Unbounded repetition, habituality, and aspect from a comparative perspective

Abstract This paper addresses the relationship between habituals, including expressions of unbounded repetition, and verbal aspect. It is often assumed that past events are conceptualized as habitually occurring or repeated in an way inherently expressed by imperfective verb forms languages with A crosslinguistic analysis provided habituals perfective aspect, based on 36 from different language families. shown there a strong but certainly not absolute association habitual constructions/expressions repetition reference. With respect to some patterns can be found. further argued any account specific aspectual behavior must take heed language-specific properties aspectual-verbal structure, using general, abstract comparative concepts, such ‘perfective’, ‘imperfective’, ‘habitual’, insufficient explain usage.