Action

Actions are expressed by verbs but different forms of the same verb allow us to view the action from different vantage points. These different vantage points may be summarized under the headings of tenses, Aktionsart, aspects, and voice.

Tense views the action from the point of the speaker's place in time, i.e., it it happened before the reporting (past tense), during (present tense), or after the assertion (future): as past ('happened'), present ('happens' or 'is happening') or future ('will happen'). While tense is the most prominent feature of verbs in the English language, greater attention to the other facets of actions in the Greek and Hebrew languages ("Biblical Hebrew has no tenses in the strict sense; it uses a variety of other means to express time relations," B. K Waltke & M. O'Connor).

Aktionsart (a German word meaning 'type of action') views the action particularly from the point of how it happened or is happening. So an action may be continuous or durative ("she is cooking"), or iterative (i.e., repeatedly) 'he kept shouting at us'), inceptive (i.e., the action is just beginning, "I am leaving now"), or omnitemporal/gnomic (i.e., "Camels trudge through the desert"), or timeless ("God loves us").

Aspect also views the action in time but from the point of view of whether the action is understood to be complete, whether past, present or future (perfective) or as incomplete, on-going, or iterative, whether in the past, present or future (imperfective). In the English language, aspect and tense have largely been fused together.

Voice views the action in relation to the subject (the actor). Two voices are usually recognized in the English language: the active and the passive: In the active voice, the subject is the doer of the verb (e.g., "Abraham roasts the lamb"). When the verb is in the passive voice, the direct object becomes the subject of the verb (e.g., "The lamb is roasted by Abraham"). Some languages distinguish a third voice, the middle voice, indicating a state where the subject is neither the doer nor the "done to" (e.g., "the lamb roasts over the fire"). In Greek the middle voice also has a reflexive sense, e.g., where the effect of the action falls back upon the doer.