Курсовая работа: The system of English verbs

– ed (past) Ø (none)

will (future) Ø (none)

have – en (perfect) Ø (none)

be – ing (progressive) do

Since will is a modal auxiliary, it cannot co-occur with other modals like can, may, and must. Only aspects can be used in infinitives. Some linguists consider will a future marker and give English two more tenses, future tense and future-in-past tense, which are shown by will and would respectively. Also, in nonlinguistic language study, aspects and mode are viewed as tenses.

Tense, aspect, and mood

The distinction between grammatical tense, aspect, and mood is fuzzy and at times controversial. The English continuous temporal constructions express an aspect as well as a tense, and some therefore consider that aspect to be separate from tense in English. In Spanish the traditional verb tenses are also combinations of aspectual and temporal information.

Going even further, there's an ongoing dispute among modern English grammarians (see English grammar) regarding whether tense can only refer to inflected forms. In Germanic languages there are very few tenses (often only two) formed strictly by inflection, and one school contends that all complex or periphrastic time-formations are aspects rather than tenses.

The abbreviation TAM, T/A/M or TMA is sometimes found when dealing with verbal morphemes that combine tense, aspect and mood information.

In some languages, tense and other TAM information may be marked on a noun, rather than a verb. This is called nominal TAM.

Classification of tenses

Tenses can be broadly classified as:

Absolute: indicates time in relationship to the time of the utterance (i.e. «now»). For example, «I am sitting down», the tense is indicated in relation to the present moment.

Relative: in relationship to some other time, other than the time of utterance, e.g. «While strolling through the shops, she saw a nice dress in the window». Here, the «saw» is relative to the time of the «strolling». The relationship between the time of «strolling» and the time of utterance is not clearly specified.

Absolute-relative: indicates time in relationship to some other event, whose time in turn is relative to the time of utterance. (Thus, in absolute-relative tense, the time of the verb is indirectly related to the time of the utterance; in absolute tense, it is directly related; in relative tense, its relationship to the time of utterance is left unspecified.) For example, «When I walked through the park, I saw a bird.» Here, «saw» is present relative to the «walked», and «walked» is past relative to the time of the utterance, thus «saw» is in absolute-relative tense.

Moving on from this, tenses can be quite finely distinguished from one another, although no language will express simply all of these distinctions. As we will see, some of these tenses in fact involve elements of modality (e.g. predictive and not-yet tenses), but they are difficult to classify clearly as either tenses or moods.

Many languages define tense not just in terms of past/future/present, but also in terms of how far into the past or future they are. Thus they introduce concepts of closeness or remoteness, or tenses that are relevant to the measurement of time into days (hodiernal or hesternal tenses).

Some languages also distinguish not just between past, present, and future, but also nonpast, nonpresent, nonfuture. Each of these latter tenses incorporates two of the former, without specifying which.

Some tenses:

Absolute tenses

Future tenses. Some languages have different future tenses to indicate how far into the future we are talking about. Some of these include:

Close future tense: in the near future, soon

Hodiernal future tense: sometime today

Post-hodiernal future tense: sometime after today

Remote future tense: in the more distant future

Predictive future tense: a future tense which expresses a prediction rather than an intention, i.e. «I predict he will lose the election, although I want him to win». As such, it is really more of a mood than a tense. (Its tenseness rather than modality lies in the fact that you can predict the future, but not the past.)

Nonfuture tense: refers to either the present or the past, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with future.

Nonpast tense: refers to either the present or the future, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with past.

Not-yet tense: has not happened in present or past (nonfuture), but often with the implication that it is expected to happen in the future. (As such, is both a tense and a modality). In English, it is expressed with «not yet», hence its name.