Editing Grammatical aspect (section)

==== Torau ====
Aspect in Torau is marked with post-verbal particles or clitics. While the system for marking the imperfective aspect is complex and highly developed, it is unclear if Torau marks the perfective and neutral viewpoints. The imperfective clitics index one of the core arguments, usually the nominative subject, and follow the rightmost element in a syntactic structure larger than the word. The two distinct forms for marking the imperfective aspect are ''(i)sa-'' and ''e-''. While more work needs to be done on this language, the preliminary hypothesis is that ''(i)sa-'' encodes the stative imperfective and ''e-'' encodes the active imperfective. Reduplication always cooccurs with ''e-'', but it usually does not with ''(i)sa-.'' This example below shows these two imperfective aspect markers giving different meanings to similar sentences.

{{interlinear
| indent = 2|Pita ma-to mate{{=}}'''sa-la'''.|Peter REAL.3SG.SUBJ-PST be.dead{{=}}IPFV-3SG|'Peter was dead.'
}}

{{interlinear
| indent = 2|Pita ma-to '''maa'''≈mate{{=}}'''e-la'''.|Peter REAL.3SG.SUBJ-PST {REDUP}≈be.dead{{=}}IPFV-3SG|'Peter was dying.'
}}

In Torau, the suffix -''to'', which must attach to a preverbal particle, may indicate similar meaning to the perfective aspect. In realis clauses, this suffix conveys an event that is entirely in the past and no longer occurring. When ''-to'' is used in irrealis clauses, the speaker conveys that the event will definitely occur (Palmer, 2007). Although this suffix is not explicitly stated as a perfective viewpoint marker, the meaning that it contributes is very similar to the perfective viewpoint.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Palmer|first=Bill|date=December 2007|title=Imperfective Aspect and the Interplay of Aspect, Tense, and Modality in Torau|journal=Oceanic Linguistics|volume=46|issue=2|pages=499–519|doi=10.1353/ol.2008.0000|jstor=20172325|hdl=1959.13/803129|s2cid=145227019|hdl-access=free}}</ref>