In
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, tense is a
category
Category, plural categories, may refer to:
Philosophy and general uses
*Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally
* Category of being
* ''Categories'' (Aristotle)
* Category (Kant)
* Categories (Peirce) ...
that expresses time reference.
Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of
verb
A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
s, particularly in their
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
patterns.
The main tenses found in many languages include the
past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
,
present, and
future. Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and
nonpast
A nonpast tense (abbreviated ) is a grammatical tense that distinguishes a verbal action as taking place in times present or future, as opposed to past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situat ...
, or future and
nonfuture. There are also
tenseless languages, like most of the
Chinese languages
The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...
, though they can possess a future and
nonfuture system typical of Sino-Tibetan languages.
In recent work
Maria Bittner
Maria Bittner is Professor Emerita in Linguistics at Rutgers University.
She is a fieldworker, semanticist, and logician whose work has focused on tense and cross-linguistic typology. She is best known for her descriptive and theoretical work o ...
and
Judith Tonhauser have described the different ways in which tenseless languages nonetheless mark time.
On the other hand, some languages make finer tense distinctions, such as remote vs recent past, or near vs remote future.
Tenses generally express time relative to the
moment of speaking. In some contexts, however, their meaning may be relativized to a point in the past or future which is established in the discourse (the moment being spoken about). This is called
''relative'' (as opposed to ''absolute'') tense. Some languages have different verb forms or constructions which manifest relative tense, such as
pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
("past-in-the-past") and "
future-in-the-past
The future in the past is a grammatical tense where the time reference is in the future with respect to a vantage point that is itself in the past. In English, future in the past is not always considered separate tense, but rather as either a subca ...
".
Expressions of tense are often closely connected with expressions of the category of
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
; sometimes what are traditionally called tenses (in languages such as
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
) may in modern analysis be regarded as combinations of tense with aspect. Verbs are also often conjugated for
mood, and since in many cases the three categories are not manifested separately, some languages may be described in terms of a combined
tense–aspect–mood
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...
(TAM) system.
Etymology
The English noun ''tense'' comes from
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intellig ...
"time" (spelled in modern French through deliberate archaization), from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, "time". It is not related to the adjective ''tense'', which comes from Latin , the
perfect passive participle of , "stretch".
Uses of the term
In modern linguistic theory, tense is understood as a category that expresses (
grammaticalizes) time reference; namely one which, using
grammatical means, places a state or action in time.
Nonetheless, in many descriptions of languages, particularly in traditional European grammar, the term "tense" is applied to verb forms or constructions that express not merely position in time, but also additional properties of the state or action – particularly aspectual or modal properties.
The category of
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
expresses how a state or action relates to time – whether it is seen as a complete event, an ongoing or repeated situation, etc. Many languages make a distinction between
perfective aspect (denoting complete events) and
imperfective aspect
The imperfective ( abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...
(denoting ongoing or repeated situations); some also have other aspects, such as a
perfect aspect
The perfect tense or aspect ( abbreviated or ) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. ...
, denoting a state following a prior event. Some of the traditional "tenses" express time reference together with aspectual information. In
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
French, for example, the
imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
denotes past time in combination with imperfective aspect, while other verb forms (the Latin perfect, and the French or ) are used for past time reference with perfective aspect.
The category of
mood is used to express
modality
Modality may refer to:
Humanities
* Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
* Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales
* Modaliti ...
, which includes such properties as uncertainty,
evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
, and obligation. Commonly encountered moods include the
indicative
A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
,
subjunctive, and
conditional. Mood can be bound up with tense, aspect, or both, in particular verb forms. Hence, certain languages are sometimes analysed as having a single
tense–aspect–mood
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...
(TAM) system, without separate manifestation of the three categories.
The term ''tense'', then, particularly in less formal contexts, is sometimes used to denote any combination of tense proper, aspect, and mood. As regards
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, there are many
verb forms and constructions which combine time reference with
continuous
Continuity or continuous may refer to:
Mathematics
* Continuity (mathematics), the opposing concept to discreteness; common examples include
** Continuous probability distribution or random variable in probability and statistics
** Continuous ...
and/or perfect aspect, and with indicative, subjunctive or conditional mood. Particularly in some
English language teaching
Teaching English as a second language (TESL) or Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are terms that refer to teaching English to students whose first language is not English. The terms TESL, TEFL, and TESOL distinguish betwee ...
materials, some or all of these forms can be referred to simply as tenses (see
below).
