The problem of aspect is intimately connected with a lexicological problem, which we shall therefore have to touch upon here. It may be well illustrated by the following series of examples. If we have, for example, the sentence, A young man sat in the corner of the room, we can say, instead, A young man was sitting in the corner of the room, without affecting the basic meaning of the sentence. The same situation may be described in both ways, the only difference between them being that of stylistic colouring: the variant with the common aspect form is more matter-of-fact and "dry", whereas the one with the continuous aspect form is more descriptive.

Besides the various theories put forward with reference to the opposition writes — is writing, we must mention various terms that have been proposed to denote its members. H. Sweet used the term "definite tenses" for what we call the continuous aspect. 1 This term cannot be said to be a happy one, as the word "tense" disguises the fact that we find here a peculiar grammatical category different from that of tense.

The interpretation of the opposition writes — is writing given above is not the only one to be found in works dealing with the English language. We will now consider some different interpretations proposed by various scholars.

However, the problem of aspects and their uses is by no means exhausted. First of all we must now mention the uses of the continuous aspect which do not easily fit into the definition given above.

Each of the two aspects must be given some name which should of course be as adequate as possible to the basic meaning of the aspect. It seems easier to find a name for the type is writing than for the type writes.

There are two sets of forms in the Modern English verb which are contrasted with each other on the principle of use or non-use of the pattern "be + first participle":

It is but natural that the verb should take up as much, or indeed, more space than all the other parts of speech we have so far considered, put together. It is the only part of speech in present-day English that has a morphological system based on a series of categories. It is the only part of speech that has analytical forms, 1 and again the only one that has forms (the infinitive, the gerund and the participle) which occupy a peculiar position in its system and do not share some of the characteristic features of the part of speech as a whole.

The main function of the statives is that of predicative and in this case they are preceded by a link verb, most usually the verb be, but occasionally also fall, keep, feel. Examples with the link verb be are very numerous and varied. A few will suffice: The child was fast asleep. The whole house was astir. Something is afoot. With the link verb fall we find the stative asleep, as in the sentence He soon fell asleep. The link verb keep is found with statives, e. g. in ...but in a crafty madness keeps aloof. (SHAKESPEARE) The link verb feel is found in the sentence He felt ashamed of himself... (LINKLATER)

With numerals, even more than with pronouns, it is difficult to keep the strictly grammatical approach and not to let oneself be diverted into lexicological considerations. O. Jespersen has quite rightly remarked that numerals have been treated by grammarians in a different way from other parts of speech. This is what he says, "...the grammarian in this chapter on numerals does what he never dreamed of doing in the two previous chapters (those on nouns and adjectives. — B. I.), he gives a complete and orderly enumeration of all the words belonging to this class."

The limits of the pronoun class are somewhat difficult to define. That is, there are words which have some pronominal features, without being full pronouns, or, even, have other features which are not pronominal at all. We may take the word many as a case in point.