Tense–aspect–mood


Tense–aspect–mood or tense–modality–aspect is a group of grammatical categories which are important for the understanding of spoken or written content and which are marked in different ways by different languages.
TAM covers the expression of three major components of words which lead to or assist with a correct understanding of the speaker's meaning:
For example in English the word "walk" would be used in different ways for the different combinations of TAM:
In the last example, there is no difference in the articulation of the word although it is being used in a different way, one for conveying information, the other for instructing.
Some authors extend this term as tense–aspect–mood–evidentiality. In some languages, evidentiality and mirativity may also be included.
The term was coined out of convenience, for it is often difficult to untangle these features of a language. Several features may be conveyed by a single grammatical construction, but this system may not be complete in that not all possible combinations may have an available construction. On the other hand, the same category may be expressed with multiple constructions. In other cases, there may not be clearly delineated categories of tense and mood, or aspect and mood.
For instance, many Indo-European languages do not clearly distinguish tense from aspect. In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek, the imperfective aspect is fused with the past tense in a form traditionally called the imperfect. Other languages with distinct past imperfectives include Latin and Persian.
In the traditional grammatical description of some languages, including English, many Romance languages, and Greek and Latin, "tense" or the equivalent term in that language refers to a set of inflected or periphrastic verb forms that express a combination of tense, aspect, and mood. In Spanish, the simple conditional is classified as one of the simple tenses, but is named for the mood that it expresses. In Ancient Greek, the perfect tense is a set of forms that express both present tense and perfect aspect, or simply perfect aspect.
However, not all languages conflate tense, aspect and mood. Some analytic languages such as creole languages have separate grammatical markers for tense, aspect, and/or mood, which comes close to the theoretical distinction.

Creoles

, both Atlantic and non-Atlantic, tend to share a large number of syntactic features, including the avoidance of bound morphemes. Tense, aspect, and mood are usually indicated with separate invariant pre-verbal auxiliaries. Typically the unmarked verb is used for either the timeless habitual or the stative aspect or the past perfective tense–aspect combination. In general creoles tend to put less emphasis on marking tense than on marking aspect. Typically aspectually unmarked stative verbs can be marked with the anterior tense, and non-statives, with or without the anterior marker, can optionally be marked for the progressive, habitual, or completive aspect or for the irrealis mood. In some creoles the anterior can be used to mark the counterfactual. When any of tense, aspect, and modality are specified, they are typically indicated separately with the invariant pre-verbal markers in the sequence anterior relative tense, irrealis mode, non-punctual aspect.

Hawaiian Creole English

Hawaiian Creole English, or Hawaiian Pidgin, is a creole language with most of its vocabulary drawn from its superstrate English, but as with all creoles its grammar is very different from that of its superstrate. HCE verbs have only two morphologically distinct forms: the unmarked form and the progressive form with the suffix -in appended to the unmarked form. The past tense is indicated either by the unmarked form or by the preverbal auxiliary wen or bin or haed. However, for "to say" the marked past tense has the obligatory irregular form sed "said", and there are optional irregular past tense forms sin or saw = wen si "saw", keim = wen kam "came", and tol = wen tel "told". The past is indicated only once in a sentence since it is a relative tense.
The future marker is the preverbal auxiliary gon or goin "am/is/are going to": gon bai "is going to buy". The future of the past tense/aspect uses the future form since the use of the past tense form to mark the time of perspective retains its influence throughout the rest of the sentence: Da gai sed hi gon fiks mi ap.
There are various preverbal modal auxiliaries: kaen "can", laik "want to", gata "have got to", haeftu "have to", baeta "had better", sapostu "am/is/are supposed to". Tense markers are used infrequently before modals: gon kaen kam "is going to be able to come". Waz "was" can indicate past tense before the future marker gon and the modal sapostu: Ai waz gon lift weits "I was gonna lift weights"; Ai waz sapostu go "I was supposed to go".
There is a preverbal auxiliary yustu for past tense habitual aspect: yustu tink so. The progressive aspect can be marked with the auxiliary ste in place of or in addition to the verbal suffix -in: Wat yu ste it? = Wat yu itin? ; Wi ste mekin da plaen. The latter, double-marked, form tends to imply a transitory nature of the action. Without the suffix, ste can alternatively indicate perfective aspect: Ai ste kuk da stu awredi ; this is true, for instance, after a modal: yu sapostu ste mek da rais awredi. Stat is an auxiliary for inchoative aspect when combined with the verbal suffix -in: gon stat plein. The auxiliary pau without the verbal suffix indicates completion: pau tich "finish teaching". Aspect auxiliaries can co-occur with tense markers: gon ste plei ; wen ste it.

