Verbs: Primary tense

Primary tense: Present and preterite

She was in Berlin (preterite, imperfective, past)

She is in Berlin (present tense, imperfective, present)

Past and present time relate to the time of utterance

Usually past time is understood as time preceding the time of speaking and present time is time simultaneous with it.

The present tense

Present

“Present” is the time that coincides with the time of utterance

I promise to phone you (perfective, simple act of uttering this sentence, brief period)

Tricia mows the lawn (imperfective, takes longer than the few seconds of the utterance “now”)

Tricia is mowing the lawn (imperfective, progressive, point within the total mowing)

“Present time” must capture a brief situation as a whole, for the utterance “now”.

If it’s not brief, it must be imperfective. The situation holds at the time of speaking but began before then and may continue after it.

Important

Perfective interpretations of present tense clauses with present time reference are restricted to situations of very short duration

Future time

Futurate

We have present knowledge of a future event

The present tense is often used for situations located in future time:

The next high tide is [at 4 o’clock] (calculated time)

The sun rises tomorrow [at 6.10 a.m.] (calculated time)

The course starts [next Thursday] (scheduled)

We arrive home [two days before Easter] (scheduled)

This construction is called the futurate, usually specified by a time adjunct.
Two common cases:

  • Recurrent events in nature whose time can be calculated

  • Arranged or scheduled in advanced

Subordinate clause

Without the calculated/scheduled restriction, present tense can reference future time in subordinate clauses. The future context is already provided with the conditional conjunctions (if, in case, provided, unless etc) and the inherited temporal anchor from the matrix clause.

All the following underlying verbs are in present tense but clearly make future time reference:

Please, bring the washing in if [it rains] (complement inside a conditional modifier)

I’ll give it to you before [I leave] (complement inside a temporal modifier)

I hope [you enjoy your stay] (complement of the VP headed by “hope”)

Note

In certain types of narrative, especially in informal style, the present tense is used instead of the preterite for past time events, even in discourses that have begun in the preterite. It’s called “the historic present”.

I was waiting at the bus-stop in the rain when this guy drives up in a BMW and offers me a ride, so I say ‘Well, I don’t know’, but he says ‘Come on, you can trust me, I’m a grammarian’, so I get in, and off we go…

The preterite

Past time

The central use of the preterite is to locate the situation, or the part of it under consideration, in past time.

I promised to phone her. (perfective)

Tricia mowed the lawn. (imperfective or perfective)

A promise made in the past is clearly perfective. But we don’t know if Tricia completed the mowing, so it can be both, and used for a single long act of mowing located in the past.

Note

In the past there is no constrain for perfective to be short duration. The past is not constrained to the utterance’s now as the present.