The perfective aspect (abbreviated PFV), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe an action viewed as a simple whole—a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms variously called "aorist", "preterite", and "simple past". Although the essence of the perfective is an event seen as a whole, most languages which have a perfective use it for various similar semantic roles, such as momentary events and the onsets or completions of events, all of which are single points in time and thus have no internal structure. Other languages instead have separate momentane, inchoative, or cessative aspects for those roles, with or without a general perfective. Use of a perfective aspect, however, does not imply a punctiliar or short-lived action. It simply "presents an occurrence in summary, viewed as a whole from the outside, without regard for the internal make-up of the occurrence." The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing or habitual actions), and from the prospective aspect, which describes impending or anticipated action. Aspects such as the perfective should not be confused with tense; perfective aspect can apply to events situated in the past, present, or future.

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