Aspect vs. Tense in English

[Vuvuzela]

Tense is typically used to describe when a verb occurred in time, and aspect usually describes the quality of a verb in time. But sometimes the distinction isn't clear-cut.

Oh, god, he's gonna pull out some obscure language with, like, two living speakers isn't he?

If by "obscure language with, like, two native speakers" you mean English, then yes. Yes I am. Quick, how many grammatical categories does English have that are unambiguously tenses, not aspects?

Six: Past, Past-perfect, Present, Present-perfect, Future, and Future-perfect.

WRONG! You need to learn what an aspect is.

Three: Past, Present, and Future, duh.

Nope. Well, yes. But no. But yes. Pick a different number.

Two?

Yes. If we were to be very picky, there's only two: Past and Not-Past. What about future? Well, that's both a tense and an aspect. Let me explain:
English forms its future with the modal verb "will" (I'd say "to will", but that sounds kind of weird). As in "I will walk" or "I will eat some corndogs right now." Now being formed by a modal verb doesn't automatically make it an aspect, what does make it an aspect is that it works both in the past and the not-past.
Yes, "will" does have a past tense, as in "Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system." But this isn't called the future-past tense, that would be complicated. No, the word for this is prospective aspect. But because English doesn't actually conjugate verbs into the future, anglophones have used the prospective aspect as the future tense enough for it to, for all intensive porpoises...

... it IS the future tense. This, to me, is really fucking confusing. I'm hoping you guys can help me get my head around it.

[Miekko]

ohgod, never thought of that! (j/k, this is kind of old hat, and slightly wrong as well - historically, would is the past tense of will, but it no longer is quite that simple. would is a form that has a lot of uses that are vaguely interrelated. saying it's a temporal form of will simplifies the matter beyond reasonable.) tense and aspect need not form a cartesian product. in the case of English, it forms something far weirder, full of gaps and also of weird places where the thing kind of folds in over itself.

[Xephyr]

"Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system."

It looks like you're reluctant to call the future in English a tense because it can be combined with other tenses. But why is this such a big no-no, when stacking aspects is acceptable (e.g. present perfect progressive "he's been Xing")?

[Travis B.]

But of course that is forgetting that English actually also forms a future with be going to... except that can take a range of tenses and aspects applied to itself that significantly change its meaning to being not simply a future but rather meaning something like planning to, e.g. you can say was going to, have been going to, had been going to, would have been going to, etc.

And yes, of course English tense and aspect is an absolute mess, and no, you don't get arbitrary combinations of tense and aspect in English.

This is kind of well-known at this point.

[Vuvuzela]

"Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system."

It looks like you're reluctant to call the future in English a tense because it can be combined with other tenses. But why is this such a big no-no, when stacking aspects is acceptable (e.g. present perfect progressive "he's been Xing")?

Because, once you've stacked tenses, that sentence no longer tells me exactly when it happened, or is happening, or will happen. All it tells me is that, sometime in the past, the action was going to begin. When I was reading up a bit on the prospective aspect, and read that this was the definition, I started trying to find information on whether English had grammatical future tense or not, but all of the sources I found differed. So I came here.

This is kind of well-known at this point.

Well, yes. I didn't think I was presenting anyone with shocking new information on English Grammar. I was simply explaining to you my current understanding of the matter, flawed as it may be.

[clawgrip]

The confusion is perhaps because English conflates voice and aspect through the use of an auxiliary + participle pattern, and uses suffixes or ablaut for mood and tense (as well as agreement and making participles).

Future with will grammatically is a mood, not a tense, because it uses the modal verb "will", and the be going to future is just a periphrastic construction, one of a great number of such constructions that use the 'to' infinitive. As was mentioned, neither of them is a true tense according to English grammar because they are not formed with a suffix, and they can also be put into past tense ("would" and "was going to").

From a practical standpoint, however, will and be going to are basically the same as -ed in their job of indicating time frame.

[Vuvuzela]

The confusion is perhaps because English conflates voice and aspect through the use of an auxiliary + participle pattern, and uses suffixes or ablaut for mood and tense (as well as agreement and making participles).

