Qu4 Flashcards
What is “tense”.
Tense refers to when an action took place in relation to the time of speaking
E.g. I like cheese= present tense. At the moment of speaking, the speaker likes cheese
She ate an apple= past tense
English only had two morphological tenses: past and present. “Future” is generally not described as a tense, but how is it expressed?
- “Will” future: I’ll help you to carry that shopping
- “Going to” future: I think I’m going to be sick
- “About to” future: I am about to be sick
- Present tense as future: the train leaves at 6.15
- Present progressive as future: We’re leaving at 10am
What is aspect
Inherent temporal properties of events
“Lexical aspect”
“Grammatical aspect”
Grammatical devices to signal ones perspective of an event.
What are the two grammatical aspects in English
Progressive and Perfective
Progressive aspect
(-ing) form, signals internal perspective on the event
E.g. he is dancing, she is singing
We are “inside” the event in the sense that it continues up until the time of speaking and will continue after the time of speaking
Perfective aspect
(-en) form
Have. has or had + verb
Signals an external perspective of the event
e.g.
I have broken the chair
He has fallen down the stairs.
The beds won’t have been changed.
He had not yet been told the news.
We are “outside” the event in the sense that the event is complete.
Tense is not aspect! For example, give the tense and aspect of the sentence: By this time next week, I will have eaten all of the food in my fridge.
Tense is the “will” future, but Perfective aspect to express completion
Give tense and aspect of “She was sleeping when the earthquake happened”
Past tense but uses progressive aspect to describe an ongoing event
Can have perfective progressive aspect. Give an example
Present perfective progressive uses ‘has been’ e.g.
She has been having a good time lately.
Past perfective progressive used ‘had been’ e.g. I had been lying awake for hours.
Future perfective progressive- uses ‘will have been’ e.g. This spring, I will have been working at costa for twenty years!
Give tense and aspect of this sentence: “Jed has sampled six ice cream flavours so far.”
Aspect= perfective
Tense= present- event is still relevant to the present+ uses ‘has’
Give tense and aspect of this sentence: Next summer, Jake will be traveling through South America.
Tense- future
Aspect- progressive
