perfect as a past tense, it relates the action to the present time. One cannot say of someone now deceased that he "has eaten" or "has been eating". The present auxiliary implies that he is in some way present (alive), even if the action denoted is completed (perfect) or partially completed (progressive perfect).) Aspects can also be marked on non-finite forms of the verb: "(to) be eating" ( infinitive with progressive aspect), "(to) have eaten" (infinitive with perfect aspect), "having eaten" ( present participle or gerund with perfect aspect), etc. The perfect infinitive can further be governed by modal verbs to express various meanings, mostly combining modality with past reference: "I should have eaten" etc. In particular, the modals will and shall and their subjunctive forms would and should are used to combine future or hypothetical reference with aspectual meaning: English expresses some other aspectual distinctions with other constructions. Used to + VERB is a past habitual , as in "I used to go to school", and going to / gonna + VERB is a prospective , a future situation highlighting current intention or expectation, as in "I'm going to go to school next year". Although Standard German does not have aspects, many Upper German languages , all West Central German languages, and some more vernacular German languages do make one aspectual distinction, and so do the colloquial languages of many regions, the so-called German regiolects . While officially discouraged in schools and seen as 'bad language', local English teachers