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The gnomic (abbreviated GNO), also called neutral, generic, or universal aspect, mood, or tense, is a grammatical feature (which may refer to aspect, mood, or tense) that expresses general truths or aphorisms.
Used to describe an aspect, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting the flow of time to any particular conception (for example, the conceptions of time as continuous, habitual, perfective, etc.). Used to describe a mood, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting the expression of words to the speaker's attitude toward them (e.g. as indicative, subjunctive, potential, etc.). Used to describe a tense, the gnomic is considered neutral by not limiting action, in particular, to the past, present, or future. Examples of the gnomic include such generic statements as: "birds fly"; "sugar is sweet"; and "a mother can always tell". [note 1] [1] [2] If, as an aspect, it does take temporality into consideration, it may be called the empiric perfect aspect. Generally, though, it is one example of imperfective aspect, which does not view an event as a single entity viewed only as a whole, but instead specifies something about its internal temporal structure.
A grammatical gnomic aspect occurs in literary Swahili, where the -a- form of the verb is gnomic (sometimes called "indefinite tense") and the -na- form of the verb is episodic (sometimes called 'definite tense' or just 'present').[ citation needed ] Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan do not have a gnomic inflection in their verbs like Swahili, but they do have lexical aspect in their be verbs ser (in Catalan, ser or ésser) (gnomic) and estar (episodic). For instance, estar enfermo (Spanish) estar doente (Portuguese) or estar malalt (Catalan) means to be sick (episodic), whereas ser enfermo (Spanish), ser doente (Portuguese) or ésser malalt (Catalan) means to be sickly (gnomic). [ citation needed ]
However, most languages use other forms of the verb to express general truths.[ citation needed ] For instance, English and French use the standard present tense, as in the examples given above. In Classical Greek, Tongan, and Dakota, the future tense is used. Biblical Hebrew uses the perfective aspect.[ citation needed ] In Japanese, an imperfective clause with the wa (topic) particle is used for generic statements such as taiyou-wa higashi-kara nobo-ru [sun-TOP east-from rise-IPFV] "the sun rises in the east", whereas the ga (subject) particle would force an episodic reading. [3]
English has no means of morphologically distinguishing a gnomic aspect; however, a generic reference is generally understood to convey an equivalent meaning. Use of the definite article "the" or a demonstrative determiner usually implies specific individuals, as in "the car he owns is fast", "the cars he owns are fast", or "those rabbits are fast", whereas omitting the definite article or other determiner in the plural creates a generic reference: "rabbits are fast" describes rabbits in general. However, the definite article may also be used in the singular for classes of nouns, as in "The giraffe is the tallest land mammal living today", which does not refer to any specific giraffe, but to giraffes in general.
English generally uses the simple present tense as the equivalent of a gnomic aspect, as in "rabbits are fast" and "water boils at 212 °F". The simple present is used with specific references for the equivalent of a habitual aspect, as in "I run every day"; likewise, the auxiliary "will" is used with specific references for the habitual aspect, as in "he will make that mistake all the time, won't he?". Thus, in English the gnomic aspect takes the same form as the habitual aspect.
The English "reportive present" tense as seen in newspaper headlines like "Technical Innovations Increase Efficiency, Lower Costs" can be viewed as gnomic. [4]
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In Ancient Greek, a general truth may be expressed in the present imperfective, future, or aorist, which are then called the gnomic present, [5] the gnomic future, [6] and the gnomic aorist. [7] There is also a gnomic perfect. [8] They are not distinct tenses but simply uses of the tense.
A gnomic future, the rarest of the three usages, similarly states that certain events often occur and does not imply that an event is going to occur. A gnomic aorist (the most common of the three usages) likewise expresses the tendency for certain events to occur under given circumstances and is used to express general maxims. The gnomic aorist is thought to derive (like the English example) from the summation of a common story (such as the moral of a fable).[ citation needed ]
Perhaps in imitation of Greek conventions, Latin sometimes uses a gnomic perfect: amor omnia vicit.[ citation needed ]
In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during. Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or repetitively as time flows.
