Tenseless language
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In
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
, tense is a
category Category, plural categories, may refer to: General uses *Classification, the general act of allocating things to classes/categories Philosophy * Category of being * ''Categories'' (Aristotle) * Category (Kant) * Categories (Peirce) * Category ( ...
that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of
verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
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 change o ...
patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the
past The past is the set of all Spacetime#Definitions, 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 ...
,
present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
, and
future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ex ...
. Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future and nonfuture. There are also tenseless languages, like most of the
Chinese languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split b ...
, though they can possess a future and nonfuture system typical of Sino-Tibetan languages. In recent work Maria Bittner 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, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we ''had arrived''" ...
("past-in-the-past") and "
future-in-the-past The future in the past is a grammatical tense In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation ...
". Expressions of tense are often closely connected with expressions of the category of aspect; sometimes what are traditionally called tenses (in languages such as
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
) 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 in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of ...
(TAM) system.


Etymology

The English noun ''tense'' comes from
Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, "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 grammar">grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formu ...
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 Grammatical aspect">aspect 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 ...
(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 languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
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 doing (something)" o ...
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 * Modalit ...
, 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 sentence Dec ...
,
subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...
, 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 in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of ...
(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, 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 English as a second or foreign language refers to the use of English language, English by individuals whose native language is different, commonly among students learning to speak and write English. Variably known as English as a foreign lang ...
materials, some or all of these forms can be referred to simply as tenses (see
below Below may refer to: *Earth *Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor * Bottom (disambiguation) *Less than *Temperatures below freezing *Hell or underworld People with the surname * Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general * Fred Belo ...
). 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 instead of past tenses when narrating past events. It is typically thought to heig ...
is a use of the present tense to refer to past events. The phenomenon of '' fake tense'' 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 *Conditional proof, in logic: a proof that asserts a conditional, a ...
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 and Dyirbal. Some languages have all three basic tenses (the
past The past is the set of all Spacetime#Definitions, 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 ...
,
present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
, and
future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ex ...
), while others have only two: some have past and nonpast tenses, the latter covering both present and future times (as in
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
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), whereas others such as Greenlandic, Quechua, and
Nivkh Nivkh or Amuric or Gilyak may refer to: * Nivkh people (''Nivkhs'') or Gilyak people (''Gilyaks'') * Nivkh languages or Gilyak languages * Gilyak class gunboat, ''Gilyak'' class gunboat, such as the Russian gunboat Korietz#Second gunboat, second R ...
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. On some islands, ...
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, have a historical past tense, used for events perceived as historical. Tenses that refer specifically to "today" are called
hodiernal tense A hodiernal tense (abbreviated ) is a grammatical tense for the current day. (''Hodie'' or ''hodierno die'' is Latin for 'today'.) Hodiernal tenses refer to events of today (in an absolute tense system) or of the day under consideration (in a rela ...
s; these can be either past or future. Apart from Kalaw Lagaw Ya, another language which features such tenses is Mwera, a
Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
of Tanzania. It is also suggested that in 17th-century French, the ''
passé composé The (; ) is a past tense in the French language. It is used to express an action that has been finished completely or incompletely at the time of speech, or at some (possibly unknown) time in the past. It originally corresponded in function to t ...
'' 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 crastinal tense (abbreviated ) is a future tense applied to a following or subsequent day. (''Crāstinō diē'' is the Latin for 'tomorrow'.) Crastinal tense refers to an event which will occur tomorrow (in an absolute tense system) or the follo ...
, a future tense referring specifically to tomorrow (found in some Bantu languages); or a
hesternal tense A hesternal tense (abbreviated ) is a past tense for the previous day. (''Hesterno die'' is Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spo ...
, 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 Ganda or Luganda ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Ganda people, Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, includ ...
, 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. In ...
. 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, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we ''had arrived''" ...
(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 In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation ...
": ''(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, such as
Nez perce The Nez Perce (; autonym in Nez Perce language: , meaning 'we, the people') are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who still live on a fraction of the lands on the southeastern Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest. This region h ...
or Cavineña also have
periodic tense Periodic tense is a subtype of the grammatical category of tense, which encodes that the event expressed by the verb occurs within a particular period of the day (such as 'at night', 'in the morning' etc.) or of the year ('in winter', 'in summer' ...
markers that encode that the action occurs in a recurrent temporal period of the day ("in the morning", "during the day", "at night", "until dawn" etc) or of the year ("in winter"). Some languages have cyclic tense 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 timeline.


Tense marking


Morphology of tense

Tense is normally indicated by the use of a particular verb form – either an
inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...
form of the main verb, or a multi-word construction, or both in combination. Inflection may involve the use of
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...
es, such as the ''-ed'' ending that marks the past tense of English regular verbs, but can also entail
stem Stem or STEM most commonly refers to: * Plant stem, a structural axis of a vascular plant * Stem group * Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Stem or STEM can also refer to: Language and writing * Word stem, part of a word respon ...
modifications, such as
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) 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 relate ...
, as found as in the strong verbs in English and other Germanic languages, or
reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...
. 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 ...
s or
clitics In Morphology (linguistics), morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , Back-formation, backformed from Ancient Greek, Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) ...
. Examples which combine both types of tense marking include the French ''
passé composé The (; ) is a past tense in the French language. It is used to express an action that has been finished completely or incompletely at the time of speech, or at some (possibly unknown) time in the past. It originally corresponded in function to t ...
'', which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected
past participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) 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 a verb and used as an adject ...
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 change o ...
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 (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...
with categories pertaining to the subject, such as
person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who 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 suc ...
,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic 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 can ...
and
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
. It is consequently not always possible to identify elements that mark any specific category, such as tense, separately from the others. Languages that do not have grammatical tense, such as most
Sinitic languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a p ...
, 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 * Lexical ...
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 a ...
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 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.