Future with will grammatically is a mood, not a tense, because it uses the modal verb "will", and the be going to future is just a periphrastic construction, one of a great number of such constructions that use the 'to' infinitive. As was mentioned, neither of them is a true tense according to English grammar because they are not formed with a suffix, and they can also be put into past tense ("would" and "was going to").

From a practical standpoint, however, will and be going to are basically the same as -ed in their job of indicating time frame.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. I have noticed that "to be going to" has replaced "will" as the marker for the prospective aspect in English, because most people are more willing to use it to talk about temporal quality. Poor "would" is so caught up in it's own mess of moods and aspects at this point that if you use it as past tense "will" people will think you're getting all subjuntive.

[Travis B.]

The confusion is perhaps because English conflates voice and aspect through the use of an auxiliary + participle pattern, and uses suffixes or ablaut for mood and tense (as well as agreement and making participles).

Future with will grammatically is a mood, not a tense, because it uses the modal verb "will", and the be going to future is just a periphrastic construction, one of a great number of such constructions that use the 'to' infinitive. As was mentioned, neither of them is a true tense according to English grammar because they are not formed with a suffix, and they can also be put into past tense ("would" and "was going to").

From a practical standpoint, however, will and be going to are basically the same as -ed in their job of indicating time frame.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. I have noticed that "to be going to" has replaced "will" as the marker for the prospective aspect in English, because most people are more willing to use it to talk about temporal quality. Poor "would" is so caught up in it's own mess of moods and aspects at this point that if you use it as past tense "will" people will think you're getting all subjuntive.

Would is complicated by that it, traditionally speaking, is both the past tense indicative and the "past" subjunctive of will, and that it can still be used in both of these manners in ways that seem rather independent of will itself.

[Radius Solis]

FWIW, TAM (tense-aspect-mood) marking is frequently a great big mess, cross-linguistically, and this is the reason they are so often treated together in grammars. For some languages (perhaps Latin? Dunno), tense and aspect and mood may be reasonably separable categories that don't interfere with each other too much, but for many others, the impression that they don't may reflect only inadequate examination of the language.

[clawgrip]

Yeah, and since the vast majority of language learners are doing it for practical purposes, they really don't care if it's considered a tense or aspect or mood as long as they can get their message across clearly. People are going to get confused if you try to separate TAM into distinct categories in English because it leans closer to theory and further from practice.

[Miekko]

because it leans closer to theory and further from practice.

This dichotomy between theory and practice is pretty squarely in the minds of people who don't know what they talk about. Yes, maybe it leans closer to naive theory, but in actual scholarly circles, theory needs to line up with reality, not with cartesian-product algebra, and as it turns out, mostly scholars are heading in the direction of descriptions that fit the actual interactions of tense, aspect and mood rather than try to shoehorn them into a tense * aspect * mood product.

[clawgrip]

because it leans closer to theory and further from practice.

This dichotomy between theory and practice is pretty squarely in the minds of people who don't know what they talk about.

This is why I said, "...since the vast majority of language learners are doing it for practical purposes, they really don't care if it's considered a tense or aspect or mood..."

The typical language learner doesn't know and doesn't care about linguistic theory; they just want to communicate effectively. Obviously from a linguistics perspective it's important to recognize the differences and interactions between TAM. From an ESL/EFL perspective, it's all about giving people as little theoretical knowledge as possible, primarily because this can be confusing to a language learner who has little knowledge of linguistics, while providing as much practical skills as possible. If they can figure out how to use present perfect, it doesn't matter whether or not they realize what aspect even is.

[Miekko]

because it leans closer to theory and further from practice.

This dichotomy between theory and practice is pretty squarely in the minds of people who don't know what they talk about.

This is why I said, "...since the vast majority of language learners are doing it for practical purposes, they really don't care if it's considered a tense or aspect or mood..."

That doesn't change what you said about theory even a sliver of the tiniest bit of minuscule.

The typical language learner doesn't know and doesn't care about linguistic theory; they just want to communicate effectively.

Which still is no fucking reason whatsoever to misrepresent theory.

Obviously from a linguistics perspective it's important to recognize the differences between TAM.