Particular tense forms need not always carry their basic time-referential meaning in every case. For instance, the
historical present
In linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present or historic present, also called dramatic present or narrative present, is the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. It is widely used in writing about history in Latin (w ...
is a use of the present tense to refer to past events. The phenomenon of ''
fake tense
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactual ...
'' is common crosslinguistically as a means of marking counterfactuality in
conditionals
Conditional (if then) may refer to:
*Causal conditional, if X then Y, where X is a cause of Y
*Conditional probability, the probability of an event A given that another event B has occurred
*Conditional proof, in logic: a proof that asserts a co ...
and wishes.
[von Fintel, Kai; Iatridou, Sabine (2020)]
Prolegomena to a Theory of X-Marking
. ''Manuscript''.
Possible tenses
Not all languages have tense:
tenseless languages include
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
and
Dyirbal.
Some languages have all three basic tenses (the
past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
,
present, and
future), while others have only two: some have past and
nonpast
A nonpast tense (abbreviated ) is a grammatical tense that distinguishes a verbal action as taking place in times present or future, as opposed to past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situat ...
tenses, the latter covering both present and future times (as in
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, and, in some analyses,
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
), whereas others such as
Greenlandic,
Quechua
Quechua may refer to:
*Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru
*Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language
**So ...
, and
Nivkh have future and
nonfuture.
Some languages have four or more tenses, making finer distinctions either in the past (e.g. remote vs. recent past) or in the future (e.g. near vs. remote future). The six-tense language
Kalaw Lagaw Ya
''Kalau Lagau Ya'', ''Kalaw Lagaw Ya'', ''Kala Lagaw Ya'' (), or the ''Western Torres Strait language'' (also several other names, see below), is the language indigenous to the central and western Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia. O ...
of Australia has the remote past, the recent past, the today past, the present, the today/near future and the remote future. Some languages, like the Amazonian
Cubeo language
The Cubeo language (also spelled Cuveo) is the language spoken by the Cubeo people in the Vaupés Department, the Cuduyari and Querarí Rivers and their tributaries in Colombia, and in Brazil and Venezuela. It is a member of the central branch of ...
, have a historical past tense, used for events perceived as historical.
Tenses that refer specifically to "today" are called
hodiernal tenses; these can be either past or future. Apart from Kalaw Lagaw Ya, another language which features such tenses is
Mwera, a
Bantu language of Tanzania. It is also suggested that in 17th-century French, the ''
passé composé'' served as a hodiernal past.
Tenses that contrast with hodiernals, by referring to the past before today or the future after today, are called pre-hodiernal and post-hodiernal respectively. Some languages also have a
crastinal tense, a future tense referring specifically to tomorrow (found in some Bantu languages); or a
hesternal tense, a past tense referring specifically to yesterday
(although this name is also sometimes used to mean pre-hodiernal).
A tense for after tomorrow is thus called post-crastinal, and one for before yesterday is called pre-hesternal.
Another tense found in some languages, including
Luganda, is the persistive tense, used to indicate that a state or ongoing action is still the case (or, in the negative, is no longer the case). Luganda also has tenses meaning "so far" and "not yet".
Some languages have special tense forms that are used to express
relative tense Relative tense and absolute tense are distinct possible uses of the grammatical category of tense. Absolute tense means the grammatical expression of time reference (usually past, present or future) relative to "now" – the moment of speaking. I ...
. Tenses that refer to the past relative to the time under consideration are called ''anterior''; these include the
pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
(for the past relative to a past time) and the
future perfect
The future perfect is a verb form or construction used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future, such as ''will have finished'' in the English sentence "I will have finished by tomorrow." ...
(for the past relative to a future time). Similarly, ''posterior'' tenses refer to the future relative to the time under consideration, as with the English "
future-in-the-past
The future in the past is a grammatical tense where the time reference is in the future with respect to a vantage point that is itself in the past. In English, future in the past is not always considered separate tense, but rather as either a subca ...
": ''(he said that) he would go.'' Relative tense forms are also sometimes analysed as combinations of tense with aspect: the
perfect aspect
The perfect tense or aspect ( abbreviated or ) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. ...
in the anterior case, or the
prospective aspect
In linguistics, the prospective aspect ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect describing an event that occurs subsequent to a given reference time.Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University P ...
in the posterior case.
Some languages have
cyclic tense
Cycle, cycles, or cyclic may refer to:
Anthropology and social sciences
* Cyclic history, a theory of history
* Cyclical theory, a theory of American political history associated with Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.
