Summary

Aspect and tense have to do with situations and time. Aspect, as in wrote vs was writing, signals whether an situation is presented as completed or as ongoing, i.e. as having reached its boundary in time or as occupying a period of time. Tense has to do with speakers locating a situation in time – past time as in She wrote, present time as in She is writing or future time as in She will write. One controversy is whether it is legitimate to recognize a future tense. Reference to future time is often achieved by means of a verb such as will or go combined with another verb, whereas speakers refer to present and past time by means of a single verb. Voice also relates to situations, not to time but to which participants in a situation are presented to the hearer/reader and which participants are presented as central. Speakers use active clauses to present Agents and Patients as central and passive clauses to exclude Agents: Susan wrote the letter yesterday vs The letter was written yesterday. The middle construction allows speakers to present the non-agent participant as central and as controlling the situation. In The door won’t unlock, the door is presented as controlling the actions of the other participants by its refusal to unlock. The problem lies not in the clumsiness of the human participant but in some property of the door’s lock.