tense (adj./n.) (tns, TNS)

A CATEGORY used in the GRAMMATICAL description of VERBS (along with ASPECT and MOOD), referring primarily to the way the grammar marks the time at which the action denoted by the verb took place. Traditionally, a distinction is made between past, present and future tenses, often with further divisions (perfect, pluperfect, etc.). In LINGUISTICS, the relationship between tense and time has been the subject of much study, and it is now plain that there is no easily stateable relationship between the two.

Tense FORMS (i.e. variations in the MORPHOLOGICAL form of the verb) can be used to signal MEANINGS other than temporal ones. In English, for example, the past-tense form (e.g. I knew) may signal a tentative meaning, and not past time, in some CONTEXTS (e.g. I wish I knew – that is, ‘know now’). Nor is there a simple one-to-one relationship between tense forms and time: the present tense in English may help to refer to future or past time, depending on CONTEXT (e.g. I’m going home tomorrow, Last week I’m walking down this street . . .). Furthermore, if tenses are defined as forms of the verb, it becomes a matter of debate whether a language like English has a future tense at all: constructions such as I will/shall go, according to many, are best analyzed as involving MODAL AUXILIARY verbs, displaying a different grammatical FUNCTION (e.g. the expression of intention or obligation, which may often involve futurity). English illustrates several such problems, as do other languages, where tense forms, if they exist, regularly display analytic difficulties, because of overlaps between tense and other verbal functions, such as aspect or mood. Alternative terminology (e.g. ‘past’ v. ‘non-past’, ‘future’ v. ‘non-future’, ‘now’ v. ‘remote’) will often be needed. In later GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY, the term tense phrase (TP) is used for what was earlier called an INFLECTION phrase (IP), referring to a verb and its inflectional elements.