Unit 2: Time, tense and aspect

Activity 1: Tense

Read the following passage to answer these questions.

1. According to linguists, how many tenses are there?
2. What three factors can tense be applied to?
3. What is the example for the first factor.
4. Why is past tense used for the second factor.
5. Why is past tense used for the third factor.
6. How many tenses are commonly taught in English textbooks?

English verb tense refers to the time when an action or state occurs. Linguists, led by Lewis (1986), refer to only two tenses: present and past. Tense can be applied to three factors, namely time, reality and register. Present tense is used for actions and states that are close while past tense is used for actions and states that are remote. When focussing on time, we can use present tense to refer to present actions (e.g. I study every day.) and past tense to refer to past actions (e.g. I studied last night). When referring to reality, present tense is used to describe reality (e.g. I am busy while past tense is used to describe hypothetical actions or states (e.g. I wish I wasn't so busy). When used for register, we can use present tense to show a neutral register (e.g. Can you help me?) or a past tense for a more polite register (e.g. Could you help me?). In every instance of usage of past or present tenses, one of these three factors applies. Tense is, therefore, not simply about time.

Textbooks for English language teaching used in school curricula worldwide, however, tend to focus on the time factor. One of the reasons is to make it easier to understand. Many textbooks state that there are three verb tenses: past, present and future. Each of these tenses has four forms, creating a total of twelve tenses. However, this classification is pedagogic rather than linguistic. For teachers, it is easier to explain tenses using this classification.

Reference

Lewis, M. (1986) The English Verb: An Exploration of Structure and Meaning. Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

Activity 2: Tense and aspect

Read the following passage to answer these questions.

1. Do Japanese and English have the same number of tenses?
2. What is the formal term that means "fabric of time"?
3. What three concepts are included in "fabric of time"?
4. What are the three ways to express aspect in English?
5. Which two ways to express aspect cannot be used together?

Tense is used to refer to a point in time. This point is either before the moment of speaking, at the same time as the moment of speaking or after the moment of speaking. Languages refer to tenses differently. Some languages have multiple tenses, some three tenses, some have two tenses. For example, English has present and past tenses while Japanese has past and non-past tenses. Most Chinese languages are tenseless, but even these tenseless languages have words to indicate time.

European linguists tended to use the word "tense" to describe not only the point in time of verb actions or states, but also to express additional information, such as the aspect and modality. To disambiguate the usage of tense, we will use tense to refer to only two time periods and "grammatical tense" to refer to the twelve tenses commonly taught to learners of English. While tense refers to a location in time, aspect refers to the "fabric of time", that is single block of time, a continuous flow of time or a repetitive occurance.

There are three ways to express aspect in English, namely: simple, progressive and perfect. Simple and progessive cannot occur simultaneously, but perfect can occur with either simple of progressive. This results in four possible permuations as shown below. All the examples are given in present forms, but they can be used in both past and future forms.

1. present simple: e.g. I read every day.
2. present progressive (or continuous): e.g. I am reading now.
3. present perfect simple: e.g. I have read War and Peace.
4. present perfect progressive: e.g. I have been reading for ten minutes so far.

Activity 4: Tense matrix

Study the following table to understand the syntax of different tenses and the names of the different tenses. In this table, all examples are in active voice and use the irregular verb "swim".

Activity 5: Finite vs. non-finite verbs

Read the following passage to understand how to differentiate finite from non-finite verbs.

Verbs may carry tense or they may not carry tense. Verbs that carry a tense are finite. Verbs that cannot carry a tense are non-finite. There are some simple checks that you can use to confirm whether verb is finite or not. The verb should conjugate to form present, past and future forms. In present forms, the verb should show agreement with the subject. In English singular and plural subjects necessite changes in the form of the verb, which is most commonly realized by adding the suffix -s when the grammatical subject is third-person singular, e.g. he, she or it.

Conversely, non-finite verbs do not change form when the tense shifts and in present tenses do not agree with the grammatical subject.

Let's practise identifying the finiteness of verbs. Identify which verbs in the following sentences are finite.

1. The man ate spaghetti.
2. The boy wanted to eat spaghetti.
3. The girl liked eating spaghetti.
4. The grandfather was eating spaghetti and drinking coffee.

In the first sentence, the verb is "ate". We can check the tense by changing the sentence to present and future forms, (The man eats spaghetti, The man will eat spaghetti). The tense can change. In the present form, we can also notice that "eat" changes to "eats". Thus, this verb is finite.

In the second sentence, the verbs are "wanted" and "eat". We can check the tense by changing the sentence to present and future forms, (The man wants to eat spaghetti, The man will want to eat). The tense of "wanted" can change, but "eat" does not. The sentence (The boy wanted to ate spaghetti) is not possible and so "eat" is non-finite. In the present form, we can also notice that "wanted" changes to "wants". Thus, "wanted" is finite, but "eat" is non-finite.

In the third sentence, the verb "liked" can change form and in present simple tense becomes "likes" and so "liked" is finite. However, "eating" does not change and is, therefore, non-finite.

In the fourth sentence, there are two verbs "was eating" and "drinking". The auxiliary verb in the second verb group is elided (omitted), but the long form of the sentence is: (The grandfather was eating spaghetti and [was] drinking coffee.) When the tense is changed to present both forms change from "was" to "is", and so both are finite.

Activity 6: Labelling verbs

Decide whether each of the underlined verbs is finite or non-finite. For the finite verbs decide the grammatical tense of its verb group. Share your ideas in the discussion forum on ELMS

1. There was torrential rain yesterday.
2. I wanted to check my tomato plants but decided not to.
3. The weather forecast reported that it will rain for 24 hours.
4. By next week, my tomato patch will have turned into a pond.
5. I have been trying to grow tomatoes for three years, but without much success.
6. I started growing tomatoes because my friend said it was simple.

Activity 7: Understanding tenses 

Watch and listen to a short explanation (3 min 50 sec) of tense, modality and aspect.