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Definition
 The
term tense refers to the temporal aspect of a verb in
use.
There
are many tenses in English to express past, present, and future.
EXAMPLES
PRESENT tense
Paul is looking for the cat.
Paris is the capital of France.
The child brings joy into their lives.
PAST tense
It was a wonderful day for all of us.
Judith had left the key on the table.
Fred had been about to leave when the telephone rang
FUTURE tense
I am going to stop smoking.
The wedding will be a splendid affair.
Stephen goes to college next week.
USE
All
languages have tenses.
English
is the only modern European language which has no future tense.
The
future tense in English is expressed by using other tenses or by
the semantic context.
In
the example 'Stephen goes to college next week' the term 'Stephen
goes' is present tense. It is the context in this case - created
by the phrase 'next week' - which tells us that we are being informed
about the future.
There
are many tenses in the English Language. They are all varieties
of past, present, and future.
The
following examples have all been placed in a context so that the
complexity and the range of English tenses can be appreciated.
The
names for tenses vary from one grammar text book to the next. Don't
worry about the exact name. It is more important to
- assess whether the statement is in past, present, or future
- look for any auxiliary verbs ('to
have' and 'to be') used to construct the tense
Varieties
of the PAST TENSE
I ran
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(so that I could be here at this moment)
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I have run
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(all the way here)
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I was running
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(when I fell over a few minutes ago)
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I had run
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(so that I could arrive on time yesterday)
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I have been running
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(and that's why I'm out of breath now)
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I had been running
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(and that's why I fell over yesterday)
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I used to run
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(but I have walked for some time now)
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Varieties
of the PRESENT TENSE
I run |
(to work every morining) |
I am running |
(and that's why I'm out of breath) |
I have been running |
(for fifteen minutes, and I'm still running) |
Varieties
of the FUTURE TENSE
I shall run
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(so that I'll arrive on time)
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I will run
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(so don't try to stop me)
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I shall be running
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(to work for the foreeeable future to keep fit)
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I shall have run
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(twelve miles by tomorrow morning)
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I shall have been running
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(to work each morning for two weeks by next Friday)
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I run
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(tomorrow because that's the day of the race)
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In
some instances of these future varieties 'shall' and 'will' are
auxiliaries deriving from the Old English 'to wish' or 'to want'.
In
order to assess whether an action or a state of existence is expressed
in the past, present or future tense, it is important to have an
idea of a fixed point in time from which the action or state is
valued.
For
example 'I shall have been running' implies a point in the future
from which the past of that time is being viewed.
"I
run into the house and there's a masked gunman waiting to rob me!" looks
like the simple present, but in fact it refers to an event in the
past. Technicallly this is known as the vivid present and is mainly
used in speech to add a sense of drama
to an account of an exciting event.
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