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I'm not a linguist but I do know both languages (English and Spanish) fairly well, and my impression is that this is mostly a semantic argument, which is based

I'm not a linguist but I do know both languages (English and Spanish) fairly well, and my impression is that this is mostly a semantic argument, which is based around the way we conjugate a single word. If you were very strict about only looking at the single word, English stays very simple (do=infinitive/present plural, does=present singular, doing=progressive, did=past, done=arguably not a tense because it's an adjective). If you look at it in this way, Spanish obviously has more tenses--they have six different variations of just the present tense, for example. But that doesn't capture the whole story because English does have all those tenses, English just doesn't do it in one word. Notably, there's no future tense in the one-word variations, so nobody reasonably will argue that the above is all the tenses. And that takes you to a complicated place because you can do multi-word variations in Spanish, too, and sometimes those are functionally the same (what's the difference between "voy a pagar" and "pagaré"?). And if you start allowing for multiple-word tenses, then there's a virtually unlimited number of constructions possible, and any limitation you could place on this is completely subjective. For example, your link doesn't list "I will have had been doing" as a tense, but it's obviously a grammatically correct construction with a real use--the only reason for not including it is a subjective judgment that it's too uncommon. And critically, you can do all of those in both languages, it's just a matter of how many words and how awkward/uncommon the construction will be. The different structures of the languages lead one toward preferring certain structures ("pagaré" over "voy a pagar" in Spanish, while one would likely say "I'll pay" in English because there's no one-word option). But to represent these as different tenses is pretty subjective and maybe a bit silly. The one thing I'm aware of that Spanish can do that English can't is communicate formality with a conjugation, i.e. "tú" form versus "usted" form, but I'd argue that's not a tense, because "tense" seems to be about the the temporatlity of the verb and that's a modification to accommodate the formality of the subject of the sentence.

