained for a week and the garden was muddy
Past perfect progressive	(Un)completed long events before events in the past. A previous event is embedded in a past event	I had been playing chess for two hours before he arrived
	To show a past result of a previous event. The previous event is embedded in the past event	He had been working too hard and was exhausted
	To show a repeated event embedded in a past event	People had been forgetting to come so he sent a reminder
Future progressive	Potentially interrupted action	He'll be working when you come
Future progressive	Progressive future event happening as a matter of course at a specific time	I'll be working at 7
Future perfect	Completed event occurring before another and embedded within it which affects the second	He'll have finished the book by the time I want it
	To show causal connections between future events	He'll have repaired the car and then we can use it
	States occurring before future events (certain verbs only) which change the second event	I'll have been at the hotel for a day or two before I can call you
Future perfect progressive	Future progressive events embedded in later events which alter them	I will have been working for over two hours before you get here
	To show causal connections between long events and states	He'll have been travelling for ten hours and will be tired
	To show a repeated previous event embedded in a future event	I'll have been trying to call him for two hours by then

We have already dealt with some of the aspects of tenses in Unit 6, so here we will focus on the others.

Learn more

If you want to discover more now about tenses of all kinds, go to:
the tenses index
which has links to other guides.
If you are concerned to know more about primary auxiliary verbs and the other things they do, try:
the essential guide

Take a test

Try a test which only focuses on the names of the tenses in the table above.
If you follow any other guides on this site to tense forms, you will come across plenty more tests.

Section B: progressive and continuous aspects

He's sitting in his office

You will very often hear (and, alas, sometimes read) the terms progressive and continuous being used interchangeably.
English, it is true often uses the form of be and the -ing form together to signal both a continuous state and a progressive action so we see, for example:
Mary is living in France at the moment
and
Mary is writing a letter to her father at the moment

However, the meanings are distinct.
In the first case, we can express the same thought as:
Mary lives in France at the moment
because the aspect is a continuous state, not a progressive action.
In the second case, we cannot replace the verb form with the same effect so
Mary writes a letter to her father at the moment
is close to nonsense because the progressive aspect is not signalled by the simple form of the verb and must be shown by be plus the -ing form.

Many verbs which imply a continuous state are used in the simple form to refer to a continuous aspect so we find, for example:
    She thinks I don't know that
    He seems lost
    I expect she's the manager
    They make shoes here
and so on.
We do not normally say:
    *She is thinking I don't know that
    *He is seeming lost
    *I am expecting she's the manager
    *They are making shoes here
because the verb itself signals the continuous state.
Nevertheless, all the correct sentences refer to a continuous condition so are in the continuous aspect, whatever the verb form.

We have already encountered issues with the stative vs. dynamic uses of verbs elsewhere.
To repeat what has been said, the continuous aspect may be signalled by a stative use of a verb but the progressive aspect can only be signalled by a progressive form using be plus the -ing form of the main verb.

The progressive aspect can be signalled in all main tenses in English with exactly the same effect and subject to exactly the same restrictions concerning the meaning of verbs so we can encounter, for example:
    She had been thinking about the problem (and was still doing so)
    She will be staying with friends (temporarily)
    I have been talking to Mary (repeatedly and at length)

Temporary, background or progressive?

With most verbs, we signal the progressive aspect by using the be + -ing form and that works just fine when we distinguish between, for example:
    She's knitting a pullover vs. She knits pullovers
    They're playing cricket vs. They play cricket
    We're enjoying the music vs. We enjoy the music
    I'm cooking the dinner vs. I cook the dinner
and so on.

However, when we use a verb such as live, work, read, stay and more whose meaning involves a long-lasting (i.e., progressive) condition or action, using the progressive form suggests not a progressive action or state but a temporary or background one.
For example:
    She's living in a hotel
    They are working abroad
    I'm reading Hemingway
    We're staying with friends
all imply a temporary or background state and she may not be near the hotel, they may be sitting at home, I may be in the pub with friends and we may be in the cinema at the time of speaking.

It matters little which tense is used to suggest this distinction so, for example:
    He has been working in reception
    I had been staying in a hotel
    I will be staying in Spain
all imply temporary or background events, not progressive ones.

Time lines

A diagrammatic representation of continuous and progressive aspects can look like this:
Continuous aspect, simple form:
simple
Progressive aspect (temporary situation):

and like this for true progressive events: