Habitual aspect

Modern Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu) has a specific participle form to mark the habitual aspect.[3] Habitual aspect in Hindi grammar is marked by the habitual participle. The habitual participle is constructed from the infinitive form of the verb by removing the infinitive marker -nā from the verb root and adding -tā. The participles agree with the gender and the number of the subject of the sentence which is marked by the vowel the participles end in.[4] Periphrastic Hindustani verb forms consist of two elements. The first of these two elements is the aspect marker. The second element is the tense-mood marker.[3] There are four different copulas with which the habitual participle can be used:[5] honā (to be, to happen), rêhnā (to stay, to remain), jānā (to go), and ānā (to come). These verbs, even when they are used as copula, themselves can be turned into aspectual participles and can be used with the default auxiliary verb honā (to be), hence forming sub-aspects that combine the nuance of two aspects.[6][7] The auxiliary rêhnā (to stay) gives a nuance of continuity of the perfective state, jānā (to go) is used to construct the passive voice (in its habitual subaspect) and also shows that the action is completed (in its perfective subaspect), karnā (to do) gives the nuance that the perfective action is repeated habitually. The auxiliary rêhnā (to stay) gives a nuance of continuity of the perfective state, jānā (to go) is used to construct the passive voice (in its habitual subaspect)[8] and also shows that the action is completed (in its perfective subaspect), karnā (to do) gives the nuance that the perfective action is repeated habitually.

Hindi-Urdu has 3 grammatical aspectsː Habitual, Perfective and Progressive. Conjugating the auxiliary verbs which are in the infinitive form above into their aspectual forms using the auxiliary honā (to be) gives the following subaspectual forms for the perfective aspect in their infintive formː[9]

Hind-Urdu Verbs can be put into five grammatical moods which are: indicative (present, past, future), presumptive (present, past, future), subjunctive (present, future), contrafactual (past), imperative (present, future). The contrafactual mood marks both the past subjunctive mood and the past conditional mood.[10] All the habitual aspectual forms in their all the moods for the verb karnā (to do) are shown in the table below using the copula honā (to be). Habitual aspectual forms cannot be put into imperative mood using the copula honā (to be), but it can be with the copulas jānā (to go) and rêhnā (to stay). It cannot be put into future tense using the copula honā (to be), to put habitual aspect forms into future tense the copulas rêhnā (to stay), jānā (to go) and ānā (to come) are used instead.

Standard English has two habitual aspectual forms in the past tense. One is illustrated by the sentence I used to go there frequently. The used to [infinitive] construction always refers to the habitual aspect when the infinitive is a non-stative verb; in contrast, when used to is used with a stative verb, the aspect can be interpreted as stative (that is, it indicates an ongoing, unchanging state, as in I used to know that), although Bernard Comrie classifies this, too, as habitual.[1]^:98–99 Used to can be used with or without an indicator of temporal location in the past (We used to do that, We used to do that in 1974); but the time indicator cannot be too specific; for example, *We used to do that at 3 pm yesterday is not grammatical.[1]

The second way that habituality is expressed in the past is by using the auxiliary verb would, as in Last summer we would go there every day. This usage requires a lexical indication of when the action occurred; by itself the sentence We would go there does not express habituality, while We used to go there does even though it does not specify when.[1]^:98–99 As with used to, would also has other uses in English that do not indicate habituality: in In January 1986 I knew I would graduate in four months, it indicates the future viewed from a past perspective; in I would go if I felt better, it indicates the conditional mood.

English can also indicate habituality in a time-unspecific way, referring generically to the past, present, and future, by using the auxiliary will as in He will make that mistake all the time, won't he?. As with used to and would, the auxiliary will has other uses as well: as an indicator of future time (The sun will rise tomorrow at 6:14), and as a modal verb indicating volition (At this moment I will not tolerate dissent).

Habitual aspect is frequently expressed in unmarked form in English, as in I walked to work every day for ten years, I walk to work every day, and I will walk to work every day after I get well.[1]^:124

The habitual and progressive aspects can be combined in English, as in He used to be playing..[1]^:30 Every time I visit, he's always making something.

Present tense

African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English use an invariant be to mark habitual or extended actions in the present tense. Some Hiberno-English in Ireland uses the construction do be to mark the habitual present.[11]

The Romance languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese do not have a grammatical form that is specific to the habitual aspect. In the past tense, they have a form called the imperfect, which combines the past tense with the imperfective aspect; it is used to indicate that a past ongoing process was habitual or continuous.

Cantonese, a Sinitic language, has a dedicated particle to express the habitual aspect, 開 hoi1, which follows the verb. This is unlike Mandarin and some other Sinitic languages, which have no grammatical indicators of the habitual aspect, but may express habituality via circumlocution.