This paper explores the aspectual system of Chiyao, a Bantu language spoken in Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania.  The distinction between aspect and tense is not always easy to draw clearly in individual languages.  As a matter of fact some scholars have gone to the extent of making a distinction between aspectual languages and non-aspectual languages while others have distinguished between aspect and Aktionsart, with aspect referring to instances where the opposition has been grammaticalized, Aktionsart to instances where it has been lexicalized.  More radical views have claimed that aspect is an exclusive phenomenon for Slavonic languages.  This contention appears to be based on the notion that aspect can only be expressed morphologically. This analysis, therefore, excludes languages that do not inflect for or morphologize aspect.  It has, however, become apparent in recent studies that the so called non-aspectual languages can and do express aspectual concepts by other linguistic means.  This paper describes some of the aspectual distinctions that obtain in Chiyao and shows that aspect can be expressed by both morphological and non-morphological means.  The paper also relates these aspectual distinctions to aspect as a general linguistic category.

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