The preterite or preterit is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense. In general, it combines the perfective aspect with the past tense and may thus also be termed the perfective past. In grammars of particular languages the preterite is sometimes called the past historic, or the aorist. When the term "preterite" is used in relation to specific languages, it may not correspond precisely to this definition. In English it can be used to refer to the simple past verb form, which sometimes expresses perfective aspect. The case of German is similar: the Präteritum is the simple (non-compound) past tense, which does not always imply perfective aspect, and is anyway often replaced by the Perfekt even in perfective past meanings.
Aorist verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the Indo-European grammatical tradition, such as Middle Persian, Sanskrit, Armenian, the South Slavic languages, Georgian, and Pashto also have forms referred to as aorist.
Spanish verbs form one of the more complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a relatively synthetic language with a moderate to high degree of inflection, which shows up mostly in Spanish conjugation.
The perfect tense or aspect is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. An example of a perfect construction is I have made dinner. Although this gives information about a prior action, the focus is likely to be on the present consequences of that action. The word perfect in this sense means "completed".
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a general imperfective, others have distinct aspects for one or more of its various roles, such as progressive, habitual, and iterative aspects. The imperfective contrasts with the perfective aspect, which is used to describe actions viewed as a complete whole.
In some of the Romance languages the copula, the equivalent of the verb to be in English, is relatively complex compared to its counterparts in other languages. A copula is a word that links the subject of a sentence with a predicate. Whereas English has one main copula verb some Romance languages have more complex forms.
Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, number and tense. In addition to finite forms thus formed, non-finite forms such as participles are also extensively used.
A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be.
Ancient Greek grammar is morphologically complex and preserves several features of Proto-Indo-European morphology. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles, numerals and especially verbs are all highly inflected.
Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared with other Slavic languages. Bulgarian verbs are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect, voice, nine tenses, three moods, four evidentials and six non-finite verbal forms. Because the subject of the verb can be inferred from the verb ending, it is often omitted. As there is no infinitive in contemporary Bulgarian, the basic form of a verb is its present simple tense first person singular form.
The grammar of Macedonian is, in many respects, similar to that of some other Balkan languages, especially Bulgarian. Macedonian exhibits a number of grammatical features that distinguish it from most other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article, the lack of an infinitival verb, and the constructions with ima/nema formed with the auxiliary "to have", among others.
Ancient Greek verbs have four moods, three voices, as well as three persons and three numbers.
Tense–aspect–mood or tense–modality–aspect is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different languages.
In the grammar of Ancient Greek, including Koine, the aorist is a class of verb forms that generally portray a situation as simple or undefined, that is, as having aorist aspect. In the grammatical terminology of classical Greek, it is a tense, one of the seven divisions of the conjugation of a verb, found in all moods and voices.
The optative mood is a grammatical mood of the Ancient Greek verb, named for its use as a way to express wishes.
In linguistics, the aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state. As its name suggests, the habitual aspect, not to be confused with iterative aspect or frequentative aspect, specifies an action as occurring habitually: the subject performs the action usually, ordinarily, or customarily. As such, the habitual aspect provides structural information on the nature of the subject referent, "John smokes" being interpretable as "John is a smoker", "Enjoh habitually gets up early in the morning" as "Enjoh is an early bird". The habitual aspect is a type of imperfective aspect, which does not depict an event as a single entity viewed only as a whole but instead specifies something about its internal temporal structure.
The subjunctive mood along with the indicative, optative, and imperative, is one of the four moods of the Ancient Greek verb. It can be used both in the meaning "should" and in the meaning "may".
The Ancient Greek infinitive is a non-finite verb form, sometimes called a verb mood, with no endings for person or number, but it is inflected for tense and voice.
Conditional clauses in Ancient Greek are clauses which start with εἰ (ei) "if" or ἐάν (eān) "if ". ἐάν (eān) can be contracted to ἤν (ḗn) or ἄν (ā́n), with a long vowel. The "if"-clause of a conditional sentence is called the protasis, and the consequent or main clause is called the apodosis.