linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, the iterative aspect ( abbreviated ), also called " semelfactive", "event-internal pluractionality", or "multiplicative", is a

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...

described by some authors as expressing the repetition of an event observable on one single occasion, as in 'he knocked on the door', 'he coughed', 'she is drumming', etc. It is not to be confused with frequentative aspect and habitual aspect, both of which signal repetition over more than one occasion. Other authorsp236 in S.C. Dik. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar, part I The Structure of the Clause. Berlin: Mouton. have reserved the term "semelfactive" for this mono-occasional repetition, and defined iterative aspect as denoting 'several' repetitions over more than one occasion, as opposed to the 'frequent' repetitions conveyed by frequentative aspect.

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Grammatical aspects {{grammar-stub