* Social cycle, various cycles in so ...
systems. This is a form of temporal marking where tense is given relative to a reference point or reference span. In
Burarra, for example, events that occurred earlier on the day of speaking are marked with the same verb forms as events that happened in the far past, while events that happened yesterday (compared to the moment of speech) are marked with the same forms as events in the present. This can be thought of as a system where events are marked as prior or contemporaneous to points of reference on a time line.
Tense marking
Morphology of tense
Tense is normally indicated by the use of a particular verb form – either an
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defi ...
form of the main verb, or a
multi-word construction, or both in combination. Inflection may involve the use of
affixes, such as the ''-ed'' ending that marks the past tense of
English regular verbs, but can also entail
stem modifications, such as
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
, as found as in the
strong verbs in English and other Germanic languages, or
reduplication. Multi-word tense constructions often involve
auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...
s or
clitics. Examples which combine both types of tense marking include the French ''
passé composé'', which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected
past participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
form of the main verb; and the
Irish past tense, where the proclitic ''do'' (in various surface forms) appears in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the main verb.
As has already been mentioned, indications of tense are often bound up with indications of other verbal categories, such as
aspect and mood. The
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
patterns of verbs often also reflect
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting o ...
with categories pertaining to the
subject, such as
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
. It is consequently not always possible to identify elements that mark any specific category, such as tense, separately from the others.
A few languages have been shown to mark tense information (as well as aspect and mood) on
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
s. This may be called
nominal TAM.
Languages that do not have grammatical tense, such as most
Sinitic languages, express time reference chiefly by
lexical
Lexical may refer to:
Linguistics
* Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language
* Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification
* Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
* Lex ...
means – through
adverbial
In English grammar, an adverbial ( abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word ''adverbial'' itself is also used as an ...
s, time phrases, and so on. (The same is done in tensed languages, to supplement or reinforce the time information conveyed by the choice of tense.) Time information is also sometimes conveyed as a secondary feature by markers of other categories, as with the
aspect markers ''le'' and ''guò'', which in most cases place an action in past time. However, much time information is conveyed implicitly by context – it is therefore not always necessary, when
translating
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
from a tensed to a tenseless language, say, to express explicitly in the target language all of the information conveyed by the tenses in the source.
Syntax of tense
The syntactic properties of tense have figured prominently in formal analyses of how tense-marking interacts with word order. Some languages (such as French) allow an adverb (Adv) to intervene between a tense-marked verb (V) and its direct object (O); in other words, they permit
erb-Adverb-Objectordering. In contrast, other languages (such as English) do not allow the adverb to intervene between the verb and its direct object, and require
dverb-Verb-Objectordering.
Tense in syntax is represented by the category label T, which is the head of a TP (tense phrase).
Tenseless language
In linguistics, a tenseless language is a language that does not have a grammatical category of tense. Tenseless languages can and do refer to
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
, but they do so using lexical items such as adverbs or verbs, or by using combinations of
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
,
mood, and words that establish time reference. Examples of tenseless languages are
Burmese,
Dyirbal, most
varieties
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
,
Malay (including
Indonesian),
Thai, Yukatek (Mayan),
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
and in some analyses
Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and
Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to
Ethnography
* Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia)
* Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay
* ...
.
In particular languages
Latin
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
is traditionally described as having six verb paradigms for tense (the Latin for "tense" being ''tempus'', plural ''tempora''):
*
Present ''(praesēns)''
*
Imperfect
The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...
''(praeteritum imperfectum)''
*
Perfect ''(praesēns perfectum)''
*
Future ''(futūrum)''
*
Pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
''(plūs quam perfectum, praeteritum perfectum)''
*
Future perfect
The future perfect is a verb form or construction used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future, such as ''will have finished'' in the English sentence "I will have finished by tomorrow." ...
''(futūrum perfectum)''
Imperfect verbs represent a past process combined with
imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a g ...
, that is, they stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see
secondary present). They can also represent habitual actions (see
Latin tenses with modality). In contrast, perfect verbs represent completed actions. Like the imperfect, the pluperfect, the perfect and the future perfect can realise
relative tense Relative tense and absolute tense are distinct possible uses of the grammatical category of tense. Absolute tense means the grammatical expression of time reference (usually past, present or future) relative to "now" – the moment of speaking. I ...
s, standing for events that are past at the time of another event (see
secondary past).
Latin verbs are inflected for tense and aspect together with
mood (indicative, subjunctive, infinitive, and imperative) and
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
(active or passive). Most verbs can be built by selecting a verb stem and adapting them to endings. Endings may vary according to the speech role, the number and the gender of the subject or an object. Sometimes, verb groups function as a unit and supplement inflection for tense (see
Latin periphrases
In Latin, there are multiple periphrases for tense and mode. Here we list the most common.