Nominal Tense

A few languages have been shown to mark tense information (as well as aspect and mood) on
noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
s. This may be called nominal tense, or more broadly nominal TAM which includes nominal marking of aspect and mood as well.


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 continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
, but they do so using lexical items such as adverbs or verbs, or by using combinations of aspect, 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, Malay (including Indonesian), Thai, Maya (linguistic nomenclature: "Yukatek Maya"),
Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...
and in some analyses Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and Guaraní.


In particular languages

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.


Latin

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
is traditionally described as having six verb paradigms for tense (the Latin for "tense" being ''tempus'', plural ''tempora''): *
Present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
''(praesēns)'' *
Future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ex ...
''(futūrum)'' *
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 doing (something)" o ...
''(praeteritum imperfectum)'' * Perfect ''(praesēns 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)'' *
Pluperfect The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we ''had arrived''" ...
''(plūs quam perfectum, praeteritum perfectum)'' Imperfect tense verbs represent a past process combined with so called
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 ...
, that is, they often stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see secondary present) or represent habitual actions (see Latin tenses with modality) (e.g. 'he was eating', 'he used to eat'). The perfect tense combines the meanings of a simple past ('he ate') with that of an English perfect tense ('he has eaten'), which in ancient Greek are two different tenses (aorist and perfect). The pluperfect, the perfect and the future perfect may also 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. In ...
s, standing for events that are past at the time of another event (see secondary past): for instance, , , may stand for respectively '', '' and ''. 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 produ ...
(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). For details on verb structure, see
Latin tenses The main Latin tenses can be divided into two groups: the present system (also known as tenses), consisting of the present, future, and imperfect; and the perfect system (also known as tenses), consisting of the perfect, future perfect, and pl ...
and
Latin conjugation In 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. The second meaning of the word ''conjugation'' is a group of verbs which all have ...
.


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 Aorist ( ; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the ...
, the perfect and the imperfect. Both aorist and imperfect verbs can represent a past event: through contrast, the imperfect verb often implies a longer duration (e.g. 'they urged him' vs. 'they persuaded him'). 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 actions if the result is still present (e.g. 'I have found it') or for present states resulting from a past event (e.g. 'I remember').


English

English has only two morphological tenses: the
present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
(or
non-past The nonpast tense (also spelled non-past) ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical tense that distinguishes an action as taking place in times present or future. The nonpast tense contrasts with the past tense, which distinguishes an action as taking place ...
), as in ''he goes'', and the
past The past is the set of all Spacetime#Definitions, 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 ...
(or
preterite The preterite or preterit ( ; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple p ...
), 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 instead of past tenses when narrating past events. It is typically thought to heig ...
it can talk about the past as well. These morphological tenses are marked either with a
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
(''walk(s)'' ~ ''walked'') or with
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) 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 relate ...
(''sing(s)'' ~ ''sang''). In some contexts, particularly in
English language teaching English as a second or foreign language refers to the use of English language, English by individuals whose native language is different, commonly among students learning to speak and write English. Variably known as English as a foreign lang ...
, 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, ...
had present, perfect ( stative), 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 northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
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 in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of ...
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 languages, 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 spoke ...
(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, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
, the compound past ''( Perfekt)'' has replaced the simple morphological past in most contexts. The
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
(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 ...
)'' has mostly given way to a compound form ''(
passé composé The (; ) is a past tense in the French language. It is used to express an action that has been finished completely or incompletely at the time of speech, or at some (possibly unknown) time in the past. It originally corresponded in function to t ...
)''. Irish, a
Celtic language The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves ...
, 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 Early Modern Irish () represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century. Classical Gaelic Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish ( ...
had a three-way aspectual contrast of simple–perfective–imperfective in the past and present tenses. Modern
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...
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, 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.) Hindustani (
Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
and
Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...
), 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 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Ba ...
, 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 The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...
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 social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
and the
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic 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 can ...
of the noun that the pronoun refers 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 Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
) and hence they agree with the
grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other ...
and the
gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
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 and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periph ...
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 sentence Dec ...
'', '' Presumptive'', ''
Subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...
'', '' Contrafactual'', and '' Imperative''. (Seeː '' Hindi verbs'') In the
Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
, verbs are intrinsically perfective or imperfective. In
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
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 The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches (West Slavic la ...
, there may be a greater variety of forms – Bulgarian, 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). 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 and Hungarian, both members of the
Uralic The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers abo ...
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 Semitic root, root (''triliteral'' or ''quadriliteral'' acc ...
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 morpholog ...
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 are described as having present and past tenses, although they may be analysed as aspects. Some
Wu Chinese , region = Shanghai, Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, parts of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces; overseas and migrant communities , ethnicity = Wu , speakers = million , date = 2021 , ref = e27 , fa ...
languages, such as
Shanghainese The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan langua ...
, use
grammatical particle In grammar, the term ''particle'' ( abbreviated ) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word (functor) associated with another word or phrase in order to impart meaning. Alth ...
s to mark some tenses. Other
Chinese languages The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split b ...
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. Th ...
. 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 words or phrases to refer to a particular time (e.g. ''then''), place (e.g. ''here''), or person (e.g. ''you'') relative to the context of the utterance. Deixis exists in all known natural languagesLyons, J ...
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 historically by the small population of Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokel ...
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 languages, Chuukic group of Micronesian languages in the Federated States of Micronesia spoken primarily in the Mortlock Islands (Nomoi Is ...
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 of ...
* Spatial tense


References


Further reading

* * * * *


External links


Combinations of Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Greek

Grammatical Features Inventory
DEIC:deictic DIR:directional
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grammatical Tense English grammar Time in linguistics