Grammatical tense
The factual accuracy of this article is disputed: see talk:Grammatical tense
Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time or place at which an event described by a sentence occurs. In English, this is a property of a verb form, and expresses only time-related information. Tense, along with mood, voice and person, are three ways in which verb forms are frequently characterized in Indo-European languages.
The exact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate, since many languages include the state of certainty of the information, the frequency of the event, whether it is ongoing or finished, and even whether the information was directly experienced or gleaned from hearsay, as moods or tenses of a verb. Some grammarians consider these to be separate tenses, and some do not.
The more complex tenses in Indo-European languages are formed by combining a particular tense of the verb with certain verbal auxiliaries, the most common of which are various forms of "be", various forms of "have", and the modal auxiliary "will/shall." Romance and Germanic languages often add "to hold", "to stand" and "to remain", and "to come" as auxiliary verbs. For example, Italian uses "stare" (to stand) with the present participle to indicate the present continuous. Portuguese uses "ter" (to hold) with the preterite for the perfect tense. Swedish uses "kommer att" (comes to) for the simple future.
An example of some generally-recognized English tenses using the verb "to go" is shown below:
| Tense | To Go | Special Notes |
| Simple Present | I go. | For many verbs, this is used to express habit or ability ("I play the guitar"). |
| Simple Past (Preterite) | I went. | In English (unlike in some languages with aorist aspects), this implies that the action took place in the past and that it is not taking place now. |
| Simple Future | I shall go. | This can be used to express intention, prediction, and other senses. |
| Present Continuous | I am going. | This is used to express current action in English (Most other languages use the simple present tense). Note that this form can also be used to express future actions ("We're going to the movies tonight"). |
| Past Continuous | I was going. | |
| Future Continuous | I shall be going. | |
| Present Perfect | I have gone. | This is usually used to express that an event happened at an unspecified or unknown time in the past. |
| Present Perfect Continuous | I have been going. | This is used to express that an event or habit started at some time in the past and continues to the present. |
| Past Perfect (Pluperfect) | I had gone. | This expresses that an action was completed before some other event. |
| Past Perfect Continuous | I had been going. | This is usually coupled with a duration, indicating that an event was ongoing for a specific time and was completed before a specific event. |
| Future Perfect | I shall have gone. | |
| Future Perfect Continuous | I shall have been going. |
In English, forms of "do" are used for some negatives, questions and emphasis of the simple present and simple past:
- "Do I go?" "I do not go." "I do go!"
- "Did I go?" "I did not go." "I did go!"
The continuous form "going to" is used for some future based tenses:
- "I am going to go."
- "I was going to go."
Many analysts would not accept that English has twelve tenses. For example the six "continuous" (also called "progressive") forms in the list above are usually treated under the heading of "aspect" rather than tense: the simple past and the past continuous are examples of the same tense, under this view. In addition, most modern grammars of English agree that English does not have a future tense (or a future perfect). These include the two largest and most sophisticated recent grammars:
- Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad & E. Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow, Longman.
- Huddleston, R. & G. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge, CUP.
The main argument given by Huddleston and Pullum (pp 209-10) that English does not have a future tense is that "will" is a modal verb, both in its grammar and in its meaning. Biber et al. go further and say that English has only two tenses, past and present: they treat the perfect forms with "have" under "aspect". Huddleston & Pullum, on the other hand, regard the forms with "have" as "secondary tenses".