Modern Greek

Modern Greek distinguishes the perfective and imperfective aspects by the use of two different verb stems. For the imperfective aspect, suffixes are used to indicate the past tense indicative mood, the non-past tense indicative mood, and the subjunctive and imperative moods. For the perfective aspect, suffixes are used to indicate the past tense indicative mood, the subjunctive mood, and the imperative mood. The perfective subjunctive is twice as common as the imperfective subjunctive. The subjunctive mood form is used in dependent clauses and in situations where English would use an infinitive.
There is a perfect form in both tenses, which is expressed by an inflected form of the imperfective auxiliary verb έχω "have" and an invariant verb form derived from the perfective stem of the main verb. The perfect form is much rarer than in English. The non-past perfect form is not a true perfect aspect in that it does not imply present relevance but rather simply past action, as in French or Italian.
In addition, all the basic forms can be combined with a particle indicating future tense/conditional mood. Combined with the non-past forms, this expresses an imperfective future and a perfective future. Combined with the imperfective past it is used to indicate the conditional, and with the perfective past to indicate the inferential. If the future particle precedes the present perfect form, a future perfect form results.

Slavic languages

In all Slavic languages, most verbs come in pairs with one member indicating an imperfective aspect and the other indicating a perfective one.

Russian

Most Russian verbs come in pairs, one with imperfective aspect and the other with perfective aspect, the latter usually formed from the former with a prefix but occasionally with a stem change or using a different root. Perfective verbs, whether derived or basic, can be made imperfective with a suffix. Each aspect has a past form and a non-past form. The non-past verb forms are conjugated by person/number, while the past verb forms are conjugated by gender/number. The present tense is indicated with the non-past imperfective form. The future in the perfective aspect is expressed by applying the conjugation of the present form to the perfective version of the verb. There is also a compound future imperfective form consisting of the future of "to be" plus the infinitive of the imperfective verb.
The conditional mood is expressed by a particle after the past tense form. There are conjugated modal verbs, followed by the infinitive, for obligation, necessity, and possibility/permission.

Romance languages

Romance languages have from five to eight simple inflected forms capturing tense–aspect–mood, as well as corresponding compound structures combining the simple forms of "to have" or "to be" with a past participle. There is a perfective/imperfective aspect distinction.

French

French has inflectionally distinct imperative, subjunctive, indicative and conditional mood forms. As in English, the conditional mood form can also be used to indicate a future-as-viewed-from-the-past tense–aspect combination in the indicative mood. The subjunctive mood form is used frequently to express doubt, desire, request, etc. in dependent clauses. There are indicative mood forms for, in addition to the future-as-viewed-from-the-past usage of the conditional mood form, the following combinations: future; an imperfective past tense–aspect combination whose form can also be used in contrary-to-fact "if" clauses with present reference; a perfective past tense–aspect combination whose form is only used for literary purposes; and a catch-all formulation known as the "present" form, which can be used to express the present, past historical events, or the near-future. All synthetic forms are also marked for person and number.
Additionally, the indicative mood has five compound verb forms, each of which results from using one of the above simple forms of "to have" plus a past participle. These forms are used to shift back the time of an event relative to the time from which the event is viewed. This perfect form as applied to the present tense does not represent the perfect tense/aspect, but rather represents a perfective past tense–aspect combination.
Unlike Italian or Spanish, French does not mark for a continuous aspect. Thus, "I am doing it" and "I do it" both translate to the same sentence in French: Je le fais. However, this information is often clear from context, and when not, it can be conveyed using periphrasis: for example, the expression être en train de is often used to convey the sense of a continuous aspect; the addition of adverbs like encore may also convey the continuous, repetitive or frequent aspects. The use of the participle mood has almost completely fallen out of use in modern French for denoting the continuous aspect of verbs, but remains used for other aspects like simultaneity or causality, and this participle mood also competes with the infinitive mood for other aspects marked by nominal prepositions.

Italian

Italian has synthetic forms for the indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive moods. The conditional mood form can also be used for hearsay: Secondo lui, sarebbe tempo di andare "According to him, it would be time to go". The indicative mood has simple forms for the present tense, the imperfective aspect in the past tense, the perfective aspect in the past, and the future. As with other Romance languages, compound verbs shifting the action to the past from the point in time from which it is perceived can be formed by preceding a past participle by a conjugated simple form of "to have", or "to be" in the case of intransitive verbs. As with French, this form when applied to the present tense of "to have" or "to be" does not convey perfect aspect but rather the perfective aspect in the past. In the compound pluperfect, the helping verb is in the past imperfective form in a main clause but in the past perfective form in a dependent clause.
Unlike French, Italian has a form to express progressive aspect: in either the present or the past imperfective, the verb stare conjugated for person and number is followed by a present gerund.

Portuguese

Portuguese has synthetic forms for the indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive moods. The conditional mood form can also express past probability: Seria ele que falava "It_would_be he that was_speaking". The subjunctive form seldom appears outside dependent clauses. In the indicative, there are five one-word forms conjugated for person and number: one for the present tense ; one for the perfective aspect of the past; one for the imperfective aspect of the past; a form for the pluperfect aspect that is only used in formal writing; and a future tense form that, as in Italian, can also indicate present tense combined with probabilistic modality.
As with other Romance languages, compound verbs shifting the time of action to the past relative to the time from which it is perceived can be formed by preceding a past participle by a conjugated simple form of "to have". Using the past tense of the helping verb gives the pluperfect form that is used in conversation. Using the present tense form of the helping verb gives a true perfect aspect, though one whose scope is narrower than that in English: It refers to events occurring in the past and extending to the present, as in Tem feito muito frio este inverno.
Portuguese expresses progressive aspect in any tense by using conjugated estar, plus the present participle ending in -ando, -endo, or indo: Estou escrevendo uma carta.
Futurity can be expressed in three ways other than the simple future form: using the present tense form of "to go" as in Vou ver João esta tarde "I_go to_see John this afternoon"; using the present tense form of one verb meaning "to have" as in Temos que ver João hoje "We_have that to_see John today"; and using the present tense form of another verb also meaning "to have" as in Hei-de ver João amanhã "I_have-of to_see John tomorrow".

