English tenses, time & aspect

Question

-How many times are there in English?- How many aspects are there in English? -Can a present tense refer to a past or future time? -What is the difference between past tense and a past time?

Fivejedjon · Accepted Answer

Alexg00t -How many times are there in English?- How many aspects are there in English? -Can a present tense refer to a past or future time? -What is the difference between past tense and a past time?

I don't understand the first question.

Many writers consider that English has two aspects, the progressive/continuous and the perfect, though some consider perfect forms to be tenses.

My personal opinion is that there are four aspects:

The durative, as in "I am writing a book",
The retrospective, as in "I have written a book",
The prospective, as in "I am going to write a book".
The past habitual, as in "I used to write for The Daily Telegraph".

The present simple tense can refer to the present moment, "I name this ship 'Unsinkable'"; the general present "I travel to work by bus"; future time "I leave for Moscow next Monday"; and past time, "This chap walks into a bar and says 'Do you serve crocodiles?'"

Past time is that time before now.
The past tense is a verb form that distances the action denoted in vividness time, "I went to China last year"; in reality "If My parents were alive, they would be very happy today" and in directness "I wondered if you had a few momenst to clear up this problem for me."

CalifJim · Answer

Alexg00t -How many times are there in English?- How many aspects are there in English? -Can a present tense refer to a past or future time? -What is the difference between past tense and a past time?

See and all the other posts in that same thread.

CJ

Alexg00t · Answer

First of all thank you very much for your answer. According to some authors English has 'tenses', 'time' and 'aspects'(the four that you mention above) so that's why my question was: How many times are there in English? according to your answer(The present simple tense can refer to the present moment, "I name this ship 'Unsinkable'"; the general present "I travel to work by bus"; future time "I leave for Moscow next Monday"; and past time, "This chap walks into a bar and says 'Do you serve crocodiles?'") I understand that English has three 'times': Past Time, Future Time and Present Time.
Is that right?

Thank you for your reply fivejedjon I appreaicate it.

Alexg00t · Answer

Thanks!

CalifJim · Answer

Alexg00tI understand that English has three 'times': Past Time, Future Time and Present Time.

It's not English that has three times. It's people that have three "times". It's a universal human characteristic that we all, regardless of language, think in terms of what's happening now (present), what we remember now from earlier in our experiences (past), and what we anticipate now on the basis of our knowledge of how events unfold in time (future).

In short, "present", "past", and "future" (times) are not language-specific concepts. They occur in the minds of all human beings.

The question to ask when studying any particular language is how that language expresses these times. Most languages, including English, have a mix of time and aspect built into their verb forms, and these create most of the grammatical machinery that's used to express those ideas.

CJ

Alexg00t · Answer

Ok thank you for your replay CJ I appreciate it.

English tenses, time & aspect

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