Perfect periphrasis
The perfect periphrasis is composed of the auxiliary and a Latin conjugation#Perfect participle, perfect participle such as , , or ...
). For details on verb structure, see
Latin tenses
Latin has six main tenses: three non-perfect tenses (the present, future, and imperfect) and three perfect tenses (the perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect). In technical language, the first three tenses are known as the tenses, while the t ...
and
Latin conjugation
In terms of linguistics and grammar, conjugation has two basic meanings. One meaning is the creation of derived forms of a verb from basic forms, or principal parts. It may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, mood, aspect, voice, o ...
.
Ancient Greek
The paradigms for
tenses in Ancient Greek are similar to the ones in Latin, but with a three-way aspect contrast in the past: the
aorist, the perfect and the imperfect. Both aorist and imperfect verbs can represent a past event: through contrast, the imperfect verb implies a longer duration ('ate' vs 'ate for a long time'). The aorist participle represents the first event of a two-event sequence and the present participle represents an ongoing event at the time of another event. Perfect verbs stood for past affecting actions if the result was still present (e.g. "I have found it") or for present states resulting from a past event (e.g. "I remember"). For further details see
Ancient Greek verbs
Ancient Greek verbs have four moods ( indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), three voices ( active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural).
* In the ...
.
The study of modern languages has been
greatly influenced by the grammar of the Classical languages, since early grammarians, often monks, had no other reference point to describe their language. Latin terminology is often used to describe modern languages, sometimes with a change of meaning, as with the application of "perfect" to forms in English that do not necessarily have perfective meaning, or the words ''Imperfekt'' and ''Perfekt'' to
German past tense forms that mostly lack any relationship to the aspects implied by those terms.
English
English has only two
morphological tenses: the
present (or
non-past), as in ''he goes'', and the
past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
(or
preterite), as in ''he went''.
[
*] The non-past usually references the present, but sometimes references the future (as in ''the bus leaves tomorrow''). In special uses such as the
historical present
In linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present or historic present, also called dramatic present or narrative present, is the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. It is widely used in writing about history in Latin (w ...
it can talk about the past as well. These morphological tenses are marked either with a
suffix (''walk(s)'' ~ ''walked'') or with
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
(''sing(s)'' ~ ''sang'').
In some contexts, particularly in
English language teaching
Teaching English as a second language (TESL) or Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are terms that refer to teaching English to students whose first language is not English. The terms TESL, TEFL, and TESOL distinguish betwee ...
, various tense–aspect combinations are referred to loosely as tenses.
Similarly, the term "future tense" is sometimes loosely applied to cases where modals such as ''will'' are used to talk about future points in time.
Other Indo-European languages
Proto-Indo-European verbs
Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, nu ...
had present, perfect (
stative
According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...
), imperfect and aorist forms – these can be considered as representing two tenses (present and past) with different
aspects. Most languages in the
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
family have developed systems either with two morphological tenses (present or "non-past", and past) or with three (present, past and future). The tenses often form part of entangled
tense–aspect–mood
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...
conjugation systems. Additional tenses, tense–aspect combinations, etc. can be provided by compound constructions containing auxiliary verbs.
The
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
(which include English) have present (non-past) and past tenses formed morphologically, with future and other additional forms made using auxiliaries. In standard
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
, the compound past ''(
Perfekt)'' has replaced the simple morphological past in most contexts.
The
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
(descendants of Latin) have past, present and future morphological tenses, with additional aspectual distinction in the past.
French is an example of a language where, as in German, the simple morphological perfective past ''(
passé simple
The ''passé simple'' (, ''simple past'', ''preterite'', or '' past historic''), also called the ''passé défini'' (, ''definite past''), is the literary equivalent of the ''passé composé'' in the French language
French ( or ) is a ...
)'' has mostly given way to a compound form ''(
passé composé)''.
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
, a
Celtic language
The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
, has past, present and future tenses (see
Irish conjugation). The past contrasts perfective and imperfective aspect, and some verbs retain such a contrast in the present.
Classical Irish had a three-way aspectual contrast of simple–perfective–imperfective in the past and present tenses. Modern
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...
on the other hand only has past, non-past and 'indefinite', and, in the case of the verb 'be' (including its use as an auxiliary), also present tense.
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, an
Indo-Iranian language
The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...
