Verbs: Tense systems

Two tense systems

There are two systems of tense to consider:

• Primary marked by the in inflectional contrast between preterite and present tense

• Secondary marked by the perfect auxiliary have.

• Progressive aspect, marked by the progressive auxiliary be

• Modal system, marked by the modal auxiliaries.

Tense System	Term	Marking	Example
Primary tense	Preterite	Preterite inflection on the lexical verb	She went home.
	Present	Present-tense inflection on the lexical verb	She goes home.
Secondary tense	Perfect	have + past participle	She has gone home.
	Non-perfect	[No special marking]	She goes home.
Aspect	Progressive	be + gerund-participle	She is going home.
	Non-progressive	[No special marking]	She goes home.
Modal system	Modal	Modal auxiliary + plain-form verb	She can go home.
	Non-modal	[No special marking]	She goes home.

Important

The relation between tense and time in English is not at all straightforward

Note

Passive auxiliary “be”

The preface was written by Sue

Has special properties that make it best described as information package

Perfective and imperfective

Perfective: Whole event

Imperfective: Part of the event

Progressive vs. non-progressive

Alex wrote a novel (perfective, in the past, non-progressive)

Alex was writing a novel (imperfective, some part of the middle during the process of composition, progressive, doesn’t follow that Alex completed the novel)

Perfective presents the writing event as a whole.

Imperfective focus on one part that was ongoing in the past that is being referred to, e.g.:

Alex was writing a novel when I last heard from her

Progressive clauses are almost always interpreted imperfectively

Without progressiveness

He lived at home until he was 31 (perfective, whole situation)

[At that time], he still lived at home (imperfective, part, “at that time” defines time he lived at home, adv. still implies being living there before and continued after that time)

His late grandfather was a Catholic (perfective, whole situation)

Dee didn’t call because [she was busy] (imperfective, part, focus is sometime within Dee’s busy life)

All the above situations (CGEL situation) are not events.

With imperfective, the state will have started earlier (by the time indication it’s already in the past) and continued later

Important

The imperfective are not covering the situation as a whole, but applying to som intermediate part of it.

Perfective vs. perfect

Independent terms (though similar shapes)

Both derived from a Latin word meaning “complete”. With perfect tense, the key concept is past time.

With perfective interpretation it’s a matter of viewing the situation as a complete whole, regardless if it’s in the past

She will write a novel (non-perfect, perfective, in the future)

She has been writing a novel for over a year now (perfect, imperfective)