Lesson 2: Tense and Aspect

This chapter describes the verbal categories related to time. You’ll learn about the categories of tense and aspect.

Key Concepts

Tense
- Present, Past, Future
- Absolute and Relative Tense
Grammatical Aspect
- Progressive Aspect
- Perfective Aspect

UNIT 1: TENSE

The verb category tense is used to localise an event in time. There exist three common tenses in the languages around the world. There is the present tense that is used to talk about a situation that is happening at the moment of speaking. Speakers use the past tense when they talk about something that happened before the moment of speaking. The future tense is used for a situation that has not yet happened and is located ahead in time. The future tense is not built by a tense marker in English but by using a variety of verbs (e.g. modal verbs) to talk about predictions and possibilities.

Example:

Present: Anna walks.

Past: Anna walked.

Future: Anna will walk.

Exercise 1:

a. How could you depict these three tenses adequately in a timeline model? Discuss with your neighbour and draw your model.

b. Name the difference between the two sentences.

1. Today, I went to the coffee shop.

2. When Hans arrived, Peter had already left.

Solution for Exercise 1 Exercise 1a: For the adequate linguistic description of time, you can imagine time itself as a line. The moment of the present is located in the middle and marked by 0. It is the reference point for many statements. The past and future are placed behind and in front of the present marker. This is also called a timeline. Exercise 1b: The difference between the two sentences is what we call 'absolute tense' and 'relative tense'. Sentence 1 is about a situation in which the point of reference is in the present moment. This is called the absolute tense. The chosen tense, for example present, past or future tense, is related to the moment of speaking and places the event in a temporal framework. Sentence 2 indicates a temporal relationship and describes how an event is related to another event in time. Thus, it can be expressed whether an event happens simultaneously, prematurely, or after the fact.

UNIT 2: ASPECT

Exercise 2

In pairs: One person roughly tells the other what is happening in the picture and the other person then tries to draw the picture based on the explanations. Which verb form is used for the description?

The category of aspect is often confused with tense. The sentences She was walking and She walked both use the past tense. However, they differ in aspect. Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action is viewed. You can think of it like looking at an action. You can either see the action as a whole picture or focus on certain moments. The temporal location of the action is regarded to its duration, completion and relevance. An example for aspect is that it can indicate if an action is completed or still ongoing. The aspects can be used together with the different tenses.

The aspects used in English are:

Progressive aspect
Perfect aspect

The absence of aspect is referred to as simple tense. Sometimes it is also referred to as simple aspect since it is used to indicate facts. E.g.: I do the dishes.

The progressive aspect

You probably used the progressive aspect in the exercise above. It indicates that an action is, was, is or will be in progress. The action is not yet finished. The progressive aspect is built with the Verb + -ing; e.g.: The boy is sleeping. The progressive aspect is used when we want to state that an action or state is ongoing. The progressive aspect is also called continuous aspect

The perfect aspect

The perfect aspect looks at a past moment in regard of its relevance up to some reference point. For the present perfect this point lies in the moment of speaking and for the past perfect it already lies in the past. When the present perfect is used the action is still of relevance in the moment of speaking. The perfect aspect is built as follows: to have (in the appropriate tense) + past participle of the Verb that describes the state/action. E.g.: I have cleaned the windows.

The two aspects and also be used together in one sentence, which we then call the perfect progressive. E.g.: I have been washing the dishes this morning.

Exercise 3:

a. Give the tense and aspect for the following sentences.

1. They left New York an hour ago.

2. Had you been waiting long before the train arrived?

3. He is sneezing.

4. Where have you been?

5. Jonathan visits his cousin daily.

6. I have been reading your Harry Potter book for over a month now.

b. Put the verb in the form the makes most sense for this sentence.

1. James Joyce ____ in Dublin. (be born)

2. I usually ____ to Starbucks to ____ my coffee before I go to school. (go, get)

3. I _____ the dishes, when Jenny came in the kitchen. (to wash)

4. The film already____ by the time we reached the cinema. (to start)

5. How many plays _____Shakespeare? (to write)

6. A person riding a bike is _____ the street. (to pass)

7. I____late this morning and ____ any breakfast yet. (wake up, have)

8. Don’t interrupt! I ____. (to think)

9. We ____ to get into the house for five minutes when Jenny came and brought the extra key. (to try)

Did you finish the exercises? Exercise 2: You have probably either used the progressive aspect (e.g. The man is washing his hair) or the simple tense (e.g. The man washes his hair). The progressive aspect is used to show that actions are not finished. The simple tense is used to express a fact. Using different aspects can change how we view an action. While the use of the progressive aspect puts emphasise on an action being ongoing, the simple aspect displays an action or situation as a fact. The categorie of aspect is further explained in Unit 2. Exercise 3a: 1. past simple 2. past perfect continous 3. present progressive 4. present perfect 5. present simple 6. present perfect continuous Exercise 3b: 1. was 2. go, get 3. was washing 4. had already started 5. did 6. passing 7. woke up, haven’t had 8. am thinking 9. had been trying

Final thought for this lesson

You have learned that for the temporal description of an action or situation we distinguish between tense and aspect. Tense describes when a moment was located in time and aspect describes how we look at it and how it extends over time.

continue with the 3rd lesson

Sources Used:

Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Comrie, B. (1985). Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heinold, S. (2015). Tempus, Modus und Aspekt im Deutschen: Ein Studienbuch. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG.

Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.