ABSTRACT
Section 1 reviews English lexical aspect. In §2, I present the tense system as marking past grammatically and future periphrastically. Sections 3 and 4 recapitulate my analysis of the progressive as [+imperfective] and the perfect as [+perfective], as introduced in chapters 3 and 4. I suggest that many apparently idiosyncratic properties attributed to progressive and perfect forms follow from the interaction of grammatical aspect with the lexical aspect features and tense. In §5, I support the claim from chapter 4 that English simple tense forms are aspectually unmarked rather than marked [+perfecti ve], contrary to
Brinton (1988) and Smith (1991). In §6, I suggest that the perfect progressive is marked [+imperfective, +perfective], and I provide ways of distinguishing these marked forms from aspectually unmarked constructions. Conclusions are summarized in §7.
