Verbal aspect in English

Learners of Russian often find the aspects of the verb a particularly difficult grammar point to learn, but verbal aspect does exist in English grammar too. Earlier this evening I attended a seminar at King's College, University of London, given by Douglas Biber, who is Regents' Professor, Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. He is co-author of the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which is a corpus-based reference book, which means that all examples are taken from sentences that are not made up to illustrate particular grammar points, but that have actually been uttered by native speakers of English. 

Professor Biber maintains there are three aspects of the English verb: simple (as in 'she works very hard'), progressive ('she is writing a letter') and perfect ('she has gone home'). Some people say there is a fourth aspect - perfect progressive ('she has been working'). EFL grammar books typically devote a lot of attention to the progressive aspect of verbs, and often begin in Chapter One by teaching these verb forms before anything else. Professor Biber's corpus analysis showed that, in fact, it is the simple aspect that is by far the most common aspect used in spoken English (I work in a bank, I think that ..., do you like, we want to know etc).

Using the progressive (or continuous) aspect instead of the simple is a common error of learners of English ('I am coming from Germany', eg). That could be because a disproportionate amount of time is devoted to the teaching of this verb form, which its frequency in ordinary English speech does not justify.

Comments

[Frederic Dichtel]

Dear Susan

As a learner of English as a second language, I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog. I have appreciated your clear, concise and very informative posts.

Forgive me for using the comment field to ask you this unrelated question but I don’t know how else to contact you.

I would love you to provide me with some guidelines as to the use of the unmodified quantifier ‘many’ in affirmative sentences. I know ‘too many + npl’ and ‘so many + npl’ are common in statements, but it’s the use of the unpremodified ‘many’ that’s harder to grasp.

In some instances, many used affirmatively sounds unnatural ; the following are sentences that I’ve uttered, which my New Zealand friends have found particularly objectionable:

I received many presents for Christmas.
I bought many books.
I’ve seen many hybrid cars in Wellington.

At the same time, I’ve heard my kiwi friends use ‘many’ in oral speech and it sounded fine:

There are many cars stranded.
I went to France many years ago.
I spent many hours dancing.

So, what’s the rule?

And are there any differences between ‘many’ and ‘lots of’ other than register? Is ‘many books’ the same number of books as ‘lots of books’?
Do native speakers have the same mental representation of ‘many books’ and ‘lots of books’? Are they visually the same sets of items, laid out the same way etc.?

I’m looking forward to your explanations.

Best Regards

Frédéric

[Virtual Linguist]

Thank you for your question, Frédéric. I have responded to you in an email, but have also written a blog post on the subject here if others are interested http://virtuallinguist.typepad.com/the_virtual_linguist/2009/08/many-in-affirmative-sentences.html