Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Aspect refers to the internal temporal structure of a verb or sentence meaning. The most important aspectual distinctions are the following: (a) stative vs active, by which situations are classified into states, which do not involve a change in time (e.g. own, know, like), and processes, activities, or actions, which refer to an active situation (e.g. blossom, hit). (b) perfective vs imperfective, durative vs non-durative, progressive vs non-progressive. Imperfective, durative, or progressive aspect refers to situations which are viewed as temporally not delimited (e.g. work, read, be burning). Perfective, non-durative, non-progressive, or punctual aspect implies a temporal boundary of the situation denoted by a verb or sentence (e.g. burn down, have read a novel). (c) Repetition or frequency with habituals (used to drink) and iteratives (flutter). (d) Reference to causality is sometimes also related to aspect. Causality distinguishes an action which is caused by an agent (e.g. hit, read) from a state or process (know, blossom); 
process vs action. With causative verbs (fell, drench) the causative component is added by morphological derivation (cf. fall, drink).
There is considerable disagreement in the treatment and description of aspect categories. This is partly due to the diverse grammatical and lexical means of expressing aspectual notions. The interaction of lexical meaning of verbs, the morphological form of the verb, the type of argument noun phrases (singular vs plural, mass noun vs count noun), adverbials, auxiliaries, tenses, etc. may contribute to the aspectual character of a sentence.
In English, most verbs have a simple and a progressive form (I sing vs I am singing) and the selection of the progressive is restricted, in general, to verbs whose lexical meaning is not stative (*I am knowing). In Russian, the durative verb lexemes (e.g. spat ‘to sleep,’ zit ‘to live, to dwell,’ sidet ‘to sit’) have, in general, only imperfective forms, whereas non-durative verb lexemes may have both an imperfective and a perfective form, e.g. probuzdat’ sja (imperf.) probudit’ sja (perf.), ‘to wake up,’ naxodit/najti ‘to find,’ umirat/umeret ‘to die’. The type of argument noun phrases influences aspect categorization: he ate apples (durative, imperfective) vs he ate an apple (non-durative, perfective). In Finnish, the case of the object noun phrase is relevant for the aspect of the sentence: luen kirjaa (partitive) ‘I read some of the book’ (durative, imperfective) vs luen kirjan (acc.) ‘I read the book’ (non-durative, perfective). The choice of adverbials denoting the duration of the event is also restricted by aspect: she worked in Texas for two years (durative, imperfective) vs she wrote a novel in two years (non-durative, perfective). There are also aspect-indicating verbs or auxiliaries: she started working (non-durative, inchoative), she finished working (non-durative, completive). Closely related to Aktionsart.
References
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Bybee, J., R.Perkins, and W.Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago, IL.
Comrie, B. 1976.
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Forsyth, J. 1970. A grammar of aspect: usage and meaning in the Russian verb. Cambridge.
Groot, C.de and H.Tommola (eds) 1984. Aspect bound: a voyage into the realm of Germanic, Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian aspectology. Dordrecht.
Hoepelmann, J. 1981. Verb classification and the Russian verbal aspect: a formal analysis. Tübingen.
Nedjalkou, V.P. (ed.) 1988. Typology of resultative constructions. Amsterdam.
Rohrer, C. (ed.) 1978. Papers on tense, aspect and verb classification. Tübingen.
Saurer, W. 1984. A formal semantics of tense, aspects and Aktionsart. Bloomington, IN.
Steinitz, R. 1981. Zum Status der Kategorie ‘Aktionsart’ in der Grammatik (oder: Gibt es Aktionsart im Deutschen?). LSt 76. 1–122.
Tedeschi, P.J. and A.Zaenen (eds). 1981. Tense and aspect. New York.
Thelin, N.B. (ed.) 1990. Verbal aspect in discourse: contributions to the semantics of time and temporal perspective in Slavic and non-Slavic languages. Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
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Vendler, Z. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca, NY.
Verkuyl, H.J. 1972. On the compositional nature of the aspects. Dordrecht.
——1989. Aspectual classes and aspectual composition. Ling&P 12. 39–94.
——1993. A theory of aspectuality. Cambridge.
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