Languages & Linguistics
Present Tense
The present tense is a grammatical form used to describe actions or states that are currently happening or are generally true. In English, it typically involves adding an "-s" or "-es" to the base form of the verb for third person singular subjects. In other languages, the present tense may have different conjugations or forms to indicate present time.
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8 Key excerpts on "Present Tense"
eBook - PDF- Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier, Martin Pütz, Susanne Niemeier(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
As descriptions of actual, bounded events occurring 22 Ronald W. Langacker at the time of speaking, sentences like (15a) are consistently infelici-tous: (15) a. *Bill {sleeps/paints a fence/changes a tire/learns a poem} right now. b. Bill {is sleeping/is painting a fence/is changing a tire/is learning a poem} right now. To say these things, we must instead use the progressive, as in (15b). On the other hand, many uses of the Present Tense do not refer to the time of speaking. Standard uses of the present pertain to the future, to the past, to timeless situations, or even to eternal truths: (16) a. Your driver's license expires on your next birthday. b. I'm driving home last night and I hear a siren. I pull over and stop. This cop comes up and starts writing me a ticket. c. Hamlet moves to center stage. He pulls out his dagger. He examines it. d. Pi is irrational. Despite these commonplace observations, I have long argued (e.g. 1987b) that the English Present Tense does in fact locate the desig-nated process at the time of speaking (coincident with the ground). More precisely, the Present Tense indicates that a full instantiation of the profiled process occurs and precisely coincides with the time of speaking. The proposed account will serve as a case study illustrating many of the points made earlier. I do not know how the Present Tense should be taught, but an understanding of how it really works must surely be relevant to the problem. I analyze a tense marker as imposing an immediate temporal scope for the focused viewing of the process it grounds. For English, there are just two, as shown in Figure 5, where a box with squiggly lines represents the speech event. The past tense morpheme imposes an immediate scope located prior to the speech event, while the Present Tense morpheme (at least in English) imposes one that coincides with it.
eBook - PDF- Keith Allan(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
On Tense Marking Tense is usually expressed overtly on the (finite) verb by way of morphological markers (cf. happen-s vs. happen-ed, sing vs. sang ) or specific auxiliary words ( will happen, has happened, had happened ), depend-ing on typological properties of the individual lan-guage. Auxiliaries in their turn are often functionally specialized tense-carrying verbs (cf. has, had ) govern-ing a nonfinite (e.g., infinitival or participial) form of the main verb. Combinations of tense auxiliaries and nonfinite main verbs are often termed periphrastic (or compound) tenses, as opposed to nonperiphrastic (one-word) tense forms. Nonfinite verb forms by themselves (e.g., to happen, happening, the past parti-ciple happened ) do not encode tenses in the stricter sense of finite tense. Tense languages vary with respect to how many tenses they distinguish formally and how their tenses are organized semantically. In general, tense forms that are unmarked from a formal point of view tend to encode the tense that is least marked from a semantic point of view. Thus, the Present Tense is zero-marked in most European languages; but in many non-European languages a zero-marked form can express present or past time reference, depending on the type of situation (state or process vs. completed event) described by the tensed verb. The Semantics of Tense: Basic Principles From a semantic point of view, tenses are abstract meanings locating the time of the situation or eventu-ality (action, event, activity, process, or state) de-scribed in a sentence – the event (E) or situation time – directly or indirectly with respect to some other time, often termed the reference time or the time of orientation (O). In the default case, it is the time of utterance (U; speech time or speaker’s now) that serves as time of orientation. That makes tense an inherently deictic category, anchored in the unique utterance situation ( I , here , now ).
eBook - PDF- Laura K. Lawless(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
2 The Here and Now: Writing in the Present IN THIS PART . . . Speak in the moment by using the Present Tense. Conjugate different kinds of verbs and use them so that you can talk about what you’re doing right now. Ask some questions and give some answers. Tackle negation. Sort out infinitives and present participles, two verb forms that exist in both French and English but act very differently in the two languages. CHAPTER 6 Right Here, Right Now: The Present Tense 97 Right Here, Right Now: The Present Tense H ere’s your chance to get a handle on the Present Tense, your link to talking about what’s going on and the way things are. This most common French verb tense — which is also one of the most complicated tenses — describes what’s happening, what people’s routines are, what a current situation is like, and all about that present you’re opening right now. The English simple Present Tense (I sing) and present progressive tense (I am singing) are both generally translated with the French Present Tense: je chante. In order to stress that something is happening right now, the way I’m singing does, use the construction être en train de: Je suis en train de chanter — I am (in the process of) singing (right now). But don’t overdo it; most of the time, the plain old Present Tense does the job just fine. Using the French Present Tense is easy; the hard part is choosing the right verb form because the conjugations are different for regular, stem-changing, spelling-change, and irregular verbs. This chapter covers the types of verbs and present-tense verb conjugations. The Mainstream: Conjugating Regular Verbs Regular verbs are groups of verbs that are all conjugated the same way, so when you know how to conjugate one, you can conjugate them all — kind of a package deal.
