Re: Looking for a good grammar
| From: | Garth Wallace <gwalla@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, January 8, 2004, 19:46 |
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Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> Which of these are the same tenses and which are
> different ways of expressing the same tense, and what
> tenses are they anyway?
>
> I am stubborn and I run.
Simple present, or present perfective.
> I am being stubborn and I am running.
Present progressive, or present imperfective.
> I will be stobborn and I will run.
Simple future
> I was stubborn and I ran.
Simple past (preterit), or past perfective.
> I was being stubborn and I was running.
Past progressive, or past imperfective
> I had been stubborn and I had run.
Past-in-past, or past perfect (past retrospective or pluperfect)
> I should have been stobborn and I should have run.
Past irrealis (subjunctive), past contrafactual, past obligative.
English here conflates the simple past and present perfect because
"should" requires a nonpast verb complement, so the present perfect
construction has to do double-duty. That's an English restriction
though--there's no reason why another language would have to limit
itself in that way.
(It may be notionally present perfect too...normally you'd say something
like this if the failure to perform a necessary action is important
because of how it impacts the present.)
"Should" is really a modal, not tense, distinction.
> I have been stubborn and I have been running.
This is a funky one. I guess you could call it a present perfect
imperfective or present perfect progressive.
> I will have been stubborn for ...
Future perfect progressive. "For..." here is explicit time reference, I
think.
> I would have been stubborn but ...
Past irrealis (subjunctive), past contrafactual. Here "would" is acting
modally.
> I will be being stubborn and I will be running.
Future imperfective, future progressive.
> I will have been being stubborn and I will have been
> running for ...
Future perfect progressive.
These also include aspect as well as tense, and a couple of modal
distinctions .
I'd recommend reading Rick Harrison's essay on verb aspect:
<http://www.rick.harrison.net/langlab/aspect.html>
Also, the SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms entries on tense
<http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsTense.htm>
and mood
<http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsMoodAndModality.htm>
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