, has past and non-past forms, with additional aspectual distinctions. Future can be expressed using an auxiliary, but almost never in non-formal context. Colloquially the perfect suffix ''-e'' can be added to past tenses to indicate that an action is speculative or reported (e.g. "it seems that he was doing", "they say that he was doing"). A similar feature is found in Turkish. (For details, see
Persian verbs Persian verbs ( fa, فعلهای فارسی, Fe’lhā-ye fārsi, ) are very regular compared with those of most European languages. From the two stems given in dictionaries (e.g. '', '' 'take, took', '', '' 'write, wrote', '', '' 'give, gave' et ...
.)
Hindustani (
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
and
), an
Indo-Aryan language
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...
, has indicative perfect past and indicative future forms, while the indicative present and indicative imperfect past conjugations exist only for the verb ''honā'' (to be). The indicative future is constructed using the
future subjunctive conjugations (which used to be the indicative present conjugations in older forms of Hind-Urdu) by adding a future future suffix -''gā'' that declines for
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
and the
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
of the noun that the pronoun refes to. The forms of ''gā'' are derived from the perfective participle forms of the verb "to go," ''jāna''. The conjugations of the indicative perfect past and the indicative imperfect past are derived from participles (just like the past tense formation in
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
) and hence they agree with the
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages pres ...
and the
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
of noun which the pronoun refers to and not the pronoun itself. The perfect past doubles as the perfective aspect participle and the imperfect past conjugations act as the copula to mark imperfect past when used with the aspectual participles. Hindi-Urdu has an overtly marked
tense-aspect-mood system.
Periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one in ...
Hindi-Urdu verb forms (aspectual verb forms) consist of two elements, the first of these two elements is the aspect marker and the second element (the copula) is the common tense-mood marker. Hindi-Urdu has 3 grammatical aspectsː
''Habitual'',
''Perfective'', and
''Progressive''; and 5 grammatical moodsː ''
Indicative
A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
'', ''
Presumptive'', ''
Subjunctive'', ''
Contrafactual'', and ''
Imperative''.
(Seeː ''
Hindi verbs
Hindi verbs are highly inflected in comparison to English, but markedly simple in comparison to Sanskrit, from which Hindi has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through Prakrit). Verbs in Hindi conjugate according to mood, tense, person ...
'')
In the
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
, verbs are
intrinsically perfective or imperfective. In
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and some other languages in the group, perfective verbs have past and "future tenses", while imperfective verbs have past, present and "future", the imperfective "future" being a compound tense in most cases. The "future tense" of perfective verbs is formed in the same way as the present tense of imperfective verbs. However, in
South Slavic languages, there may be a greater variety of forms –
Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
, for example, has present, past (both "imperfect" and "aorist") and "future tenses", for both perfective and imperfective verbs, as well as
perfect forms made with an auxiliary (see
Bulgarian verbs
Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared with other Slavic languages. Bulgarian verbs are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfec ...
). However it doesn't have real future tense, because the future tense is formed by the shortened version of the present of the verb hteti (ще) and it just adds present tense forms of person suffixes: -m (I), -š (you), -ø (he,she,it), -me (we), -te (you, plural), -t (they).
Other languages
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
and
Hungarian, both members of the
Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
language family, have morphological present (non-past) and past tenses. The
Hungarian verb ''van'' ("to be") also has a future form.
Turkish verbs conjugate for past, present and future, with a variety of aspects and moods.
Arabic verbs
Arabic verbs ( '; '), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of two to five (but usually three) consonants called a root (''triliteral'' or ''quadriliteral'' according to th ...
have past and non-past; future can be indicated by a prefix.
Korean verbs
Verbs in the Korean language come in last place in a clause. Verbs are the most complex part of speech, and a properly conjugated verb may stand on its own as a complete sentence. This article uses the Yale romanization in bold to show morphology ...
have a variety of affixed forms which can be described as representing present, past and future tenses, although they can alternatively be considered to be aspectual. Similarly,
Japanese verbs
Japanese verbs, like the verbs of many other languages, can be phonetically modified to change their purpose, nuance or meaning – a process known as conjugation. In Japanese, the beginning of a word (the ''stem'') is preserved during conjugation ...
are described as having present and past tenses, although they may be analysed as aspects. Some
Wu Chinese
The Wu languages (; Wu romanization and IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] ( Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Zhejiang Provin ...
languages, such as
Shanghainese, use
grammatical particles to mark some tenses. Other
Chinese languages
The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...
and many other East Asian languages generally lack inflection and are considered to be
tenseless languages, although they often have aspect markers which convey certain information about time reference.
