EXPRESSING LOCATION IN TIME THROUGH THE VERB
Tense
SUMMARY
1 Tense is the grammatical expression of the location of events in time. It anchors an event to the speaker’s experience of the world by relating the event time to a point of reference. The universal, unmarked reference point is the moment of speaking – speech time. In narrative, a point in past time is usually taken as the reference point.
2 English has two tenses, the present and the past, the past being the marked form, both morphologically and semantically.
3 The basic meaning of the present tense is to locate a situation holding at the present moment. This may be an instantaneous event (I promise to wait), a permanent state, a fact held as true (The law of gravity is universal), or an habitual occurrence (He works in an office). Secondary meanings of the Present include reference to past and future events, ‘historic present’ (This man comes up to me . . . ) and the quotative (and she goes/she’s like ‘I don’t believe it’).
4 The past tense primarily refers to a definite event or state that is prior to utterance time. Its secondary uses refer to a present event or state as hypo thetical (If I were you).
5 English has no verbal inflection to mark a future tense. Instead, English makes use of a number of forms to refer to future events.
6 Finite clauses in English can be marked for either tense or modality but not both. Verbs marked for tense are said to be ‘tensed’. Non-finite clauses are not tensed.
