Mandarin Chinese appears to be a language that may not express tense (at least in the way I will define below), and it does not seem to allow aspectual coercion.
By not expressing Tense I mean, such a language will fail to show morphological exponence of past or present-oriented meanings. English shows present and past on the verb by suffixation to a root or root suppletion (he goes versus he went respectively).
By allowing aspectual coercion, I mean in this case that phrases that by themselves would denote momentaneous events, e.g., achievement verb phrases like win the chess match or arrive, can be used to convey other aspects when they appear (a) with progressive aspect, or (b) with adverbials like in an hour in some cases. Some examples in English, which don't sound bad to my ear:
- Mary is winning the chess match
- Mary won the chess match in 5 minutes
- The train is arriving
- The train arrived in 2 hours
Such a language as answers my question would (a) not show morphological exponence of past/present by means of affixation or suppletion, but (b) equivalent sentences as (1)-(4) would be perfectly acceptable.