eBook - PDFSituations, Tense, and Aspect
Dynamic Discourse Ontology and the Semantic Flexibility of Temporal System in German and English
- Renate Bartsch(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
However, there is a central temporal concept in the polysemic complex. It is the interpretation that indicates presence, i.e. that the action referred to is located at speech time. The other uses are restricted to different kinds of contexts and aktionsarten. The contextual conditions which govern the interpretation of sentences in Present Tense, take into account the structure of a text and the actionsart properties of a sentence, as they are composed from those of the verb and its complement terms and adverbs. It is evident, that the narrative version 156 Interaction of tense, aspect, aktionsart can only be used within a narrative text, from where the binding of the anaphoric referent is provided. The first sentence of a narrative text does not include a narrative connectedness, it introduces the scene of action and, therefore, cannot be interpreted by means of the narrative tense reading. For that we can use the central, i.e. prototypical, interpretation of the re-spective tense, or the accidental neutral version. The universal neutral ver-sion, of course, is restricted to permanent states. Enrich (1992) points out that the possibility to use simple Present Tense for expressing future situ-ations is restricted to contexts in which an adverbial phrase specifies a time in the future, or to the aktionsart [+durative, -»-resultative]. For states and processes, [+durative, -resultative], and for pointlike events, [-durative, +resultative], Present Tense has to be interpreted in the prototypical ver-sion as at speech time, if no explicit future specification is given. We could just take Present Tense in its weakest form, as for example Ludwig (1971) does, who assumes as the basic semantics of PRES(a) not more than there is a situation describable by a, which is our first repre-sentation.
eBook - PDFTense-Switching in Classical Greek
A Cognitive Approach
- Arjan A. Nijk(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The problem supposedly disappears if we choose ‘temporal neutrality’ as the basic meaning of the Present Tense. This would be reflected by the fact that the present is the unmarked tense category across languages. See, e.g., Casparis (); Wolfson (); Lewis (); Fleischman (); Mellet (); compare Fludernik (: ). Carruthers () suggested this was the dominant contemporary view at that time. Many other references may be found in Declerck (: ); Gosselin (). Fleischman refers to Dahl (), but note that of the present grams listed in Bybee et al. (: ), only have zero marking. . The Semantics of the Present Tense If the present has no inherent temporal meaning, the question is what motivates the variation between the present and the other tenses when they refer to the same temporal domain. There are, essentially, two possible answers to this question. The first is based on an economy principle. If the present is unmarked with respect to time reference, then it can replace any of the other tenses when it is already clear from the context what temporal domain is referred to. Thus, Kiparsky (: –) accounts for the ‘historical present’ in old Indo-European languages in terms of conjunction reduction, a mechanism ‘which optionally reduces repeated occurrences of the same tense to the present’. We can be swift in rejecting this thesis, as tense-switching patterns in Classical Greek do not bear out this principle. For one thing, conjunction reduction hardly explains the occurrence of single ‘historical present’ forms isolated among a large number of preterites (see example [] in Section ..; compare McKay []; Tristram [: ]; Fanning [: –]). The second type of solution is to ascribe a specific value to the Present Tense but not in terms of time reference.