Just as important as understanding the similarities between TAM, how the three often don't quite form nicely distinguishable things, how they tend to correlate in where they pop up, etc. You're trying to make linguistics look like its main raison d'etre is splitting. But lumping is just as important.

it doesn't matter whether or not they realize that present is a function of tense and perfect is a function of aspect.

Which fully and utterly and completely misunderstands what I am saying. Good for you, learn to fucking get what people are saying plz?

[clawgrip]

That doesn't change what you said about theory even a sliver of the tiniest bit of minuscule.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. Perhaps what I said was unclear. What I mean is that explicit teaching of theory is a good way to overwhelm a language learner.

Which still is no fucking reason whatsoever to misrepresent theory.

Have you ever tried to teach someone a language? Someone who can communicate effectively only in their own language, who has no linguistic theory at all, who has only a basic and distorted understanding of English, and who gets confused and starts to freak out when they feel the pressure of being unable to say what they want to say? Billions of people get by in their languages just fine without understanding theory. I'm not suggesting misrepresenting it, and I'm not sure what gives you the impression I want to do so; I'm only suggesting keeping it as implicit as possible.

Just as important as understanding the similarities between TAM, how the three often don't quite form nicely distinguishable things, how they tend to correlate in where they pop up, etc. You're trying to make linguistics look like its main raison d'etre is splitting. But lumping is just as important.

I agree with what you say here.

Which fully and utterly and completely misunderstands what I am saying. Good for you, learn to fucking get what people are saying plz?

I modified what I typed before you replied to my post because I recognized what I said was not fully accurate.

Please learn how to act maturely. Your attitude is juvenile and entirely uncalled for.

[Gulliver]

Tense is typically used to describe when a verb occurred in time, and aspect usually describes the quality of a verb in time. But sometimes the distinction isn't clear-cut.

[will] IS the future tense. This, to me, is really fucking confusing. I'm hoping you guys can help me get my head around it.

There are linguists who would agree with you, actually. I'm not one of them, but I can see the logic behind the argument and it doesn't really matter most of the time because it's verbs, people. There are much more important arguments to be had, like about file formats or whether sparkly vampires or emotionally volatile werewolves are more appropriate lovers.

Will, is, as we know, an auxiliary verb that is used to indicate futurity. Making reference to futurity is not the same as using a future tense. "Tomorrow is Sunday" refers to the future, but is in the present tense.

Right then.

Firstly, there's the argument that English cannot have a future tense because the future differs from the past and the present because it is unverifiable from the speaker's place it time. (Yes, one could just wait and see, but we are talking about the point in time when the utterance pops into existence). This also assumes that time is linear, which is also unverifiable (as far as I'm aware). When you say "I will dance on her grave", what you are saying is qualitatively different from "I danced on her grave" or "I dance on her grave" because it does not have a verifiable place in time; it may never happen, it is merely a statement of intent, expectation or speculation. As it cannot be proven to take place in time, it cannot be a tense. This means that all languages cannot have a purely future tense, which automatically denies English of one. I think this argument is both very neat and very silly at the same time.

Secondly, will has uses that are not future-related. "He'll have danced on her grave by now", "He'll have been dancing on her grave all morning" and "He'll have finished dancing on her grave by now" refer to past and present events - albeit speculated ones. This, in my opinion, backs up will as a speculative verb, rather than a temporal one.

[zompist]

Secondly, will has uses that are not future-related. "He'll have danced on her grave by now", "He'll have been dancing on her grave all morning" and "He'll have finished dancing on her grave by now" refer to past and present events - albeit speculated ones. This, in my opinion, backs up will as a speculative verb, rather than a temporal one.

I don't think it backs it up much, because you're taking a combined form— future perfect— in a somewhat uncommon usage. We use verbs in so many ways that trying to come up with a single semantic meaning for any construction can be misleading or even impossible. The meaning of "will" is prototypically future.

(Of course the future is always partly unknown, so statements about it are speculative. Presumably this is why languages often create future tenses in rather baroque ways.)

As for the future perfect, I'm pretty sure it's prototypically a prospective— i.e. a future perfect. E.g. just as "John has arrived" implies that he's still here, "John will have arrived" implies that he will still be here.

As for your examples themselves, I'm not sure what's going on. It's almost an evidential: it signals that we can predict the grave-dancing by deduction.

