Page "Grammatical aspect" Paragraph 11

Like tense, aspect is a way that verbs represent time.

However, rather than locating an event or state in time, the way tense does, aspect describes " the internal temporal constituency of a situation ", or in other words, aspect is a way " of conceiving the flow of the process itself ".

English aspectual distinctions in the past tense include " I went, I used to go, I was going, I had gone "; in the present tense " I lose, I am losing, I have lost, I have been losing, I am going to lose "; and with the future modal " I will see, I will be seeing, I will have seen, I am going to see ".

What distinguishes these aspects within each tense is not ( necessarily ) when the event occurs, but how the time in which it occurs is viewed: as complete, ongoing, consequential, planned, etc.