For examples of languages with a greater variety of tenses, see the section on
possible tenses, above. Fuller information on tense formation and usage in particular languages can be found in the articles on those languages and their grammars.
Austronesian languages
Rapa
Rapa is the French Polynesian language of the island of
Rapa Iti
Rapa, also called Rapa Iti, or "Little Rapa", to distinguish it from Easter Island, whose Polynesian name is Rapa Nui, is the largest and only inhabited island of the Bass Islands in French Polynesia. An older name for the island is Oparo. The ...
.
Verbs in the indigenous Old Rapa occur with a marker known as TAM which stands for tense, aspect, or mood which can be followed by directional particles or
deictic
In linguistics, deixis (, ) is the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words ''tomorrow'', ''there'', and ''they''. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their de ...
particles. Of the markers there are three tense markers called: Imperfective, Progressive, and Perfective. Which simply mean, Before, Currently, and After.
However, specific TAM markers and the type of deictic or directional particle that follows determine and denote different types of meanings in terms of tenses.
Imperfective: denotes actions that have not occurred yet but will occur and expressed by TAM e.
Progressive: Also expressed by TAM e and denotes actions that are currently happening when used with deictic na, and denotes actions that was just witnessed but still currently happening when used with deictic ra.
Perfective: denotes actions that have already occurred or have finished and is marked by TAM ka.
In Old Rapa there are also other types of tense markers known as Past, Imperative, and Subjunctive.
Past
TAM i marks past action. It is rarely used as a matrix TAM and is more frequently observed in past embedded clauses
Imperative
The imperative is marked in Old Rapa by TAM a. A second person subject is implied by the direct command of the imperative.
For a more polite form rather than a straightforward command imperative TAM a is used with adverbial kānei. Kānei is only shown to be used in imperative structures and was translated by the french as "please".
It is also used in a more impersonal form. For example, how you would speak toward a pesky neighbor.
Subjunctive
The subjunctive in Old Rapa is marked by kia and can also be used in expressions of desire
Tokelau
The
Tokelauan language
Tokelauan is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and on Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with Englis ...
is a tenseless language. The language uses the same words for all three tenses; the phrase E liliu mai au i te Aho Tōnai literally translates to Come back / me / on Saturday, but the translation becomes 'I am coming back on Saturday'.
Wuvulu-Aua
Wuvulu-Aua does not have an explicit tense, but rather tense is conveyed by mood, aspect markers, and time phrases. Wuvulu speakers use a realis mood to convey past tense as speakers can be certain about events that have occurred.
In some cases, realis mood is used to convey present tense — often to indicate a state of being. Wuvulu speakers use an irrealis mood to convey future tense.
Tense in Wuvulu-Aua may also be implied by using time adverbials and aspectual markings. Wuvulu contains three verbal markers to indicate sequence of events. The preverbal adverbial ''loʔo'' 'first' indicates the verb occurs before any other. The postverbal morpheme ''liai'' and ''linia'' are the respective intransitive and transitive suffixes indicating a repeated action. The postverbal morpheme ''li'' and ''liria'' are the respective intransitive and transitive suffixes indicating a completed action.
Mortlockese
Mortlockese
Mortlockese (Kapsen Mwoshulók), also known as Mortlock or Nomoi, is a language that belongs to the Chuukic group of Micronesian languages in the Federated States of Micronesia spoken primarily in the Mortlock Islands ( Nomoi or Lower Mortlock I ...
uses tense markers such as ''mii'' and to denote the present tense state of a subject, ''aa'' to denote a present tense state that an object has changed to from a different, past state, ''kɞ'' to describe something that has already been completed, ''pɞ'' and ''lɛ'' to denote future tense, ''pʷapʷ'' to denote a possible action or state in future tense, and ''sæn/mwo'' for something that has not happened yet. Each of these markers is used in conjunction with the subject proclitics except for the markers ''aa'' and ''mii''. Additionally, the marker ''mii'' can be used with any type of intransitive verb.
See also
*
Sequence of tenses The sequence of tenses (known in Latin as ''consecutio temporum'', and also known as agreement of tenses, succession of tenses and tense harmony) is a set of grammatical rules of a particular language, governing the agreement between the tenses o ...
*
Spatial tense
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Combinations of Tense, Aspect, and Mood in GreekGrammatical Features Inventory
DEIC:deictic
DIR:directional
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grammatical Tense
English grammar
Time in linguistics