Mendoza, Juris Renier C.

LLB – 4 May 25, 2019

Mr. Miguel P. Bolo Jr. English 20 Saturday 8AM-5PM

TENSE

In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference with reference to the moment of
speaking. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their
conjugation patterns.1

Main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, and future. Some languages have
only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future and nonfuture. 2 There are also tenseless
languages, like most of the Chinese languages, though it can possess a future and nonfuture system,
which is typical of Sino-Tibetan languages. Recent work by Bittner, Tonnhauser has described the
different ways in which tenseless languages nonetheless mark time. On the other hand, some
languages make finer tense distinctions, such as remote vs recent past, or near vs remote future.

Tenses generally express time relative to the moment of speaking. In some contexts, however, their
meaning may be relativized to a point in the past or future which is established in the discourse (the
moment being spoken about). This is called relative (as opposed to absolute) tense. Some languages
have different verb forms or constructions which manifest relative tense, such as pluperfect ("past-in-
the-past") and "future-in-the-past".

Expressions of tense are often closely connected with expressions of the category of aspect;
sometimes what are traditionally called tenses (in languages such as Latin) may in modern analysis
be regarded as combinations of tense with aspect. Verbs are also often conjugated for mood, and
since in many cases the four categories are not manifested separately, some languages may be
described in terms of a combined tense–aspect–mood (TAM) system.

The past tense is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to place an action or situation in
past time. In languages which have a past tense, it thus provides a grammatical means of indicating
that the event being referred to took place in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the
English verbs sang, went and was.3

In some languages, the grammatical expression of past tense is combined with the expression of
other categories such as Grammatical and aspect (see tense–aspect). Thus a language may have
several types of past tense form, their use depending on what aspectual or other additional
information is to be encoded. French, for example, has a compound past (passé composé) for
expressing completed events, an imperfect.

Some languages that grammaticalise for past tense do so by inflecting the verb, while others do so
periphrastically using auxiliary verbs, also known as "verbal operators" (and some do both, as in the

1 Fabricius-Hansen, "Tense", in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2006
2 Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6: "the semantic concept of time reference (absolute or relative), ... may be
grammaticalized in a language, i.e. a language may have a grammatical category that expresses time reference, in
which case we say that the language has tenses. Some languages lack tense, i.e. do not have grammatical time
reference, though probably all languages can lexicalize time reference, i.e. have temporal adverbials that locate
situations in time."
3 Comrie, Bernard, Tense, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985.
example of French given above). Not all languages grammaticalise verbs for past tense – Mandarin
Chinese, for example, mainly uses lexical means (words like "yesterday" or "last week") to indicate
that something took place in the past, although use can also be made of the tense/aspect markers le
and guo.

The "past time" to which the past tense refers generally means the past relative to the moment of
speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is employed (as in some instances of indirect
speech) it may mean the past relative to some other time being under discussion.[1] A language's
past tense may also have other uses besides referring to past time; for example, in English and
certain other languages, the past tense is sometimes used in referring to hypothetical situations, such
as in condition clauses like If you loved me ..., where the past tense loved is used even though there
may be no connection with past time.

Some languages grammatically distinguish the recent past from remote past with separate tenses.
There may be more than two distinctions.

The present tense is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in
the present time.4 The present tense is used for actions in a time which are happening now. In order
to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense,
the present and the future tense are positioned. The term present tense is usually used in
descriptions of specific languages to refer to a particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may
have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the
English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form leaves is said to be in the
present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in
the historical present, the present tense is used to narrate events that occurred in the past.

There are two common types of present tense form in most Indo-European languages: the present
indicative (the combination of present tense and indicative mood) and the present subjunctive (the
combination of present tense and subjunctive mood). The present tense is mainly classified into four
parts: (1) Simple Present, (2) Present Perfect, (3) Present Continuous, and (4) Present Perfect
Continuous.

In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated fut) is a verb form that generally marks the event described
by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. 5 An example of a
future tense form is the French aimera, meaning "will love", derived from the verb aimer ("love").
English does not have a future tense formed by verb inflection in this way, although it has a number of
ways to express the future, particularly the construction with the auxiliary verb will or shall or
is/am/are going to and grammarians differ in whether they describe such constructions as
representing a future tense in English.

