Verbs

Tense, Voice, Aspect, and

Mood in English Verbs

• There are 12 different tenses in English

• They refer mainly to the past, present and future

• Four of them refer to the past

• Four to the present

• Four to the future

Aspect

• This refers to whether the action was completed or not. A verb’s aspect can be perfective and imperfective

In the sentence

• she was singing when I entered

• the verb “entered” presents its action as a single event with its beginning, middle, and end included

• this is an example of the perfective aspect

• The verb “was singing,” on the other hand, refers to an internal portion of her singing, without any reference to the beginning or end of her singing

• this is an example of imperfective aspect.

Relation between Tense and Aspect

• The English verbs are inflected for two tenses: present (walk(s)) and past (walked). In other words, tense is indicated by morphological marking: zero/-s for present tense and -ed for regular past tense. Tense is not necessarily straightforwardly related to what TIME the event represented by the verb takes place.

• For instance, the simple present tense can be used to refer to various times, as it is used for

1

• events which happen regularly or habitually:He smokes, drinks, betrays people and has no guilt whatsoever

2

• timeless truths:The sun rises in the east

3

• present events: I declare the meeting open. Bremner passes the ball to Lorimer.

4

• historic present, especially in literary English but also in oral narrative. It recalls or recounts the past as vividly as if it were present: He just walks into the room and sits down in front of the fire without saying a word to anyone.

5

• events that are expected to happen in the future: When he returns to Manhattan 1000 years later, it has been destroyed and rebuilt three times.

What about time then?

• this is not only done by means of grammatical tense. The two tenses, past and present, combine with the aspects discussed below to indicate how the event is viewed in relation to time.

• In the time-line perspective, we can talk about the past, present and future time. To take an example, English, unlike many other languages, does not have a separate verb form for the future

• Consequently, there is no future tense in English, even though there are, of course, many different ways in which we can talk about the future time:

• The parcel will arrive tomorrow. (modal auxiliary will)

• The parcel is going to arrive tomorrow. (be going to)

• The parcel is arriving tomorrow. (present progressive)

• The parcel arrives tomorrow. (simple present) • The parcel will be arriving tomorrow. (modal

auxiliary will + progressive aspect)

Aspect

• 1. Grammatical aspect

• There are two grammatically marked aspects in English:

• progressive aspect (be+-ing)

• perfective aspect (have+past participle).

• The situation may be represented as lasting for only a moment or having duration, and it can be viewed as complete or as ongoing. These are aspectual distinctions.

• Consider the meaning of the following sentences with the simple forms as opposed to the progressive ones:

• I raise my arm! (event) / I'm raising my arm. (duration )

• My watch works perfectly. (permanent state) /  My watch is working perfectly. (temporary state)

• The man drowned. (complete) / The man was drowning (but I jumped into the water and saved him.)

• When we arrived she made some coffee. (two events following one another) / When we arrived she was making some coffee. (ongoing action at the time when something else happened )

• Consider the meaning of the following sentences with the simple form as opposed to the perfect(ive) form:

• We lived in London for two months in 1986. (complete) / We have lived in London since last September (and still do.)