jrochkind1 4y ago
You seem to be arguing that you can communciate the same things about temporarity in all languages, and suggesting this is the same thing as saying there are the same tenses in all languages. I'm not even certain the first part is true, and would want to read a lot more about it -- but it also doesn't seem at all clear to me that these claims are synonymous. But would you think they are, that if you can communicate the same things about temporality in all languages, then that means "all languages have the same tenses"? I guess that may indeed be a semantic argument on what it means to "have a tense", but that seems an idiosyncratic meaning of "tense" to me. But then, what do you do with the simple non-controversial fact that Spanish has both past imperfect and past preterite, and English does not? Sure you can use a "past progressive" construction in English like "was walking" to, in some cases communicate the same or similar thing -- but you can say "estaba caminando" in Spanish too -- or you can instead, more commonly, say "caminaba". You have an extra choice in Spanish, an additional grammatical form with an additional shade of meaning, that does not exist in English. (and "caminaba" isn't always, or even usually, translated to English properly as "was walking", but could probably more often just be "walked" too.) This seem to be a pretty clear counter-example to the claim that all languages have the same tenses? A simple one, with an everyday construction, from a common language. (for all languages, I'd want to look at some obscure ones too!). Now, it doesn't mean that "caminaba" is untranslateable to English, there are several differnet ways you might translate it depending on context, to try to get the point across more or less ("was walking", "used to walk", "Back then I would walk", etc, and in many cases though just "walked" is fine, "I walked to work everyday") -- which is true of all translation. But this gets back to--are you actually just trying to say that all languages can express the same ideas? That's also a somewhat controversial claim, but, I think, an entirely different and broader one than "all languages have the same tenses", but can be true even if all languages don't have the same tenses.
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  > You seem to be arguing that you can communciate the same things about temporarity in all languages, and suggesting this is the same thing as saying there are the same tenses in all languages. I'm not even certain the first part is true, and would want to read a lot more about it -- but it also doesn't seem at all clear to me that these claims are synonymous. Eh... if I had to make a claim to argue for I'd just claim that tense isn't really a clear communication of an idea that actually exists. If it's about conjugating words, then English has, what, 3 tenses (do, did, doing)? If it's about temporality, English has virtually infinite tenses, although at some point they become unwieldy ("will have had been going to have been doing"?). > But then, what do you do with the simple non-controversial fact that Spanish has both past imperfect and past preterite, and English does not? Sure you can use a "past progressive" construction in English like "was walking" to, in some cases communicate the same or similar thing -- but you can say "estaba caminando" in Spanish too -- or you can instead, more commonly, say "caminaba". You have an extra choice in Spanish, an additional grammatical form with an additional shade of meaning, that does not exist in English. (and "caminaba" isn't always, or even usually, translated to English properly as "was walking", but could probably more often just be "walked" too.) Sure, but again, doesn't English have that sort of thing? Isn't there a subtle difference between "I will pay" and "I'm going to pay", even though pretty much everything I've read would list these both as the future tense? Is that subtle difference really a "tense" or is it just that there's a separate word?
btilly 4y ago
First, there is a semantic argument here, which is exactly why people will disagree on how many tenses a language has. But that said, the fact that you CAN communicate something, doesn't mean that you did it through a tense. I already pointed you at Chinese, which has NO verb conjugation at all, and therefore is often claimed to have no tenses. What does it do instead? It has words for things like past, yesterday, tomorrow, and so on. Once one of those has been used, this is a context that is assumed to continue holding through your conversation until someone says something else. Then you continue in that new context with no grammatical cues to remind you of the timeframe under discussion. See https://www.thoughtco.com/mandarin-timeframes-2279615 https://www.thoughtco.com/mandarin-timeframes-2279615 for a more detailed explanation of how this actually works in practice. But it is clear that treatment of time is grammatically different as you go across languages.
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  Well, I can't speak to Chinese as I don't speak it even a little. But if that's a claim that Chinese has no tenses, I guess it somewhat comes down to what you consider a tense, then. Because if it's just about forms of a verb, I'd have to say that English has no future tense, for example, leaving us with probably... three tenses? Present (do), past (did), progressive (doing). But nothing I've read treats tense that way.
  - btilly 4y ago
    And "what you consider a tense" is semantics. Full circle. To me a tense is the way you normally and automatically construct the grammar of a sentence to implicitly convey a specific idea about time. Without saying it explicitly. So "I went to the store", "I went to the store yesterday", and "I went to the store last week" are all the same tense. Because you've communicated "past" through the grammar without having explicitly said it. And it is clearly different than "I am going to the store" or "I will go to the store". The Chinese form, by contrast, all look like, "I go to store". And the words saying whether it was somewhere in the past, yesterday, last week, now, or some time in the future need be nowhere in the sentence. It is enough that they were explicitly said at some point. And this is specifically something that Chinese people struggle with in English. You constantly will catch them making mistakes like, "I go to store yesterday." Because the idea of conveying time with grammar is as foreign to them as the idea that objects have gender is to English speakers.

jrochkind1 4y ago

You seem to be arguing that you can communciate the same things about temporarity in all languages, and suggesting this is the same thing as saying there are the same tenses in all languages. I'm not even certain the first part is true, and would want to read a lot more about it -- but it also doesn't seem at all clear to me that these claims are synonymous. But would you think they are, that if you can communicate the same things about temporality in all languages, then that means "all languages have the same tenses"? I guess that may indeed be a semantic argument on what it means to "have a tense", but that seems an idiosyncratic meaning of "tense" to me. But then, what do you do with the simple non-controversial fact that Spanish has both past imperfect and past preterite, and English does not? Sure you can use a "past progressive" construction in English like "was walking" to, in some cases communicate the same or similar thing -- but you can say "estaba caminando" in Spanish too -- or you can instead, more commonly, say "caminaba". You have an extra choice in Spanish, an additional grammatical form with an additional shade of meaning, that does not exist in English. (and "caminaba" isn't always, or even usually, translated to English properly as "was walking", but could probably more often just be "walked" too.) This seem to be a pretty clear counter-example to the claim that all languages have the same tenses? A simple one, with an everyday construction, from a common language. (for all languages, I'd want to look at some obscure ones too!). Now, it doesn't mean that "caminaba" is untranslateable to English, there are several differnet ways you might translate it depending on context, to try to get the point across more or less ("was walking", "used to walk", "Back then I would walk", etc, and in many cases though just "walked" is fine, "I walked to work everyday") -- which is true of all translation. But this gets back to--are you actually just trying to say that all languages can express the same ideas? That's also a somewhat controversial claim, but, I think, an entirely different and broader one than "all languages have the same tenses", but can be true even if all languages don't have the same tenses.

