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From: doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Subject: Re: English verb tenses
Message-ID: <dougD5utAx.GF5@netcom.com>
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Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 18:13:45 GMT
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In article <D5FBwH.700@tigadmin.ml.com> pardoej@lonnds.ml.com writes:
>Well there's "I go" and "I went" and, er...  I think the point is that it's
>not clear whether we should count "I will go" as the future tense of "go"
>or as a phrase made from two verbs.

This whole issue is far simpler than it looks. It hinges on one
thing: grammatical categories that exist in a particular language
are obligatory, not optional (see e.g. "A Dictionary of Grammatical
Terms in Linguistics" by R.L. Trask).

Therefore, even though you can create phrases to indicate the equivalent
of any tense you like, such phrases are are not tenses in themselves.
A "tense" is a grammatical category, and hence obligatory, and as
others have said, English only marks present and non-present in this
strict sense of "tense".

Phrases using e.g. "will" and "have" in English express aspect and
mood, btw, not tense, which is why your examples do not in fact
complicate the issue. "I will" is in fact an obligatory grammatical
category, but of mood, not tense.

>The question is: Are we right to call "he" the subject of the first sentence?

The definition of "subject" has gotten pretty complicated in linguistics.
Sometimes the terms "topic" or "pivot" are used to indicate something
that looks like a subject in one sense, but that seems to violate some
theory about subjects. Also the voice used in a sentence can transform
a nominal object into an actual subject. There's still no consensus
on the entire subject of subjects :-).

>As for the number of tenses in English I reckon there are 4 * 2 * 2:
>
>4: present, future, past, conditional
>2: continuous, non-continuous
>2: perfective, imperfective

Nope. There is no future; "I will..." is actually a modal, as
is conditional, while continuous and imperfective are aspects.

It is common for languages to mark tense, mood, and aspect
simultaneously, which leads to a conflation of the terminology,
but each is a separate entity. English may use a modal to talk
about future events, but it's still a modal, not a tense.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow

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