The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of
speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some
other point in time under consideration.

ASPECT

4 Ibid.
5 Östen Dahl, Tense and Aspect Systems, Blackwell, 1985, pp. 105-106.
Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb,
extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and
unitary, without reference to any flow of time during ("I helped him"). Imperfective aspect is used for
situations conceived as existing continuously or repetitively as time flows ("I was helping him"; "I used
to help people").

Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish states and ongoing actions (continuous
and progressive aspects) from repetitive actions (habitual aspect).6

Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation in time between the event and the time of reference.
This is the case with the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to (but has
continuing relevance at) the time of reference: "I have eaten"; "I had eaten"; "I will have eaten".

Different languages make different grammatical aspectual distinctions; some (such as Standard
German; see below) do not make any. The marking of aspect is often conflated with the marking of
tense and mood (see tense–aspect–mood). Aspectual distinctions may be restricted to certain tenses:
in Latin and the Romance languages, for example, the perfective–imperfective distinction is marked in
the past tense, by the division between preterites and imperfects. Explicit consideration of aspect as a
category first arose out of study of the Slavic languages; here verbs often occur in pairs, with two
related verbs being used respectively for imperfective and perfective meanings.

The concept of grammatical aspect should not be confused with perfect and imperfect verb forms; the
meanings of the latter terms are somewhat different, and in some languages, the common names
used for verb forms may not follow the actual aspects precisely.

The aspect of a verb is determined by whether the action is on going or completed.

The four aspects are:

Simple Aspect(also known as the indefinite aspect)
Perfect Aspect(also known as the complete aspect)
Progressive Aspect(also known as the continuing aspect)
Perfect Progressive Aspect
Examples of Aspect
Here are some examples of the aspects in sentences:
He took the photos.(simple aspect - no emphasis of completed or on-going action)
He had taken the photos by the time the owner arrived.(perfect aspect - action completed)
He was taking the photos when the owner arrived.(progressive aspect - action on going)
He had been taking the photos before the owner arrived.(perfect progressive aspect - action
on going but then finished)
These sentences are all in the past tense, but they all have a different aspect. Remember, we need
aspect to tell us whether the action was on going or completed.

Aspect applies equally to the present tense and the future tense.
Aspects in Past, Present, and Future Tenses
Here is a table showing how the different aspects are formed in the past, future, and future tenses:
The Simple Aspect (Indefinite Aspect) Example
simple past tense I went

6 Henk J. Verkuyl, Henriette De Swart, Angeliek Van Hout, Perspectives on Aspect, Springer 2006, p. 118.
simple present tense I go
simple future tense I will go
The Perfect Aspect (Completed Aspect) Example
past perfect tense I had gone
present perfect tense I have gone
future perfect tense I will have gone
The Progressive Aspect (Continuing
Example
Aspect)
past progressive tense I was going
present progressive tense I am going
future progressive tense I will be going
The Perfect Progressive Aspect Example
past perfect progressive tense I had been going
present perfect progressive tense I have been going
future perfect progressive tense I will have been going

TENSE VS ASPECT

The Germanic languages combine the concept of aspect with the concept of tense. Although English
largely separates tense and aspect formally, its aspects (neutral, progressive, perfective, progressive
perfective, and [in the past tense] habitual) do not correspond very closely to the distinction of
perfective vs. imperfective that is found in most languages with aspect. Furthermore, the separation
of tense and aspect in English is not maintained rigidly. One instance of this is the alternation, in
some forms of English, between sentences such as "Have you eaten?" and "Did you eat?".

