Tense and aspect in English
We begin by looking at how the English tense-aspect system prompts for information relating to the timing of events. To begin with the fundamentals, tense is a feature of the closed-class system, usually marked morphologically on verbs or independent inflection words. Tense marks a sentence with information concerning the time of the event described relative to the moment of speaking. Present tense signals that the time referred to and the time of speaking are equivalent. Past tense signals that the time referred to precedes the time of speaking. Future tense signals that the time referred to follows the time of speaking. Linguists often use a relatively simple representational system to capture the relationship between event time and time of speaking called the SER (Speech-Event-Reference) system (Reichenbach 1947). In this system, S stands for ‘moment of speaking’ and R stands for ‘reference time’ (the time referred to in the utterance).
In English, present and past tense are marked on the verb with suffixes, but in the present tense this suffix is only marked on the third person singular he/she/it form in the case of most verbs (for example, I/you/we/they sing vs. she sing-s). However, the ‘irregular’ verb be shows a wider range of present tense forms (I am, you/we/they are, he/she/it is). Past tense is marked on many verbs by the suffix -ed(for example, I played). Strictly speaking, English lacks a future tense, because there is no bound morpheme indicating future time that forms part of the same grammatical system as present and past tense. However, English has a number of ways of referring to future time, including the use of the modal verb will, for example I will sing, which we can loosely refer to as future tense.
Tense interacts with grammatical aspect (see Chapter 18 for the distinction between grammatical and lexical aspect). Unlike tense, aspect does not refer to the time of the event described relative to the moment of speaking, but instead describes whether the event is viewed as ‘completed’ or ‘ongoing’. The traditional term for a ‘completed’ event is perfect aspect and traditional terms for an ‘ongoing’ event include the terms imperfect or progressive aspect. In English, perfect aspect is introduced by the auxiliary verb have (for example, I have finished) and progressive aspect is introduced by the auxiliary verb be (for example, I am singing). For novice linguists, this is a difficult system to get to grips with, not least because the verbs have and be do not always function as auxiliary verbs. They can also function as lexical verbs. The easiest way to tell the difference between auxiliary and lexical verbs is that the former are followed by another verb form called a participle (I am singing; You have finished), while the latter are not (I am hungry; You have green eyes). In the SER system, aspect is represented as the interaction between R (reference time) and E (event). In the case of perfect aspect, the whole completed event is located prior to the reference time, indicating that, relative to the time referred to in the utterance, the event is viewed as ‘completed’:
Progressive aspect is represented in the SER system as B . . . F (which stand for ‘beginning’ and ‘finish’, respectively). These ‘surround’ the reference time, indicating that the event is viewed by the speaker as ‘ongoing’ relative to the time referred to in the utterance:
Tense and aspect can ‘cut across’ one another within the tense-aspect system. In other words, they can be combined to produce a large number of different permutations. Some of these are shown in example (14), together with the relevant SER ‘timeline’ diagrams:
The aspect of each example can be identified according to whether the ‘verb string’ contains have (perfect) or be (progressive). Observe that these auxiliaries also require the verb that follows them to assume a particular form. The perfect auxiliary have requires the next verb to be in its past participle form. This term from traditional grammar is rather misleading since it implies that the past participle is restricted to past tense contexts. As examples (14a) and (14c) illustrate, this is not the case. It can also be difficult to identify the past participle because it often looks just like the past tense form (for example, outwitted), but certain verbs have distinct past tense/past participle forms (for example, I wrote [past tense] vs. I have written [past participle]). The progressive auxiliary be requires the verb that follows it to occur in the progressive participle form, which ends in -ing. These verb forms are called participles because they form a subpart of a tense-aspect configuration, and crucially they cannot ‘standalone’ without an auxiliary verb (for example, *I written;*I singing).
The tense of each example can be identified by the form of the auxiliary verb. If this verb is present, past or future (marked by will), the whole clause has that tense property. For example, (14a) is in the present tense because the auxiliary have is in the (third person singular) present tense form has. Although the event is viewed as completed, it is viewed from the perspective of the moment of speaking; this is why present perfect configurations can be modified by the temporal expression now. Example (14b) is in the past tense because the auxiliary have is in its past tense form: had.
