Tense

Verb tense refers to the ways in which a verb changes its form to indicate the time in which it occurs. Verb tenses can be formed from all types of verbs, including actions and states of being.

Strictly, English verb tenses are formed by inflexion only, meaning only the present and past tenses are considered to be true tenses. This is called ‘morphological tense’ after the Greek word morphē, meaning ‘form’ or ‘shape’. For example:

The lawyer signed the document.

The lawyer signs the document.

In practice, however, tense-and-aspect combinations are commonly also referred to as tenses. (This is also how we refer to tenses in our self-study academy here at AcquiSpeak.) Tense-and-aspect combinations are formed by combining a conjugated auxiliary verb (typically ‘will’, ‘be’, or ‘have’) with the base form or the past participle of the main verb. For example:

1. The fisherman is catching trout.

2. The fisherman will catch trout.

3. The fisherman has caught trout.

In the sentences above, we can observe the use of (1) the present continuous tense, (2) the future tense, and (3) the past perfect tense, respectively. An auxiliary verb is present in all three cases, meaning the tenses are not morphological (i.e. the construction of individual words) but syntactic (i.e. the arrangement of multiple words).

Here is a visual representation of the types of tenses found in the English language:

Morphological Tenses

Morphological tenses are tenses that are formed through the inflexion of the verb. This occurs when the verb itself is altered to convey the meaning of the tense without relying on an accompanying auxiliary verb.

In English, there are two morphological tenses, which are described below:

Non-Past Tense

The non-past tense (also called the ‘present-future tense’) describes an action that is happening in the current moment or a state that currently exists. It can also be used to describe actions that happen regularly or habitually. For example:

She grasps the book with both hands.

Here, the present tense is formed by using the base form of the verb ‘to grasp’ without relying on an auxiliary verb to indicate its occurrence in the present moment.

Worthy of note is that, although the above example is in the present tense, its meaning in conventional English indicates habit or regularity. In this case, the speaker might be indicating that she has a habit of grasping books whenever she sees them, for example. To indicate that an action is taking place in the current moment, English speakers use the present continuous instead (which relies on the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ and is therefore not a morphological tense). Using the above example, the sentence would then become:

She is gasping the book with both hands.

To indicate the futurity of an action or state, the base verb is typically accompanied by either the auxiliary verb ‘will’ or ‘shall’, and the tense is therefore no longer morphological.

Past Tense

The past tense describes an action that has already been completed or a state that existed in the past. For example:

1. The cook smoked the salmon in the kitchen.

2. I ate the smoked salmon for breakfast

In the two examples above, the past tense is formed by (1) adding the suffix -ed to regular verbs or by (2) using the inflected form for irregular verbs. This tense is more specifically referred to as the simple past (or ‘preterite’) to differentiate it from the other tense-aspect combinations.

Tense-Aspect Combinations

When a verb is accompanied by an auxiliary verb, it is usually referred to as a tense, even if the meaning is indicated syntactically and not morphologically. This distinction is purely grammatical and formal: when speaking about ‘tenses’, most people (including us) include tense-aspect combinations in addition to morphological tenses. However, although it’s not incorrect to refer to tense-aspect combinations as tenses, referring to them this way uses a loose definition of the term ‘tense’.

Below is a summary of the tense-aspect forms found in English:

Future

Tense-aspect combinations can be used to describe actions that will happen at a future moment or make predictions about the future. There are four ways in which these constructions can be formed:

Simple Future

The simple future is formed using the auxiliary verb ‘will’ followed by the base form of the main verb. This form describes an action that will happen at a future moment in time. For example:

I will admire the view out of the window.

Future Continuous

The future continuous (or ‘future progressive’) is a less common way to indicate the future which uses the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ followed by the present participle of the main verb. This form describes an action that will be in progress at a specific time. For example:

Tomorrow I am admiring the view out of the window when I get home.

Future Perfect

The future perfect describes an action or state that will be completed by a specific time in the future. Here’s an example of how this form might be used in relation to the above sentence:

Soon I will have admired the view out of the window.

Future Perfect Continuous

The future perfect continuous (or ‘future perfect progressive’) describes an action or state that will have been in progress for a specific period of time by a specific future time. Here’s an example of how this form might be used:

Soon I will have been admiring the view out of the window all morning.

Past

Just as we summarised earlier in the section about morphological tense, aspect-tense combinations can describe an action or state that has already been completed or that existed.

There are four tense-aspect combinations in the past:

Simple Past

The simple past (also called the ‘past simple’ or ‘preterite’) is identical to the morphological past tense we described earlier. It is formed by (1) adding the suffix -ed to regular verbs or by (2) using the inflected form for irregular verbs. For example:

I admired the view out of the window.

Past Continuous

The past continuous (or the ‘past progressive’) is formed by combining the simple past of the verb ‘to be’ with the present participle of the main verb. For example:

I was admiring the view out of the window yesterday.

It describes an action or state that is:

Past Perfect

The past perfect is used to describe an action or event that occurred before the past moment being referenced. It is formed by combining the auxiliary ‘to have’ in the simple past (which is always ‘had’) and the past participle of the main verb. For example:

I had admired the view out of the window before she arrived.

Past Perfect Continuous

The past perfect continuous (also called the ‘past perfect progressive’) is formed by combining ‘had’, ‘been’, and the present participle of the main verb. For example:

I had been admiring the view out of the window before she arrived.

Present

As with the past and future, there are four distinct combinations of tense and aspect which are used to indicate that an action is occurring in the present moment:

Simple Present

The simple present is identical to the morphological non-past tense explained above. It is formed using the base verb without adding an auxiliary verb. It describes an action that is happening in the current moment or a state that currently exists. For example:

I admire the view out of the window every morning.

This form describes an action or state that is happing:

Present Continuous

The present continuous (also called the ‘present progressive’) describes an event or state that is in progress at the present time. It’s formed by combining the auxiliary ‘to be’ with the present participle of the main verb thusly:

I am admiring the view out of the window.

Present Perfect

The present perfect is formed using the auxiliary verb ‘to have’, followed by the past participle of the main verb. This form describes an action or a state that began in the past and continues up until the present moment and is often used to describe past events that have consequences or are relevant to the present situation. For example:

I have admired the view out of the window.

Present Perfect Continuous

The present perfect continuous (also known as the ‘present perfect progressive’) describes a state or action that has been in progress for a specific period of time up until the present time. For example:

I have been admiring the view out of the window for an hour now.