Continuous and progressive aspects

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help clarify the article. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page. (October 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Continuous and progressive aspects" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The continuous and progressive aspects (abbreviated CONT and PROG) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects.

In the grammars of many languages the two terms are used interchangeably. This is also the case with English: a construction such as "He is washing" may be described either as present continuous or as present progressive. However, there are certain languages for which two different aspects are distinguished. In Chinese, for example, progressive aspect denotes a current action, as in "he is getting dressed", while continuous aspect denotes a current state, as in "he is wearing fine clothes".

As with other grammatical categories, the precise semantics of the aspects vary from language to language, and from grammarian to grammarian. For example, some grammars of Turkish count the -iyor form as a present tense;^[1] some as a progressive tense;^[2] and some as both a continuous (nonhabitual imperfective) and a progressive (continuous non-stative) aspect.^[3]