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Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English. By some definitions, it doesn't have a future tense at all, it has a handful of future 'aspects,' the d
by lmkg 17y ago
Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English. By some definitions, it doesn't have a future tense at all, it has a handful of future 'aspects,' the difference being that a tense uses verb inflection and an aspect uses auxiliary verbs. The examples show how the distinction between an auxiliary and lexical verb can blur around the edges, which is actually how auxiliary verbs formed in the first place.
Sorry for the nitpicking, and you are correct that there's a mismatch between the title and the content (an increasingly severe problem). I was hoping for a linguistics discussion.
- davidw 17y agoThe main verbs are pretty much unconditionally about present actions: "We are in talks", and "I am getting ready". Of course the complete phrases certainly look to the future, which is the author's point. I'm just being nitpicky.
- pmiller2 17y ago>Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English. I'm blaming it on whoever misplaced most of our inflections and our case system like 800 years ago. Old English was a cool language.
- eru 17y agoSpoken German has even fewer tenses. You have the present tense, which you use for talking about present and future events, and the perfect, used for talking about the past. That covers at least 95% of all uses.