The absentive aspect was proposed in 2000 by the Dutch linguist Casper de Groot. [1] It is a verbal form of aspect, and denotes that someone was not in a particular place at the time that they were performing some activity.
It is found in the German, Frisian, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and Catalan languages, among others. [2]
The absentive expresses the concept of absence grammatically. In order to be able to be classified as absentive, an utterance must express:
A typical example is when someone asks about someone else, but they are currently out shopping. The question about the person's whereabouts can be answered with the absentive. It is also possible to describe oneself through an absentive construction.
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