Aspect

Aspect refers to a particular way of "looking at" an event, action, or situation. This is quite different from tense, which refers to time (past, present, future). Aspect is relevant to events whenever they take place. Some languages, including Kashaya, pay more attention to aspect than to tense.

This is the most important distinction in aspect:

• The perfective views an event as a complete whole without reference to its internal structure. It describes the event from the outside, as a action or situation that has ended (or will be ended at some future reference time).
• The imperfective views the event as not complete, whether because it is an activity that continues over time, or because something happened in the middle of the event. It describes the action or situation from the inside, without reference to its beginning or end.

Consider something as simple as walking home. This trip might take five minutes or many hours, but it can always be viewed as a complete whole: I walked home yesterday. This is perfective aspect. The same walk could, however, be considered as something that was ongoing when something else happened: I was walking home yesterday when it started raining. This sentence has imperfective was walking and a perfective started raining, which makes their temporal relation clear.

These two events could be described without making the relation between the two explicit: I walked home yesterday, and it rained. This sentence is expressed with two perfectives, but the listener might assume something about how they relate to each other – why mention the rain if it didn't affect the walk? Still, different relations are possible. These sentences have only perfective verbs:

• I walked home yesterday, and it rained. I ended up getting all wet.
• I walked home yesterday, and it rained. Fortunately it didn't start until after I got home.

If we add an imperfective verb in the first scenario, including the temporal conjunction while, the relation between the events is much clearer.

• It started raining while I was walking home yesterday. I ended up getting all wet.
• It started raining after I walked home yesterday. Fortunately I was home in time to avoid getting wet.

In English, the form be doing is a common means of expressing the imperfective. There are two main interpretations of this form, but both are imperfective.

• Progressive: the situation is in progress at the time of reference (past, present, future)
• He was eating lunch when we arrived.
• They're watching TV in the other room.
• I'll be sleeping when you leave.

• Continuous: an ongoing situation is true at the time of reference but may not be in progress at that moment
• I was working at a different job last month.
• They're studying Portuguese.
• She'll be writing a book next year.

Another kind of imperfective meaning is the habitual, which extends over a relatively long span of time. This can include separate events; even if each is considered as a completed action, when put together they can be seen as a overall uncompleted sequence of events. This idea can be expressed in English in various ways.

• Habitual: a situation is true over a period of time, whether one long situation (protracted) or multiple repeated events (iterated)
• I used to go shopping at that store.
• They're always gossiping with each other.
• She won't be eating meat anymore.

In Kashaya, the Durative suffix (in many allomorphs) is the main marker of imperfective aspect, with doubling to indicate the habitual. A verb can be made perfective by adding the Semelfactive /-c/. The various switch reference suffixes also indicate either perfective ("after") or imperfective ("while") aspect.