Tense and Aspect in English. PDF

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Chapter 6 Tense and Aspect Presented by: Fatima AL-Amri Hanan AL-Olyani Hanan AL-Sultan Outline  Introduction - Aspect vs. tense - example  Tense - Tense and time are distinct - Pragmatic matters in tense - forms encoding tense and aspect - Present, Past and Future - Tense and adverbials  Aspect ...

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Chapter 6

Tense and Aspect Presented by: Fatima AL-Amri Hanan AL-Olyani Hanan AL-Sultan

Outline  Introduction - Aspect vs. tense - example

 Tense

- Tense and time are distinct - Pragmatic matters in tense - forms encoding tense and aspect

- Present, Past and Future - Tense and adverbials

 Aspect

- Habituality and simple aspect - Progressive aspect - Perfect aspect

This chapter is about:

- how English grammar allows us to locate events in time (tense), in relation to the time of speaking or writing, and - grammatical signals regarding the sender’s notions of how an event is distributed in time (aspect); for instance, is it viewed as ongoing, or repeated, or characterised as compressed to a point?

Tense vs. Aspect 1. Tregidgo (1974) comments on tense and aspect by saying that: "tense is concerned with time; aspect is concerned with action, whether the action is complete or incomplete, single or repeated, regular or irregular, momentary or lasting."

2. In terms of the tense-aspect system of Klein (1994), the difference between tense and aspect can be described as follows: Aspectrelates the topic time to the time of situation, whereas tenserelates the topic time to the moment of utterance.

3. Huddleston and Pullum (2002) defined tense as:

“a system where the basic or characteristic meaning of the terms is to locate the situation, or part of it, at some point or period of time." and aspect as: “a system where the basic meanings have to do with the internal temporal constituency of the situation."

Example showstense and aspect being used together to convey meaning:

When I told people I was spending time with farmers, they’d say: how can you stand it, they just complain all day and they’ve always got their hand out. (from an article by Andrew O’Hagan)

Time is represented by the line running from left to right.The time of writing is represented as an interval on the time line. before the time of the writing

He was spending time with farmers

after the time of the writing

He told people >> past simple (two-part labels):  the first word denotes tense (past)

 the second denotes aspect (simple)

 Tense is marked on the verb. The past simple indicates that he “told people …” before the time of writing.

 the event of telling is arrowed to a point (the point of completion) on the time line because past simple encodes events as if they can be located precisely in time

 ‘people’ (not a group of people) entails that he told different people,individually or in groups, so there should be more than one arrow from the box containing the words ‘He told people …’ to separately locate on the time line each event in which he told a person, a pair or a group of people about his time with farmers.

He was spending time >> past progressive (twopart labels):  the first word denotes tense (past)

 the second denotes aspect (progressive >> aux be +V+ ing)

 when tense is marked in a verb group as in (was spending), it goes on the first element in the sequence.

 the activity of spending was ongoing before the time of

utterance but its beginning and particularly its end are not in focus, so it is shown as a grey bar located generally before the time of writing, but not arrowed to a point in time

they’d say =they would say

 Would is the past simple form of the modal auxiliary verb will

 Will is the main grammatical device for signalling future time in English

 There is no suffix in English to put on to verbs as an indicator of futurity.

“. . . while there are numerous ways of indicating future time, there is no grammatical category that can properly be analysed as a future tense” (Huddleston & Pullam, 2002, p.209)

 The use of a marker of futurity here indicates that the responses were located towards the future from the past points in time of the tellings.

how can you stand it, they just complain all day >> present simple:  Present simple can signal different things, not just times coinciding with the time of utterance. It can indicate habitual actions.

 ‘tolerating the company of complaining farmers’ and ‘complaining’ ,in the above sentences, is regarded as habitual behaviour.

 Habituality has to come out of a pragmatic interpretation of present simple e.g. We have semantics class every Saturday.

or past simple e.g. He used to write short stories.

they’ve got = they have got >> present perfect:  the first word denotes tense (present)  the second denotes aspect (perfect)

 Present perfect is used here to talk about the time-ofutterance consequences of earlier events (the farmers having previously got their hands into that position of begging).

 e.g.

