The english verb sit apparently has two meanings. One is the terminal action of sitting down (usually indicated by “down”), the other is to be seated, i.e. the process.
I walked into the room and sat on the whoopey cushion = action, sit down
I sat on the grass all afternoon = action
We walked down the road and sat on the grass = ambigious! or both?
What is the name (is there a name for this distinction?) It seems to me kinda like the difference of aspect in greek
And not only in German. Not that long ago, almost every language distinguished the so-called durative stems from the non-durative. That is why in Greek verb system you have present(+futur), aorist and perfect verb stem. Here every stem reflects the duartion in time, not a time distance. And so, present is related to an action that lasts (cf. tempus imperfectum wich is a past tense but it significates an action that endured in time), aorist is used for an action that happed in one moment (like, for instance, sit down), and perfect is used for a finished action (it is most similar to english present perfect, an example for this could be the perfect form of the verb ὡράω οἴδα which literally means “I’ve seen, so now I know”). Latin differs a bit, but still you can find some relicts in the stem endings. Compare iacEo and iacIo, where the first one means “to lay” while the other means “to hit, to throw sth”. The consequence of throwing something is that this thing is laying now.
Since the tendency in modern languages is simplification, english does not distinguish these two states.
However, this phenomenon is still present in the Slavic languages.
The difference is perhaps the one between stative and dynamic verbs. Stative verbs describe a state or condition rather than an action.
For example “She has a good job.” She’s not actually doing anything. The verb tells us something about her. Cf. “She’s having a bath.” In this case she is doing something.
Notice that we wouldn’t say “She’s having a good job”. Stative verbs are rarely found in the continuous tenses.
It might be helpful to think of this distinction in terms of different meanings of verbs, rather than the verbs themselves. Thus, to take another example: “I think textkit is wonderful” v. “I’m thinking about what to read next.” In the first sentence the verb ‘think’ means ‘it is my opinion that …’ , while in the second sentence it refers to mental activity.