Time and Tense - English, what a wonderful language!

The common idea of tense is often used to cover all forms of the verb in relation to both form and function and springs from different basic premises. Firstly most language learners think of verb formation and usage with the obvious relationship between tense and time. In fact in many languages, such as Spanish or French, time and tense are synonymous. Secondly, like many concepts in English grammar – such as avoiding split infinitives for example – the idea of tense develops from the historical approach of trying to harmonise English grammar with Latin grammar. This motivated grammarians to look for corresponding forms between “tenses” and many language learners do the same in an attempt to understand how English works.

In most cases, we would normally represent time by means of a timeline concept marking the past, the present and the future. While time is a universal concept, not all languages express time in the same manner. Linguists now make a distinction between tense and aspect. Tense is defined as the “absolute location of an event or action in time” and is generally marked by inflection in the form, in other words it can be considered as a grammatical form, while aspect “refers to how an event or action is to be viewed with respect to time.” [i]

While we might be accustomed to think of expressing time according to the past, the present and the future, it can be said that English only has two tenses – present tense and past (or non-present) tense since these are the only forms that show inflection:

John walks to work – Mary is ill (Present tense)

John walked to work – Mary was ill (Past tense)

As a general rule the third person singular of the present tense is inflected –s (I sing but she sings) and the past tense is usually formed by the stem + -ed (talk – talk +ed = talked.)  English does not have a future tense in the sense of having an inflected form, equivalent to the French parlerai or Spanish hablaré but expresses the future in a variety of ways, such as by using constructions like will + infinitive or be going to + infinitive.

In the case of aspect, it is generally held that an action can be viewed as progressive (sometimes known as continuous), perfective or perfect progressive. Since this refers to the manner in which the verb is viewed or regarded, the question is how to teach this to an English language student since the differences are often slight, ambiguous or context dependant.

The formation of aspects is as follows:

The progressive aspect is formed by using the construction to be + verb + -ing :                                     He is + sleep + -ing = he is sleeping

The perfective aspect is formed by using the construction to have + past participle :

                                    He has + eaten = he has eaten

The perfect progressive aspect is formed by the construction to have been + verb + -ing :

                                    He has been + sleep + -ing = he has been sleeping

Both tense and aspect can be combined in various ways to form the following paradigm:

	Simple	Progressive	Perfective	Perfect Progressive
Present	walk	am walking is walking are walking	have walked has walked	have been walking has been walking
Past	walked	was walking were walking	had walked	had been walking

From the above we can see the variation in verb forms and contrast their various uses. In general terms, the progressive aspect refers to something which is still in progress during a temporary period, such as a planned action. The perfective aspect links two events at different times, one of which is generally in the past, but the other may still be ongoing. 

Thus:

John sleeps soundly (Present simple – states a general fact, John is not sleeping at this moment in time)

John is sleeping soundly (Present progressive – the action is ongoing, John is sleeping at this moment in time)

They have lived in Spain for five years (Present perfective – action started in the past and they are still living there at the present)

Peter had been walking the dog when he slipped (Past perfect progressive – he was in the process of walking the dog when another event took place, his phone rang)

Some textbooks will make the distinction between the two concepts, tense and aspect, while others will use the general term “tense” to cover all forms of the verb. This former option is chosen by Quirk et al in A Grammar of Contemporary English which differentiates between time, tense and aspect and deals with the simple present and the simple past together as tenses, before moving on to aspect, while Parrott’s Grammar for English Language Teachers follows the latter option.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Parrott, Martin (2000) Grammar for English Language Teachers Cambridge University Press

Quirk et al (1989) A Grammar of Contemporary English Longman, Essex 18^th edition

The Internet Grammar of English

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[i] Both the definition of tense and aspect are taken from the Internet Grammar of English.