Like tense, aspect is a way that verbs represent time. However, rather than locating an event or state
in time, the way tense does, aspect describes "the internal temporal constituency of a situation", or in
other words, aspect is a way "of conceiving the flow of the process itself". English aspectual
distinctions in the past tense include "I went, I used to go, I was going, I had gone"; in the present
tense "I lose, I am losing, I have lost, I have been losing, I am going to lose"; and with the future
modal "I will see, I will be seeing, I will have seen, I am going to see". What distinguishes these
aspects within each tense is not (necessarily) when the event occurs, but how the time in which it
occurs is viewed: as complete, ongoing, consequential, planned, etc.7

In most dialects of Ancient Greek, aspect is indicated uniquely by verbal morphology. For example,
the very frequently used aorist, though a functional preterite in the indicative mood, conveys historic
or 'immediate' aspect in the subjunctive and optative. The perfect in all moods is used as an
aspectual marker, conveying the sense of a resultant state. E.g. ὁράω – I see (present); εἶδον – I saw
(aorist); οἶδα – I am in a state of having seen = I know (perfect).

"Traditionally . . . both aspects [perfect and progressive] are treated as part of the tense system in
English, and mention is made of tenses such as the present progressive (e.g. We are waiting), the
present perfect progressive (e.g. We have been waiting), and the past perfect progressive (e.g. We
had been waiting), with the latter two combining two aspects. There is a distinction to be made,
however, between tense and aspect. Tense is concerned with how time is encoded in the grammar of

7 Bernard Comrie, 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press

English, and is often based on morphological form (e.g. write, writes, wrote); aspect is concerned with
the unfolding of a situation, and in English is a matter of syntax, using the verb be to form the
progressive, and the verb have to form the perfect. For this reason combinations like those above are
nowadays referred to as constructions (e.g. the progressive construction, the present perfect
progressive construction)."8

“Verb tense” refers to when the action occurred. “Verb aspect” refers to the flow of time. Aspect
addresses whether or not the action takes place in a single block of time or if the action is continuous
or repeated.9

PHRASE VS PHRASAL

In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a special idiomatic meaning;
in this sense it is synonymous with expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words (or
possibly a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence, a single unit within
a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase typically appears within a clause, but it is possible also for a
phrase to be a clause or to contain a clause within it. There are also types of phrases like noun
phrase and prepositional phrase.10

There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics.
In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other
significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and the like.
It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc.

In grammatical analysis, particularly in theories of syntax, a phrase is any group of words, or

sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the grammatical structure of a sentence.
It does not have to have any special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the
sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete grammatical unit. For example, in
the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white
neck form what is called a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories, which functions as
the object of the sentence.

Theorists of syntax differ in exactly what they regard as a phrase; however, it is usually required to be
a constituent of a sentence, in that it must include all the dependents of the units that it contains. This
means that some expressions that may be called phrases in everyday language are not phrases in
the technical sense. For example, in the sentence I can't put up with Alex, the words put up with
(meaning 'tolerate') may be referred to in common language as a phrase (English expressions like
this are frequently called phrasal verbs) but technically they do not form a complete phrase, since
they do not include Alex, which is the complement of the preposition with.

VERB PHRASE

In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and its
dependents—objects, complements and other modifiers—but not always including the subject. Thus

8 Bas Aarts, Sylvia Chalker, and Edmund Weiner, Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, 2nd ed. Oxford University
Press, 2014
9 https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-writing/chapter/verbs/
10 Finch, G. 2000. Linguistic terms and concepts. New York: St. Martin's Press.
in the sentence A fat man put the money quickly in the box, the words put the money quickly in the
box are a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its dependents, but not the subject a fat man. A
verb phrase is similar to what is considered a predicate in more traditional grammars.

Verb phrases generally are divided among two types: finite, of which the head of the phrase is a finite
verb; and nonfinite, where the head is a nonfinite verb, such as an infinitive, participle or gerund.
Phrase structure grammars acknowledge both types, but dependency grammars treat the subject as
just another verbal dependent, and they do not recognize the finite verbal phrase constituent.
Understanding verb phrase analysis depends on knowing which theory applies in context.

In phrase structure grammars such as generative grammar, the verb phrase is one headed by a verb.
It may be composed of only a single verb, but typically it consists of combinations of main and
auxiliary verbs, plus optional specifiers, complements (not including subject complements), and
adjuncts. For example:

Yankee batters hit the ball well enough to win their first World Series since 2000.
Mary saw the man through the window.
David gave Mary a book.

