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I am looking for a resource, on how far the category of aspect is a relevant category in the German language, and in how far the aspect of something influences the choice of tenses used for inflection.

This might include book recommendations or research papers.

shuhalo
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  • I guess there isn't pretty much about this topic since aspect isn't a feature of the German language. Some regional "errors" contains an aspect form though. See Wikipedia. – Em1 Dec 04 '12 at 15:51
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    see here: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/3037/tense-and-aspect – Takkat Dec 04 '12 at 20:59
  • Note that this is not a dupe of the other question, as here we are not asked about aspect but rather for a good scientific reference or book on that topic. – Takkat Dec 05 '12 at 19:54
  • As Em1 said, aspects in German are regional only. One of them is known as Rheinische Verlaufsform, which probably makes a good start for searching. – phipsgabler Dec 07 '12 at 12:38
  • +1 for interesting question. I somewhere read/heart that pairs like "bauen, erbauen" are a remainder of a richer system of verbal aspects, but don't remember where that was or if I dreamt it :) - I furthermore suspect that some German linguists with no or little background in Slavic languages treat "Aspekt" and "Aktionsart" as synonyms. Don't quote me on that but it might help you find what you are looking for. – Tilo Dec 26 '12 at 23:41

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I'm not sure you can say that aspect is a missing feature in the German language. Although aspect is not encoded grammatically it exists on the semantic level. So any scientific textbook on German grammar could be used as a reference. Doing a quick Google search, I found these two books:

  • "Determinierung unter Defektivität des Determinierersystems" by Andreas Späth
  • "Verbalaspekt und Tempussystem im Deutschen und Polnischen" by Jan Czochralski

They both compare German and Slavic language, in which aspect is a pretty dominant feature.

alexkelbo
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