Tense and time are distinct “It is important to keep the two concepts, time and tense strictly apart. The former is common to all mankind and is independent of language while the latter varies from language to language and is the linguistic expression of time relations, so far as these are indicated in verb forms” (Jespersen, 1933, p.230)

Time common to everyone

Tense the linguistic expression of time relations, indicated in verb forms

varies from language to independent of language another

Important distinction It is important not to confuse the name ofverb tense with the way we use it to talk about time. Examples:

 a present tense does not always refer to present time: I hope it rains tomorrow.

"rains" present simple, but it refers here to future time (tomorrow)

 a past tense does not always refer to past time: If I had some money now, I could buy it.

"had" past simple, but it refers here to present time (now)

Tense

 “a system where the basic or characteristic meaning of the terms is to locate the situation, or part of it, at some point or period of time.” (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002)

e.g. I hit the nail once with a hammer.

Here, tense is present >>the situation time coincides with the time ofutterance

Two-part labels for tense–aspect combinations

tense past tense aspect simple aspect

past simple saw

present tense

future tense

present simple

future simple will see

see

progressive aspect

perfect aspect

past progressive

present progressive

future progressive

was/were seeing

am/is/are seeing

will be seeing

past perfect

present perfect

future perfect

had seen

have/has seen

will have seen

 Tense is a deictic feature oflanguage:It has to be explicated in relation to the time of utterance. present tense = the sender portrays the situation as ‘in a time interval including the time of utterance’ past = ‘before the time of utterance’

future = ‘after the time of utterance’

Pragmatic matters in tense:

 The locations in time of the points or intervals being spoken or written about are worked out pragmatically, in the process of explicature.

 the length of relevant time intervals and – for past and future – how long before or after the time of utterance is also a pragmatic matter.

Forms that encode tense and aspect: There is not a one-to-one match between the tense and aspect forms and the meanings signalled by those forms.

1. explicit markers: a) auxiliary verbs: e.g. will, have, be

b) irregular forms of verbs:e.g. saw, seen, thought, blew, blown, is, am, are, was, cut, would c) inflectional suffixes:

past tense, usually written -ed present tense, when the subject is singular non-sender and non- addressee, usually written –s e.g.goes, sees

progressive -ing,e.g. am singing, was emerging past participle -(e)n or -ed,e.g.has seen, have helped

2. unmarked forms of verbs: e.g. see, look, can,

Question for class:

What is tense and time in the following sentences:

1. I think we will eat out tomorrow evening. 2. I want a coffee. 3. I leavetomorrow. 4. Hold on. I'll do it now.

References

 Aspect vs. tense. (2011). Retrieved from:

http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Aspect

 Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G.K. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge University Press: UK.

 Jespersen, O. (1933). Essentials of English grammar London: George Allen & Unwin.

 past progressive. (2011). Retrieved from: http://costadeorointermediate1.blog.alianza.edu.uy/2010/06/past-simplepast-progressive-or.html

 Present perfect. (2011). Retrieved from: http://www.grammaring.com/present-perfect-for-recent-events-with-aresult-in-the-present

 Saeed, John I. 2003. Semantics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.  Tense and time. (2011). Retrieved from:

http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses_sys-tense-time.htm

 Tregidgo, P. S. (1974). English tense usage: A Bull's-eye view. ELT Journal, 28(2), 97-107.

Exercises 

Question 1: Recently goes with the past time group that includes yesterday. Note the unacceptability of *He is happy recently, ?He shops at the corner store recently, *I will do it recently. (In connection with Example (6.20) it was noted that recently can be used with present perfect forms, for example I have been over the Forth Rail Bridge recently, where it indicates that the aftermath – the period between my crossing of the bridge and now, the time of utterance – is relatively short, but note that the period of the aftermath assessed as short is all before now, which is to say it is in past time.) Soon is like then in Table 6.2, in being acceptable with past and future times, but not present: *I’m eating cake soon is no good if reference is to the present, but is fine with future reference in I’m catching a train soon, even though both of these sentences are present progressive in form. In such cases soon is directly anchored on the time of utterance, with the meaning ‘a short time after now’. But when soon is used with past reference, as in It began to rain, but stopped soon, the deixis is indirect, and soon means ‘a short time after that time’. In the example, ‘that time’ is the time that the past tense form began points to deictically....