Aspect
Czech verbs are distinguished by aspect, they are either perfective or imperfective. Perfective verbs indicate the finality of the process. Therefore, they cannot express the present tense.
Perfective verbs are usually formed adding prefixes to imperfective verbs:
- psát (imperf.) - to write, to be writing -> napsat (perf.) - to write down
Some perfective verbs are not formally related to imperfective ones:
- brát (imperf.) - to take, to be taking -> vzít (perf.) - to take
Read more about this topic: Czech Conjugation
Famous quotes containing the word aspect:
“We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially unlike the reality, although it must be accepted as true to that reality. Its truth consists in the fact that it is impossible to correct it, and in the fact that it only professes to consider one aspect of the percept.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)