Lexical aspect

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In linguistics, the lexical aspect or Aktionsart (German pronunciation: [ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaːɐ̯t], plural Aktionsarten [ʔakˈtsi̯oːnsˌʔaːɐ̯tn̩]) of a verb is part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. For example, the English verbs arrive and run differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which has a natural endpoint while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from grammatical aspect in that it is an inherent semantic property of a predicate, while grammatical aspect is a syntactic or morphological property. Although lexical aspect need not be marked morphologically, it has downstream grammatical effects, for instance that arrive can be modified by "in an hour" while believe cannot.