Talk:frequentative aspect

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Latest comment: 15 years ago by Stephen G. Brown
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I'm gonna go ahead and change the example, since there is no aspect difference whatsoever between crack and crackle--they're two different, albeit related, words.

A better example would be how the English present imperfect implies a habitual, frequent action, while the present progressive implies it's currently being done. For instance, "I'm shopping at Wal-Mart" means "I'm there right now", but "I shop at Wal-Mart" means "it's a store I routinely use." Nagakura shin8 00:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, crack (semelfactive) and crackle (frequentative) are not identical in meaning. And "I shop there", while freqentative semantically, is not a frequentative form (it isn’t really frequentative at all, but imperfective aspect). English has only a few frequentative forms (crackle, sniffle, chuckle, etc.), unlike some languages such as Russian and Finnish. —Stephen 02:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)Reply