ABSTRACT
German term meaning ‘manner of action’; it is used by some linguists (especially German and Slavonic) to denote the lexicalization of semantic distinctions in verbal meaning, as opposed to aspect, which is then used to denote the systematic grammaticalization of such distinctions. Usage differs as to whether the term ‘Aktionsart’ covers all lexicalized semantic distinctions, i.e. those inherent in the meaning of the verb as well as those created by derivational morphology, e.g. suffixes denoting iterativity etc., or only the latter.