[Salmoneus]

Secondly, will has uses that are not future-related. "He'll have danced on her grave by now", "He'll have been dancing on her grave all morning" and "He'll have finished dancing on her grave by now" refer to past and present events - albeit speculated ones. This, in my opinion, backs up will as a speculative verb, rather than a temporal one.

I don't think it backs it up much, because you're taking a combined form— future perfect— in a somewhat uncommon usage. We use verbs in so many ways that trying to come up with a single semantic meaning for any construction can be misleading or even impossible. The meaning of "will" is prototypically future.

(Of course the future is always partly unknown, so statements about it are speculative. Presumably this is why languages often create future tenses in rather baroque ways.)

As for the future perfect, I'm pretty sure it's prototypically a prospective— i.e. a future perfect. E.g. just as "John has arrived" implies that he's still here, "John will have arrived" implies that he will still be here.

As for your examples themselves, I'm not sure what's going on. It's almost an evidential: it signals that we can predict the grave-dancing by deduction.

It's also not just the future perfect. It works equally with, say, "he'll be dancing on her grave about now". And yes, it seems to be about deduction.

Is it worth considering the variety of ways we can construct the future? I mean, are we saying that "will" forms a tense, but that "shall" and "be going to" don't? Or are we saying that English has three future tenses? And then what about "be about to"?

[Travis B.]

That doesn't change what you said about theory even a sliver of the tiniest bit of minuscule.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. Perhaps what I said was unclear. What I mean is that explicit teaching of theory is a good way to overwhelm a language learner.

Which still is no fucking reason whatsoever to misrepresent theory.

Have you ever tried to teach someone a language? Someone who can communicate effectively only in their own language, who has no linguistic theory at all, who has only a basic and distorted understanding of English, and who gets confused and starts to freak out when they feel the pressure of being unable to say what they want to say? Billions of people get by in their languages just fine without understanding theory. I'm not suggesting misrepresenting it, and I'm not sure what gives you the impression I want to do so; I'm only suggesting keeping it as implicit as possible.

Just as important as understanding the similarities between TAM, how the three often don't quite form nicely distinguishable things, how they tend to correlate in where they pop up, etc. You're trying to make linguistics look like its main raison d'etre is splitting. But lumping is just as important.

I agree with what you say here.

Which fully and utterly and completely misunderstands what I am saying. Good for you, learn to fucking get what people are saying plz?

I modified what I typed before you replied to my post because I recognized what I said was not fully accurate.

Please learn how to act maturely. Your attitude is juvenile and entirely uncalled for.

He's frustrated that you still keep misrepresenting theory regarding TAM in English, as you have not gone back and renounced your claims as to how theory considering TAM in English works. Instead, you've just kept on talking about teaching people English, when that has not been the issue in the first place.

[clawgrip]

He's frustrated that you still keep misrepresenting theory regarding TAM in English, as you have not gone back and renounced your claims as to how theory considering TAM in English works. Instead, you've just kept on talking about teaching people English, when that has not been the issue in the first place.

I'm not sure which claims I "still keep misrepresenting". Do you mean the erroneous idea that TAM should always be considered as individual elements and we should never consider how they interact? Indeed I said that in the first post, but changed it in the second (he unfortunately responded before I had a chance to edit my post; I tried to do it when I realized what I had said, but I was too slow), and explicitly said that I agreed with him after that.

Because in the post to which he took exception I was specifically talking about ESL/EFL, my use of the term 'theory' was coloured by that field and likely misconstrued by Miekko. What I meant by 'theory' was 'explicit grammar teaching', something to be done as little as realistically possible.

I think Miekko's reaction was unnecessarily obnoxious, but anyway I come here mainly to enjoy myself and don't really want to waste everyone else's time complaining about who didn't understand what. I was perhaps obtuse in my response. Can we forget it? I am in fact interested to know what scholars are saying about the interaction of TAM.

[Radius Solis]

It's also not just the future perfect. It works equally with, say, "he'll be dancing on her grave about now". And yes, it seems to be about deduction.

That's certainly an effect of it, but I think there's more going on than that: there's a sort of implicit notion hanging around the edges of this construction that we will find out, in the future, that he was dancing (in what's currently the present).

