Other Uses of The Term "Tense" : Tense, Aspect, and Mood
In many language descriptions, particularly those of traditional European linguistics, the term tense is erroneously used to refer to categories that do not have time reference as their prototypical use, but rather are grammaticalisations of mood/modality (e.g. uncertainty, possibility, evidentiality) or aspect (e.g. frequency, completion, duration). Tense differs from aspect in showing the time reference, while aspect shows how the action/state is "envisaged" or "seen" as happening/occurring. The most common aspectual distinction in languages of the world is that between perfective (complete, permanent, simple, etc.) and imperfective (incomplete, temporary, continuous, etc.).
The term tense is therefore at times used in language descriptions to represent any combination of tense proper, aspect, and mood, as many languages include more than one such reference in portmanteau TAM (tense–aspect–mood) affixes or verb forms. Conversely, languages that grammaticalise aspect can have tense as a secondary use of an aspect. In many languages, such as the Latin, Celtic and Slavic languages, a verb may be inflected for both tense and aspect together, as in the passé composé/passé simple (historique) and imparfait of French. Verbs can also be marked for both mood and tense together, such as the present subjunctive (So be it) and the past subjuncitve (Were it so), or all three, such as the past perfect subjunctive (Had it been so).
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Tense
Famous quotes containing the words term, tense and/or mood:
“In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“A pathological business, writing, dont you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!”
—Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929)
“As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the pastto preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majoritys whims and the minoritys rights.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (19081973)