Chapter 7 presents a theory of the Progressive Form in which the PROG-operator is broken up into BE and -ING. This makes it impossible to maintain the central position attributed to the Progressive in the analysis of imperfectivity. The situation turns out to be more complex but can be accounted for compositionally by giving -ing its own semantic value. The chapter also shows how the binary approach to compositionality bridges the gap between the analysis of Slavic and non-Slavic aspect. It formalizes an aspectual theory which accounts for a wide variety of Slavic languages. It continues by focussing on the position of the aorist in rich tense systems where it has to survive marginally or where it has obtained an important position. A comparison is made with aoristic tense forms in systems that are (re-)organized binarily such as French. That opens the way for a deeper insight in the semantics of tense forms in languages where the aorist does not or no longer appears.

Chapter 2 corrects the tendency to let any serious theory of tense start in 1947 with the publication of Reichenbach (1947). It is absolutely necessary to connect the current theory of tense with classical grammar in order to take into account the aorist or its current descendants. This leads to a discussion of different ternarily organized tense systems as part of a closer inspection of notions like point, interval, fleeting ??, landmark, etc. This prepares the way for showing which sort of role they have in a binary approach. The chapter also gives a sketch of the so-called present perfect puzzle preparing for a solution in Chapter 6.