Timeline for How many tenses are there in English?
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41 events
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| Nov 20, 2015 at 1:48 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Oct 19, 2014 at 16:32 | answer | added | rogermue | timeline score: -1 | |
| Apr 17, 2014 at 3:14 | answer | added | David M W Powers | timeline score: 1 | |
| Nov 16, 2012 at 3:11 | comment | added | Nathan Long | In fiction: Dinosaur Comics' T-Rex claims to have invented the "future perfect continuous passive." qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2300 (I suppose an example would be "I will have been being here two hours by then.") Also, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Adams suggests that the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional is needed by time travelers. | |
| Nov 15, 2012 at 12:58 | comment | added | T.E.D. | @CPRitter It's mostly done by using "be" instead of "is" (eg: "He be working," to mean something like "He is constantly working"). See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… | |
| Nov 15, 2012 at 12:37 | comment | added | CPRitter | @T.E.D. Would you please elaborate on the "alternate present tense which indicates sort of a habitual activitity"? It seems useful but I don't know that I've heard it used. | |
| Nov 14, 2012 at 18:16 | vote | accept | Mohammad Rafiee | ||
| Nov 14, 2012 at 17:11 | comment | added | Alex B. | For linguistically minded people features.surrey.ac.uk/features/tense.html | |
| Nov 14, 2012 at 10:40 | history | protected | RegDwigнt | ||
| Nov 14, 2012 at 7:07 | history | edited | coleopterist | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Remove unnecessary information.
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| Nov 14, 2012 at 5:14 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | Related: How do the tenses in English correspond temporally to one another? Attempt at formulating verb tenses when time travel is involved? Differences between ways to express future actions | |
| Nov 14, 2012 at 3:00 | history | edited | tchrist♦ |
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| Nov 14, 2012 at 1:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/268518852936228867 | ||
| S Nov 13, 2012 at 22:42 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| S Nov 13, 2012 at 22:42 | history | reopened | RegDwigнt | ||
| S Nov 13, 2012 at 22:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| S Nov 13, 2012 at 22:31 | history | closed |
user19148 Daniel tchrist♦ Mitch John Lawler |
exact duplicate | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 22:31 | comment | added | Neil Coffey | I'm guessing two questions have been combined here or something, as an old answer of mine from 18 months ago has suddenly appeared in addition to the one I left earlier today. (Though I see I pretty much agree with my previous self-- that's reassuring to know.) | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 22:04 | answer | added | Dmytro Chyzhykov | timeline score: 18 | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 21:58 | comment | added | Izkata | Also, the time-travel tenses! | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 21:07 | history | post merged (destination) | |||
| Nov 13, 2012 at 20:34 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @PeterShor If today you intend to do as you will, then perhaps yesterday you already did as you would. But yes, it is mostly oratorical/archaic/poetic/obsolete to use will/would non-modally. But it is enough to say that I am sure I will go tomorrow but yesterday I was sure I would go today. That is already a present/past inflectional distinction for will/would. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 20:22 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @Kaz No, it is not a subjunctive. It is remarkable what people think subjunctives are. Compare present and future in "He is telling me that he will go home early" with past and future-in-the-past" in "He was telling me that he would go home early." Nothing is even vaguely subjunctive there. Here, however, there is: "I insisted that she go home immediately." See the difference? | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 20:22 | comment | added | Peter Shor | The ESL definition of "future in the past" is "I would go" or "I was going to go". I think the terminology comes from the fact that "I would go" is formally the past tense of "I will go", although it's not always used that way. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 19:59 | comment | added | Kaz | I suspect that "future in the past" is a subjunctive: it's a different future than what actually happened. "I coulda been a contender." -> "At some time in the past, it looked like I had a future as a successful male." | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 19:47 | comment | added | Mitch | what is the tense 'future in the past'? Can you give an example? | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 19:18 | answer | added | Neil Coffey | timeline score: 13 | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:59 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | Related, and relevant: Whose tense is it, anyway? “As mentioned above, the current popular approach is to limit the use of the word tense to only those situations in which verb morphology is inflected to convey time information. This view unfortunately can't work. In fact, if you applied this sort of thinking to English, not only would we not have future tenses, but we'd have neither past nor present tenses either.” | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:54 | answer | added | JSBձոգչ | timeline score: 141 | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:44 | comment | added | T.E.D. | It also depends on how you define "English". The African American Vernacular English (AAVE) dialect has four different degrees of past tenses, and three of future tenses. Also an alternate present tense which indicates sort of a habitual activity (Which personally I find so damn handy that its really tough not to slip it into in non-AAVE conversation). You can get a far better sense of the timing of events in AAVE than you can in most other English dialects. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:22 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 13, 2012 at 22:32 | |||||
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:17 | comment | added | JSBձոգչ | The answer to this depends on how you define "tense". I will put together a more complete response as an answer. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:14 | history | edited | JSBձոգչ |
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| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:12 | history | edited | Andrew Leach♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Corrected spelling, fixed grammar, improved formatting
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| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:06 | answer | added | Barrie England | timeline score: 24 | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 18:00 | history | asked | Mohammad Rafiee | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
| Apr 9, 2011 at 15:49 | answer | added | Jason Orendorff | timeline score: 12 | |
| Apr 9, 2011 at 11:18 | answer | added | Vladislav Rastrusny | timeline score: 5 | |
| Apr 9, 2011 at 5:51 | answer | added | Neil Coffey | timeline score: 16 | |
| Apr 9, 2011 at 4:19 | answer | added | jsj | timeline score: 8 | |
| Apr 9, 2011 at 4:18 | answer | added | ssakl | timeline score: 3 |