eBook - PDFThe Grammar of the English Tense System
A Comprehensive Analysis
- Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In some cases the choice of the Present Tense is motivated by the fact that the Present Tense is the unmarked tense in the English tense system, i. e. the tense 180 3. The absolute use of the Present Tense with the simplest semantics and forms. A typical example of such a use of the Present Tense as unmarked tense is to be found in a standard joke style: Two atoms are sitting next to each other and chatting, and the first atom says “You know, I lost an electron yesterday.” “Are you sure?” asks its friend. The first atom smiles . “Yes,” it says . “I’m positive.” (www) Newspaper headlines provide another illustration: (Brighton) Man bites leopard. Both now in hospital. Two gangsters escape from the Old Bailey. Typhoon ravages East Malaysia. It is typical of headlines that a simplified language is used: marked forms are generally replaced by unmarked ones. The omission of articles (marking defi-nite or indefinite reference) and of the linking verb be forms part of this pro-cess, and so does the use of the Present Tense when the reference is really to a past situation. 3.6 Pre-present situations represented as if present When news has recently been received, the source of the news (e. g. the telling or the hearing) can be referred to using a verb in the nonprogressive Present Tense. The nonprogressive Present Tense can be used to refer to a pre-present speech act that is still relevant at t 0 . This shift of temporal perspective is only possible with verbs of communication, i. e. verbs referring to the encoding, the recep-tion, or the mental decoding of the message. I hear you’re going to buy a new car. Gayle O’Connor, our division’s immediate past chair, writes that she will be pre-senting two programs to the Legal Services Corporation-Access to Justice Founda-tion. (www) I learn from your letter that you are not happy with your position. They tell me you’ve just been to Greece. I am informed that your contribution is long overdue.
eBook - PDFRelative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages
A Comparative Study
- Bettina Zeisler(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Since the linguistic concept of temporal reference is imported from Sanskrit grammar, all connotations such as processuality in the case of actual present 3.4 Present stem and Present Tense forms in past time context ill time reference may have been imported as well, without regard as to their application. Vexed by the intricacies of the Tibetan verbal morphology, the Tibetan grammarians were and still are preoccupied in identifying, on the model of Sanskrit verbal morphology, the prescripts as the formal expres-sions of the presumed temporal functions and the diathesis of bdag and gzan, instead of developing a functional description of the verb stems and the periphrastic counterparts. Whether processuality is an adequate or sufficient characteristic of the Sanskrit vartamäna is another question. Since the as-pectual oppositions inherited from Indo-European were no longer productive, the Indian grammarians, for their part, had not developed any tool for the analysis of phasal or aspectual oppositions to hand over to their Tibetan disciples. It is thus not surprising, that in spite of all erudition on the part of the Tibetan authors, even the quite substantial difference between (a) time as a domain wherein events may be localised, (b) temporal reference in communicative interaction, and (c) tense as grammaticalisation or sub-sumption of the function of temporal location, temporal reference, as well as other aspectual or modal functions under one single formal marker, has not been noticed, and that the subtle differences in meaning as described above have remained more or less out of focus. 3.4.6 f Narrative Present and narrative conventions In the Tibetan languages, ancient and modern alike, Present Tense construc-tions are rather conventionally used in past time context, especially in nar-rations.
- M. Rafael Salaberry, Llorenç Comajoan(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
77–103. Langacker, Ronald W. 2001a Cognitive Linguistics, language pedagogy and the English pres- ent tense. In Martin Pu ¨tz, Susanne Niemeier & Rene ´ Dirven (Eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics I: Theory and language acqui- sition, 3–39. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, Ronald W. 2001b The English Present Tense. English Language and Linguistics: 251–272. Langacker, Ronald W. 2003 Extreme subjectification: English tense and modals. In Hubert Cuyckens, Thomas Berg, Rene ´ Dirven & Klaus-Uwe Panther (Eds.), Motivation in language: Studies in honor of Gu ¨nter Radden, 3–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Langacker, Ronald W. 2008 Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Cognitive perspective on Spanish 87 Langacker, Ronald W. 2009 Investigations in Cognitive Grammar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, Ronald, W. 2011 The English present: Temporal coincidence versus epistemic immedicacy. In Frank Brisard & Adeline Patard (Eds.), Cogni- tive approaches to tense, aspect and epistemic modality, 45–86. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Leonetti, Manuel & Victoria Escandell 2003 On the quotative readings of Spanish imperfecto. Cuadernos de Lingu ¨ı ´stica X. 135–154. Leonetti, Manuel 2004 Por que ´ el imperfecto es anafo ´ rico. In Luis Garcı ´a Ferna ´ndez & Bruno Camus Bergareche (Eds.), El prete ´rito imperfecto, 481– 507. Madrid: Gredos. Porcar Miralles, Margarita 1993 La oracio ´n condicional. La evolucio ´n de los esquemas verbales con- dicionales desde el Latı ´n al Espan ˜ol actual. Castello ´: Universitat Jaume I. Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson 1995 Relevance: Communication and cognition, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Steele, Susan 1975 Past and irrealis: Just what does it all mean? International Journal of American Linguistics 41. 200–217. Vendler, Zeno 1967 Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Vetters, Cari 1996 Temps, aspect et narration.
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