English
English is an example of a language with no general imperfective. The English progressive is used to describe ongoing events such as "The rain was beating down". Habitual situations do not have their own verb form, but the construction "used to" conveys past habitual action, as in "I used to ski". Unlike in languages with a general imperfective, in English the simple past tense can be used for situations presented as ongoing, such as "The rain beat down continuously through the night".
Read more about this topic: Imperfective Aspect
Famous quotes containing the word english:
“An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The mob has many heads but no brains.”
—17th-century English proverb, collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
“To be born in a new country one has to die in the motherland.”
—Irina Mogilevskaya, Russian student. “Immigrating to the U.S.,” student paper in an English as a Second Language class, Hunter College, 1995.