> 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

> 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?