The first example contains the long verb phrase hit the ball well enough to win their first World Series
since 2000; the second is a verb phrase composed of the main verb saw, the complement phrase the
man (a noun phrase), and the adjunct phrase through the window (a prepositional phrase). The third
example presents three elements, the main verb gave, the noun Mary, and the noun phrase a book,
all of which comprise the verb phrase. Note, the verb phrase described here corresponds to the
predicate of traditional grammar.

Current views vary on whether all languages have a verb phrase; some schools of generative
grammar (such as principles and parameters) hold that all languages have a verb phrase, while
others (such as lexical functional grammar) take the view that at least some languages lack a verb
phrase constituent, including those languages with a very free word order (the so-called non-
configurational languages, such as Japanese, Hungarian, or Australian aboriginal languages), and
some languages with a default VSO order (several Celtic and Oceanic languages).

Phrase structure grammars view both finite and nonfinite verb phrases as constituent phrases and,
consequently, do not draw any key distinction between them. Dependency grammars (described
below) are much different in this regard.

PHRASAL VERBS

In English, a phrasal verb is a phrase such as turn down or ran into which combines two or three
words from different grammatical categories: a verb and a particle and/or a preposition together form
a single semantic unit. This semantic unit cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the
individual parts, but must be taken as a whole. In other words, the meaning is non-compositional and
thus unpredictable.11 Phrasal verbs that include a preposition are known as prepositional verbs and
phrasal verbs that include a particle are also known as particle verbs. Additional alternative terms for
phrasal verb are compound verb, verb-adverb combination, verb-particle construction, two-part
word/verb or three-part word/verb (depending on the number of particles) and multi-word verb.12

11 That unpredictability of meaning is the defining trait of phrasal verb constructions is widely assumed. See for instance
Huddleston and Pullum (2002:273) and Allerton (2006:166).
12 Concerning these terms, see McArthur (1992:72ff.).
There are at least three main types of phrasal verb constructions depending on whether the verb
combines with a preposition, a particle, or both.13
Verb + preposition (prepositional verbs)
When the element is a preposition, it is the head of a full prepositional phrase and the
phrasal verb is thus prepositional. These phrasal verbs can also be thought of
as transitive and non-separable; the complement follows the phrasal verb.
a. Who is looking after the kids? – after is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase after the kids.
b. They picked on nobody. – on is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase on nobody.
c. I ran into an old friend. – into is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase into an old friend.[5]
d. She takes after her mother. – after is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase after her mother.
e. Sam passes for a linguist. – for is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase for a linguist.
f. You should stand by your friend. – by is a preposition that introduces the prepositional
phrase by your friend

Verb + particle (particle verbs)

When the element is a particle, it can not (or no longer) be construed as a preposition, but
rather is a particle because it does not take a complement.These verbs can be transitive or
intransitive. If they are transitive, they are separable.
a. They brought that up twice. – up is a particle, not a preposition.
b. You should think it over. – over is a particle, not a preposition.
c. Why does he always dress down? – down is a particle, not a preposition.
d. You should not give in so quickly. – in is a particle, not a preposition.
e. Where do they want to hang out? – out is a particle, not a preposition.
f. She handed it in. – in is a particle, not a preposition.

Verb + particle + preposition (particle-prepositional verbs)

Many phrasal verbs combine a particle and a preposition. Just as for prepositional verbs,
particle-prepositional verbs are not separable.
a. Who can put up with that? – up is a particle and with is a preposition.
b. She is looking forward to a rest. – forward is a particle and to is a preposition.
c. The other tanks were bearing down on my Panther. – down is a particle and on is a
preposition.
d. They were really teeing off on me. – off is a particle and on is a preposition.
e. We loaded up on Mountain Dew and Doritos. – up is a particle and on is a preposition
f. Susan has been sitting in for me. – in is a particle and for is a preposition.

The aspect of these types of verbs that unifies them under the single banner phrasal verb is the fact
that their meaning cannot be understood based upon the meaning of their parts taken in isolation: the
meaning of pick up is distinct from pick; the meaning of hang out is not obviously related to hang.

13 Declerck, R. Comprehensive Descriptive Grammar of English, A – 1991 Page 45 "The term multi-word verb can be used as a
cover term for phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, prepositional phrasal verbs and combinations like put an end to."