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Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
al category, referring to an action soon to take place. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 such as Latin and Lithuanian
Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad....
, and also in Balto-Finnic languages. In other languages, auxiliary verbs can be used, for example French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 (as aller plus infinitive: je vais faire "I am going to do", Futur proche
Future tense

In grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future ....
), English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 (often as "I am going to do" or "I am about to do").






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Inchoative aspect (also called inceptive aspect) is a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
al category, referring to an action soon to take place. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 such as Latin and Lithuanian
Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad....
, and also in Balto-Finnic languages. In other languages, auxiliary verbs can be used, for example French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 (as aller plus infinitive: je vais faire "I am going to do", Futur proche
Future tense

In grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future ....
), English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 (often as "I am going to do" or "I am about to do"). In these cases, the term near future
Future tense

In grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future ....
 is more commonly used.

Since inchoative is an aspect
Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
 and not a tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
, it can be combined with tenses to form present inchoative, past inchoative and future inchoative, all used in Lithuanian. Finnish employs a systematic construction ole-TEMP-PERS X-maisilla-POSS "to be on (my/your/etc.) X-ings", where the temporal and personal ending and possessive suffix
Possessive suffix

In linguistics, a possessive suffix is a suffix attached to a noun to indicate its possession , much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive suffixes do not exist in all languages; they do exist in some Uralic languages, Semitic languages, and Indo-European languages languages....
 are to be selected according to the context. For example, "ol+i+t kaatu+maisilla+si", literally "you were on your fallings down", meaning "you were about to fall down". The -maisilla- is a string of derivational suffixes: ma participle; i plural; s adjective suffix; lla adessive case
Adessive case

In Finno-Ugric languages, such as Finnish language, Estonian language and Hungarian language, the adessive case is the fourth of the locative declension with the basic meaning of "on"....
. In Russian
Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
, inchoatives are regularly derived from unidirectional imperfective verbs of motion by adding the prefix ??-, e.g. ?????? - ????????: "to run" - "to start running". Also cf. ??? (normal past tense plural of ???? - "to go") vs. "?????!" meaning approximately "We'll be off! / We're gone!".

The term inchoative verb is used by generative grammar
Generative grammar

In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences....
ians to refer to a class of verbs that reflect a change of state. e.g., John aged or The fog cleared. This usage bears little or no relationship to the aspectual usage described above.

See also

  • Inchoative verb
    Inchoative verb

    An inchoative verb, sometimes called an "inceptive" verb, shows a process of beginning or becoming. Productive inchoative infix exist in several languages, including Latin language and Ancient Greek, and consequently some Romance languages....