This paper analyses the nature of understanding verbal aspect. This task involves an inferencing process triggered by the semantics of the sentence involved, specifically the verb, any aspectual markers present, and adverbials. Via such inferences, any incompatibilities raised by these semantic interpretations are resolved in the light of general knowledge of the world. Hence there is no necessary one-to-one correlation between aspectual markings in equivalent utterances in two languages. Two claims underlie the author’s argument that the learning and/or translation of such aspectual features can be made explicit: firstly it is claimed that the inferencing processes involved are not language-specific, and secondly it is claimed that a correlation between the semantics and the syntax of verb classes is to be found in most natural languages. Examples from German, English and Russian are provided.