kerkeslager 4y ago
> You seem to be arguing that you can communciate the same things about temporarity in all languages, and suggesting this is the same thing as saying there are the same tenses in all languages. I'm not even certain the first part is true, and would want to read a lot more about it -- but it also doesn't seem at all clear to me that these claims are synonymous. Eh... if I had to make a claim to argue for I'd just claim that tense isn't really a clear communication of an idea that actually exists. If it's about conjugating words, then English has, what, 3 tenses (do, did, doing)? If it's about temporality, English has virtually infinite tenses, although at some point they become unwieldy ("will have had been going to have been doing"?). > But then, what do you do with the simple non-controversial fact that Spanish has both past imperfect and past preterite, and English does not? Sure you can use a "past progressive" construction in English like "was walking" to, in some cases communicate the same or similar thing -- but you can say "estaba caminando" in Spanish too -- or you can instead, more commonly, say "caminaba". You have an extra choice in Spanish, an additional grammatical form with an additional shade of meaning, that does not exist in English. (and "caminaba" isn't always, or even usually, translated to English properly as "was walking", but could probably more often just be "walked" too.) Sure, but again, doesn't English have that sort of thing? Isn't there a subtle difference between "I will pay" and "I'm going to pay", even though pretty much everything I've read would list these both as the future tense? Is that subtle difference really a "tense" or is it just that there's a separate word?

btilly 4y ago

First, there is a semantic argument here, which is exactly why people will disagree on how many tenses a language has. But that said, the fact that you CAN communicate something, doesn't mean that you did it through a tense. I already pointed you at Chinese, which has NO verb conjugation at all, and therefore is often claimed to have no tenses. What does it do instead? It has words for things like past, yesterday, tomorrow, and so on. Once one of those has been used, this is a context that is assumed to continue holding through your conversation until someone says something else. Then you continue in that new context with no grammatical cues to remind you of the timeframe under discussion. See https://www.thoughtco.com/mandarin-timeframes-2279615 https://www.thoughtco.com/mandarin-timeframes-2279615 for a more detailed explanation of how this actually works in practice. But it is clear that treatment of time is grammatically different as you go across languages.

kerkeslager 4y ago
Well, I can't speak to Chinese as I don't speak it even a little. But if that's a claim that Chinese has no tenses, I guess it somewhat comes down to what you consider a tense, then. Because if it's just about forms of a verb, I'd have to say that English has no future tense, for example, leaving us with probably... three tenses? Present (do), past (did), progressive (doing). But nothing I've read treats tense that way.
- btilly 4y ago
  And "what you consider a tense" is semantics. Full circle. To me a tense is the way you normally and automatically construct the grammar of a sentence to implicitly convey a specific idea about time. Without saying it explicitly. So "I went to the store", "I went to the store yesterday", and "I went to the store last week" are all the same tense. Because you've communicated "past" through the grammar without having explicitly said it. And it is clearly different than "I am going to the store" or "I will go to the store". The Chinese form, by contrast, all look like, "I go to store". And the words saying whether it was somewhere in the past, yesterday, last week, now, or some time in the future need be nowhere in the sentence. It is enough that they were explicitly said at some point. And this is specifically something that Chinese people struggle with in English. You constantly will catch them making mistakes like, "I go to store yesterday." Because the idea of conveying time with grammar is as foreign to them as the idea that objects have gender is to English speakers.