Questions tagged [tense]
A grammatical category expressing the time when a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.
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Which languages conflate (imperfective) past and irrealis, and why?
In English, the "simple past" form of a verb can sometimes be used to convey irrealis meanings, without any preterite sense:
If I was rich, I'd buy a Porsche.
If you only knew!
I wish I was there ...
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What is the present tense expressing future?
Perhaps this question has been asked before, I may have looked for the wrong terms then because I haven't found the answer.
I would like to know more about the usage of the present tense in sentences ...
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Is future tense in English really a myth?
Does English really have two tenses - present and past? Some linguists argue that it is a Latinate fallacy to think that English has three tenses.
Some English professors and even some native ...
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Relationship between possession ("to have") and tenses ("I have seen")
In several Indo-European languages the verb that denotes possession (to have) is also used to construct verb tenses.
Some examples:
I have seen ... I have a dog. (English)
Am văzut ... Am un câine. (...
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Grammatical Aspect and Lexical Aspect
This is my first question here. I normally participate in ELU. This question was posted yesterday https://english.stackexchange.com/q/289903/129806. The OP asks why They build a house next to mine. ...
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Do most languages have the same basic verb tenses?
I am a student learning languages who is interested in linguistics! In trying to keep myself organized with my own study sheets, I wanted to know, do all languages have the same basic verb tenses? I'm ...
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Why is the Romanian tense system so "simple", compared to other Romance languages?
It appears like Romanian has only 5 inflected/conjugated tenses (excluding imperative), while all other Romance languages have much more. For example, in Spanish, French and Italian, there are 7(8) ...
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Is there any language where time is grammaticalised by inflections on something other than its verbs?
I wonder if there's a language where grammatical tense is not expressed by inflections on its verbs, but by inflecting some other part of speech?
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Why is the future tense almost completely regular in Portuguese?
In Portuguese (Br, and I think Pt too), the future tense of a verb can be created by taking its infinitive, and adding a suffix depending on the subject, e.g.:
to think -> pensar
I will think -> ...
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Diagnostic for Finiteness
For a language that does not have overt morphological tense and any tense distinctions (e.g. Malay), how is it possible to discern whether a clause is finite or non-finite? Is it possible to use ...
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