Unit 3: Time in natural language

Activity 1: Complexity of natural language

Read the inroduction below:

Natural language is complex. Words, phrases, clauses and sentences are often ambiguous. However, when identifying tense structure, the ambiguities are fewer than identifying the meaning of the tenses. Consider the example sentence below.

• She is boring.

This sentence could be "present simple tense" if boring is classed as an adjective. However, if boring is classed as a verb, this sentence could be "present progressive." A dictionary search reveals that "boring" may be classified as an adjective or a verb. Thus, even for such a simple sentence, the labelling of tense is not straightforward.

This problem is related to parts of speech. The accuracy of automatic labelling of parts of speech greatly affects any natural language processing that utilize those labels.

When meaning in context is considered, there is even more ambiguity.

• She is reading a novel.

This sentence could mean:

1. She started reading the novel. She is not reading now, but she will continue reading the book later.
2. She is currently looking at and reading the book.
3. She should not be doing so, but now she is reading a novel. (i.e. an undesired action, e.g. she should be doing homework.

In short, syntax may be ambiguous, meaning is more likely to be ambiguous.

Activity 2: Time deixis

Watch and listen to this short video (2 min 4 sec) that explains and gives examples of indexical time and deictic time expressions.

It is possible to refer to the day following today using the deictic adverb "tomorrow", but it is also possible to use the specific name of the day, which naturally changes depending on what day today is. useful link perhaps

Activity 3: The token "time"

Consider how many times a day speakers of English use the word "time".

In fact, the word time is highly frequent. It is listed as the 52nd or 55th most frequent word in English. Even in the instruction above the word time was present! The ranking differs slightly depending on the algorithm used. To put this rank in perspective there are around 200,000 discrete words in English with around half a billion discrete dictionary entries (470,000).

Activity 4: Visualizing "time"

Access the Visuword website here and input the word "time". Check the four meanings of time as a verb and five as a noun. This is just the tip of the iceberg though, because time combines with many other words, creating expressions, such as time out, in time, and time machine.

Access the Lexipedia website here and input the word "time". Check out the multiple meanings displayed.

Activity 5: Instants and intervals

Read.

Time expressions can be indexical or deictic. Another way to classify time expressions is by whether they refer to a specific points in time, i.e. instants, or whether they refer to periods in time, i.e. intervals. At 9:15 is a specific point while Monday is a period. Arguably, 9:15 could be seen as a period since one minute contains 60 seconds, but for most people, we arrange to meet people in hours and minutes, and ignore seconds since when we say 9:15,we tend to mean 9:15:00.

Collect and classify time expressions into instant and interval expressions.

When studying how to use for and for, it is necessary to know whether the following time expression is a point in time or a period. Remember depending on the scale, some periods (intervals) may be considered as points (instants). Identify the time expression and classify them as either instants or intervals in these examples.

1. She has been working here for a decade.
2. He has been working here since Friday.
3. It worked for two days and then broke down.
4. One day a cat was sitting on a wall.
5. A cat sat on a wall for one day.
6. The race lasted for just 10 seconds.
7. Covid-19 has distrupted air transport since the beginning of 2020.
8. I have not seen her since my schooldays.

Activity 6: Understanding aspect

There are three aspects to understand, namely progressive, perfect and future. Progressive and perfect aspects can be used to describe the past, present or future. Future aspect can only refer to the future, though.

Find the answers to the following questions. Share your ideas in the discussion forum. Remember the first person who submits a post may be wrong, so think about the answer carefully!

1. How many tenses can take progressive aspect? What are their names?
2. How many tenses can take perfect aspect? What are their names?
3. Which tenses can be used to refer to the future?
4. How can we know whether a sentence such as "I can do it" refers to the present, the future or both?

Share your ideas in the discussion forum. Remember the first person who submits a post may be wrong, so think about the answer carefully!

Activity 7: Understanding future aspect

What is the difference in meaning between the following:

1. "I will go" and "I'll go"?
2. "I will go" and "I am going to go"?
3. "I am meeting him tomorrow" and "I am going to meet him tomorrow"?
4. "I will be able to help you tomorrow" and "I can help you tomorrow."

Read the following sentences. Identify which refer to future time and which verbs are used in future aspect.

1. I am having my haircut.
2. They will not understand that concept.
3. She is going to try that.
4. Tim might see him later on.
5. I am having my haircut at 2pm.
6. We plan to go to Mexico.
7. He is about to leave now.

Share your ideas in the discussion forum.

Knowledge and application

Activity 8: Reading, summarizing and creating

Read extensively about your assigned grammatical tense. Submit a two-minute audio summary of the information via ELMS . This can be submitted in either English or Japanese. Do not state your name in the audio file. Label the file with the tense name. Your recordings will be uploaded to this website, so do not divulge any personal information.

The last number of your student id determines your tense. For example if the final digit is 3, your tense is number 3. If the final digit is 0, your topic is number 10.

1. Present simple
2. Past simple
3. Future simple
4. Present perfect simple
5. Past perfect simple
6. Future perfect simple
7. Present progressive
8. Past progressive
9. Present perfect progressive
10. Past perfect progressive