Tense is one grammar issue that doesn’t generally make us tense—like commas, for example. Most of us just talk or write without thinking too much about tense. Tense, of course, refers to time and always concerns verbs. This post begins a short series of posts about tense and its issues.
How many tenses are there in the English language? Many people would say three: past, present, and future. Actually, there are many more than that. But let’s start at the beginning.
A verb has a few forms: Present, Past, Past Participle, and Present Participle. These are related to, but not the same as, tenses.
- Present: The regular old form of the verb. Let’s use talk as an example.
- Past: The past tense form of the verb. With regular verbs, we just add -ed to the present: talked. One problem is that there are so many irregular verbs in our language. More about that in another post.
- Past Participle: Talked
- Present Participle: Talking
Okay. Let’s use an irregular verb:
- Present: Freeze
- Past: Froze
- Past Participle: Frozen
- Present Participle: Freezing
Now, how many tenses are there? More than three. Most people would say there are twelve, and that is what we will say. However, if you want to get really fancy, there are more than that. There are six main tenses, and each one has a companion progressive (or continuous) tense, thus making twelve. Here they are, and here is how they are made using the verb forms above.
1.Present tense – Use the present form: I talk to you. The pond freezes.
2. Simple past tense – Use the past form: I talked to you. The pond froze.
3. Future – Use the auxiliary (or helping) verb will with the present form: I will talk to you. The pond will freeze.
Now, each of those tenses has a perfect tense:
4. Present perfect tense – Use the auxiliary verb has or have with the past participle form: I have talked to you. The pond has frozen.
5. Past perfect tense – Use the auxiliary verb had with the past participle form: I had talked to you. The pond had frozen.
6. Future perfect tense – Use the auxiliary verbs will have with the past participle form: I will have talked to you. The pond will have frozen.
Okay. Those are the six main tenses. Each one has a matching progressive or continuous tense, and often these tenses are more commonly used.
7. Present progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verb am, is, or are with the present participle: I am talking to you. The pond is freezing. (Our pond example doesn’t make complete sense in these progressive examples, but we will stick with it!)
8. Past progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verb was or were with the present participle: I was talking to you. The pond was freezing.
9. Future progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verbs will be with the present participle: I will be talking to you. The pond will be freezing.
10. Present perfect progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verbs has been or have been with the present participle: I have been talking to you. The pond has been freezing.
11. Past perfect progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verbs had been with the present participle: I had been talking to you. The pond had been freezing.
12. Future perfect progressive tense – Use the auxiliary verbs will have been with the present participle: I will have been talking to you. The pond will have been freezing.
There you have it! Some verbs aren’t used often in progressive tenses. Others are used mostly in progressive. Our examples of the past and future perfect tenses show how the form is made, but the sentences really need something added to them because of how we use those tenses.
Next week, we will see the differences among the tenses, how they are used, and the timeline showing where each belongs.
Oh, what about those other fancy tenses? We use them, but we don’t really think about them much. And yes, we can and do use them incorrectly sometimes. I am not going to delve into the other tenses (twelve is enough for now), but if you would like more information about the “past unusual conditional” tense, be my guest! http://www.edufind.com/english-grammar/conditional/
I must say that I am not impressed by the disussion – is this actually meant as a discussion?
I don’t know what you mean by discussion: it is a blog post and its comments.
Three different things are being conflated here. tense, aspect and mood. English has three simple and three compound tenses. Tense indicates the temporal relationship between a subject and its predicate. It is a clausal operator. This means that every clause must have exactly one tense. If a clause contains more than one verb, only one will have tense.
Aspect refers to the state of the verb itself, without necessary reference to a subject. Every verb must be perfect (gone), progressive (going) or neutral (go). It is unfortunate that traditional grammatical nomenclature calls these past and present participles since that is plainly inaccurate.
‘I used to study every day when I was going to school’. ‘I will be gone after this semester’.
Mood refers to the perception of the state of reality of the predication. It must be factive, or traditionally, indicative, deontic, meaning seen as obligatory (should), rather than extant (is) or epistemic, which indicates the possibility of the predication (could). The hypothetical complex sentence structures with ‘would/if’ are epistemic mood. ‘I would/if=’It would be possible for me/if’. ‘Would’ is also used as a past progressive synonymous with ‘used to’. ‘ I would (used to) pass the same bus stop every day on my way to school.’
There is some confusion because regular English verbs (walk) use the same form for the past tense and the perfect participle. There is an undeniable semantic overlap of the concepts past (tense) and perfect (completed) aspect.
Thank you so much for the response. Not being a linguist, I am not prepared to go that far into it. I realize there are many ways you can put verbs together and verbs together with infinitives – and there is voice and mood, etc. I am just giving the basics.
You forgot the passives!
Yes, I did think about including the passives, which are rarely discussed when we talk about tense. I will add those to the discussion.
How about he infinitive used withe present progressive to denote the future? “I am going TO GO there.”
You are correct. Infinitives are used in a couple of tenses. There is also an infinitive to denote past: I want to have graduated by the time I am 24.
Thank you for your concise review of the tenses. I will save your article to use for my private students.
You are very welcome. More to come!
Sometimes I hear people say, “Tomorrow I take my driving test.”
Clearly, the action is set in the future, but instead of modifying the verb (“I will take”), the future is indicated with “Tomorrow” (an adverb, I think).
seem to recall that some languages–Chinese?–have sentence structures like this. But in English, it is a just mistake?
Murray – Great example of incorrect tense usage. Thanks! Reminds me of a similar mistake: I have known him since I’m little!
I think this is easy until you get to the exceptions, like to hang. When do you use hanged vs. hung?
I will talk about some of the irregulars in a couple of weeks. Hung is used with pictures. Actually, hung is always used as the past tense of hang unless it deals with a noose! He was hanged in the public square.
The error I make most often in writing is mixing tenses in the same paragraph or even the same sentence. I’m looking forward to the other posts, too, because they’ll help. Would love to see specific tips for addressing my problem, too 🙂
Thanks, Shawn. Yup, mixing tenses is an issue, as you can see in the example above. I have known him since I am little. Also things like “I go to the movies, and I saw my friend.”