This then would seem to be another use of tense to refer to the time of knowledge instead of the time of action, as in Linguoboy's thread about "I was going to ..." or Imralu's example "what was your name again?".

[Gulliver]

Secondly, will has uses that are not future-related. "He'll have danced on her grave by now", "He'll have been dancing on her grave all morning" and "He'll have finished dancing on her grave by now" refer to past and present events - albeit speculated ones. This, in my opinion, backs up will as a speculative verb, rather than a temporal one.

I don't think it backs it up much, because you're taking a combined form— future perfect— in a somewhat uncommon usage. We use verbs in so many ways that trying to come up with a single semantic meaning for any construction can be misleading or even impossible. The meaning of "will" is prototypically future.

(Of course the future is always partly unknown, so statements about it are speculative. Presumably this is why languages often create future tenses in rather baroque ways.)

As for the future perfect, I'm pretty sure it's prototypically a prospective— i.e. a future perfect. E.g. just as "John has arrived" implies that he's still here, "John will have arrived" implies that he will still be here.[...]Is it worth considering the variety of ways we can construct the future? I mean, are we saying that "will" forms a tense, but that "shall" and "be going to" don't? Or are we saying that English has three future tenses? And then what about "be about to"?

Gosh darnit, I thought I had a non-future perfect one in there. I must have cackily edited it out.

I don't think will forms a tense. Or "shall" or "going to". I think it's more or less modal, with a strong future implication.

Will does have a few entirely non-modal uses, though. "Today is Monday therefore tomorrow will be Tuesday" or "We will all die" or "The Sun will one day fizzle out" all talk of future events that do not have, in my opinion, aspectal or modal meanings. This "destiny" meaning is probably one of the least modal meaning of will; all of these events are sort of mechanical in a way and are the next stage in a sequence of events. But, I think this is an example of perfective aspect because of the inevitability of something as part of a whole. It's not future tense because it's a predictable, unavoidable part of something and is like saying "cats meow" or "boys will be boys". It's a statement of something that happens, irrelevant to time. I think "aorist" is probably the right word here, but I could be wrong.

"Going to" is framed in the present, I think. "I'm going to do it tomorrow" is a statement of intention (and hence modal). "New Years Eve is going to rock" is has a viewpoint set in the present, I think, this viewpoint is about a future event.

Shall is more or less the same as will in most contexts as the meanings have largely elided. The main difference I can think of is that shall can be more emphatic "Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!", which is just good-old intentional modality masquerading as a prediction. Oh, and "Shall we have Indian or Chinese tonight?" is modal and means "Do you want to...?", again wearing the futurity hat.

Yeah so basically I don't think English has a future tense, but it has bunches and bunches of future-referencing aspectual and modal constructions. If I'm being really argumentative, I think I follow the school that, from a philosophical point of view, the future is a different kind of time than the present and the past so it cannot be comprehended by our feeble human minds tenses.

* Sorry for all the words like "aspecty"; I've just come back from the gym and my brain isn't entirely functioning.

[Pole, the]

Yes. If we were to be very picky, there's only two: Past and Not-Past. What about future? Well, that's both a tense and an aspect. Let me explain:
English forms its future with the modal verb "will" (I'd say "to will", but that sounds kind of weird). As in "I will walk" or "I will eat some corndogs right now." Now being formed by a modal verb doesn't automatically make it an aspect, what does make it an aspect is that it works both in the past and the not-past.

Then you have things like German Perfekt, which can be also turned to its past form. The same with the future tense.
So, in German you have two tenses as well, where the second one is used only exceptionally.
That's not a very practical point of view.

Also, when you reject any tenses expressed by analytic construction, you can likewise say that e.g. Polish has no tenses at all.

Yes, "will" does have a past tense, as in "Little did he know, the fate of the entire world would one day rest on his understanding of English's clusterfuck of a tense-aspect system." But this isn't called the future-past tense, that would be complicated.

That's Future-in-the-past, I was tought.

As for the future perfect, I'm pretty sure it's prototypically a prospective— i.e. a future perfect. E.g. just as "John has arrived" implies that he's still here, "John will have arrived" implies that he will still be here.

