Aspect and aktionsart are verbal categories which shape the temporal design of a situation by focusing on its temporal borders and its phases. Relevant formatives are principally grammaticalized from verbs designating phases of a situation which take clausal complements, like ‘start’, ‘keep’, ‘cease’. Such paths will be illustrated from Chinese and Spanish. Both of these languages have a rich supply of verbs which are fit for such a use, and of verbal constructions in which such verbs can combine with other verbs which will emerge, in the course of grammaticalization, as the structural head of the periphrastic form.