Perfective/Imperfective Aspect
Verbs: tense, mood, evidence · one world map for each value
WALS codes 222 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction”, covers 121 of them (55%); the least frequent, “Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction”, covers 101.
That value is most frequent in South America (76% of the 21 languages coded there) and least frequent in Africa (40% of 50).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Trans-New Guinea is the most uniform: 6 of 8 have “No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction”.
Niger-Congo is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 10 of 20.
Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction101 languages · 45%
No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction121 languages · 55%
One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.
By macro-area
| Value | Africa | Eurasia | Papunesia | Australia | North America | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 30 | 30 | 14 | 5 | 17 | 5 |
| No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 20 | 36 | 26 | 9 | 14 | 16 |
| All values | 50 | 66 | 40 | 14 | 31 | 21 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 23 | No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 57% |
| Indo-European | 21 | Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 57% |
| Niger-Congo | 20 | Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 50% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 18 | Grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 61% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 8 | No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 62% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 8 | No grammatical marking of perfective/imperfective distinction | 75% |