But "future perfect" and "prospective" are actually two different things.

[finlay]

Secondly, will has uses that are not future-related. "He'll have danced on her grave by now", "He'll have been dancing on her grave all morning" and "He'll have finished dancing on her grave by now" refer to past and present events - albeit speculated ones. This, in my opinion, backs up will as a speculative verb, rather than a temporal one.

I don't think it backs it up much, because you're taking a combined form— future perfect— in a somewhat uncommon usage. We use verbs in so many ways that trying to come up with a single semantic meaning for any construction can be misleading or even impossible. The meaning of "will" is prototypically future.

(Of course the future is always partly unknown, so statements about it are speculative. Presumably this is why languages often create future tenses in rather baroque ways.)

As for the future perfect, I'm pretty sure it's prototypically a prospective— i.e. a future perfect. E.g. just as "John has arrived" implies that he's still here, "John will have arrived" implies that he will still be here.[...]Is it worth considering the variety of ways we can construct the future? I mean, are we saying that "will" forms a tense, but that "shall" and "be going to" don't? Or are we saying that English has three future tenses? And then what about "be about to"?

Gosh darnit, I thought I had a non-future perfect one in there. I must have cackily edited it out.

I don't think will forms a tense. Or "shall" or "going to". I think it's more or less modal, with a strong future implication.

Will does have a few entirely non-modal uses, though. "Today is Monday therefore tomorrow will be Tuesday" or "We will all die" or "The Sun will one day fizzle out" all talk of future events that do not have, in my opinion, aspectal or modal meanings. This "destiny" meaning is probably one of the least modal meaning of will; all of these events are sort of mechanical in a way and are the next stage in a sequence of events. But, I think this is an example of perfective aspect because of the inevitability of something as part of a whole. It's not future tense because it's a predictable, unavoidable part of something and is like saying "cats meow" or "boys will be boys". It's a statement of something that happens, irrelevant to time. I think "aorist" is probably the right word here, but I could be wrong.

"Going to" is framed in the present, I think. "I'm going to do it tomorrow" is a statement of intention (and hence modal). "New Years Eve is going to rock" is has a viewpoint set in the present, I think, this viewpoint is about a future event.

Shall is more or less the same as will in most contexts as the meanings have largely elided. The main difference I can think of is that shall can be more emphatic "Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!", which is just good-old intentional modality masquerading as a prediction. Oh, and "Shall we have Indian or Chinese tonight?" is modal and means "Do you want to...?", again wearing the futurity hat.

Yeah so basically I don't think English has a future tense, but it has bunches and bunches of future-referencing aspectual and modal constructions. If I'm being really argumentative, I think I follow the school that, from a philosophical point of view, the future is a different kind of time than the present and the past so it cannot be comprehended by our feeble human minds tenses.

* Sorry for all the words like "aspecty"; I've just come back from the gym and my brain isn't entirely functioning.

There are also the future constructions that are actually morphologically present: "I'm having dinner with him tomorrow" (present continuous) or "My plane leaves at 9 on Sunday" (present simple). This is perhaps the best evidence that English doesn't strictly separate present and future, but to be fair, the uses of these are somewhat limited; plans and schedules, mainly.

[linguoboy]

There are also the future constructions that are actually morphologically present: "I'm having dinner with him tomorrow" (present continuous) or "My plane leaves at 9 on Sunday" (present simple). This is perhaps the best evidence that English doesn't strictly separate present and future, but to be fair, the uses of these are somewhat limited; plans and schedules, mainly.

But isn't that mostly what we use the future for? Either plans or predictions, what else can there be?

[Viktor77]

There are also the future constructions that are actually morphologically present: "I'm having dinner with him tomorrow" (present continuous) or "My plane leaves at 9 on Sunday" (present simple). This is perhaps the best evidence that English doesn't strictly separate present and future, but to be fair, the uses of these are somewhat limited; plans and schedules, mainly.

But isn't that mostly what we use the future for? Either plans or predictions, what else can there be?

Also, I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure those constructions can exist (and I know "to be going to" does exist) in Romance languages where there is an explicit future tense. I'd argue that this means future isn't separated even where there is a future tense.