Spanish

Spanish morphologically distinguishes the indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and conditional moods. In the indicative mood, there are synthetic forms for the present tense, the past tense in the imperfective aspect, the past tense in the perfective aspect, and the future tense. The past can be viewed from any given time perspective by using conjugated "to have" in any of its synthetic forms plus the past participle. When this compound form is used with the present tense form of "to have", perfect tense/aspect is conveyed.
Spanish expresses the progressive similarly to English, Italian, and Portuguese, using the verb "to be" plus the present participle: estoy leyendo "I_am reading".

Germanic languages

Germanic languages tend to have two morphologically distinct simple forms, for past and non-past, as well as a compound construction for the past or for the perfect, and they use modal auxiliary verbs. The simple forms, the first part of the non-modal compound form, and possibly the modal auxiliaries, are usually conjugated for person and/or number. A subjunctive mood form is sometimes present. English also has a compound construction for continuous aspect. Unlike some Indo-European languages such as the Romance and Slavic languages, Germanic languages have no perfective/imperfective dichotomy.

German

The most common past tense construction in German is the haben plus past participle form, which is a pure past construction rather than conveying perfect aspect. The past progressive is conveyed by the simple past form. The future can be conveyed by the auxiliary werden, which is conjugated for person and number; but often the simple non-past form is used to convey the future. Modality is conveyed via conjugated pre-verbal modals: müssen "to have to", wollen "to want to", können "to be able to"; würden "would", sollten "should", sollen "to be supposed to", mögen "to like", dürfen "to be allowed to".

Danish

has the usual Germanic simple past and non-past tense forms and the compound construction using "to have", the compound construction indicating past tense rather than perfect aspect. Futurity is usually expressed with the simple non-past form, but the auxiliary modals vil and skal are sometimes used. Other modals include kan, kan gerne, må, and må gerne. Progressivity can be expressed periphrastically as in er ved at læse, er i færd med at vaske, sidder og læser, and står og taler. The subjunctive mood form has disappeared except for a few stock phrases.

Dutch

The simple non-past form can convey the progressive, which can also be expressed by the infinitive preceded by liggen "lie", lopen "walk, run", staan "stand", or zitten "sit" plus te. The compound "have" plus past participle is synonymous with, and more frequently used than, the simple past form, which is used especially for narrating a past sequence of events. The past perfect construction is analogous to that in English.
Futurity is often expressed with the simple non-past form, but can also be expressed using the infinitive preceded by the conjugated present tense of zullen; the latter form can also be used for probabilistic modality in the present. Futurity can also be expressed with "go" plus the infinitive: Hij gaat een brief schrijven "He goes a letter to_write", "He is going to write a letter". The future perfect tense/aspect combination is formed by conjugated zullen + hebben + past participle: Zij zullen naar Breda gegaan zijn.
The conditional mood construction uses the conjugated past tense of zullen: Hij zou graag thuis blijven "He would gladly home to_stay", "He would gladly stay home". The past tense/conditional mood combination is formed using the auxiliary "to have" or "to be": Hij zou graag thuis gebleven zijn "He would gladly home stayed to_be", "He would gladly have stayed home". In contemporary use the subjunctive form is mostly, but not completely, confined to set phrases and semi-fixed expressions, though in older Dutch texts the use of the subjunctive form can be encountered frequently.
There are various conjugated modal auxiliaries: kunnen "to be able", moeten "to have to", mogen "to be possible" or "to have permission", willen "to want to", laten "to allow" or "to cause". Unlike in English, these modals can be combined with the future tense form: Hij zal ons niet kunnen helpen "He will us not to_be_able to_help", "He will not be able to help us".

Icelandic

As with other Germanic languages, Icelandic has two simple verb forms: past and non-past. Compound constructions that look to the past from a given time perspective use conjugated "to have" plus past participle. In each voice there are forms for the indicative mood and the subjunctive mood for each of the simple past, the simple non-past, the perfect, the past perfect, the future, and the future perfect, and there are a non-past conditional mood form and a past conditional mood form, as well as an imperative mood. The perfect form is used for a past event with reference to the present or stretching to the present, or for a past event about which there is doubt, so the perfect form represents aspect or modality and not tense. The future tense form is seldom used. The non-past subjunctive form expresses a wish or command; the past subjunctive form expresses possibility. The indicative mood form is used in both clauses of "if ...then..." sentences, although "if" can be replaced by the use of the subjunctive mood form. The subjunctive form is used in both clauses of "if ...then..." sentences, and is often used in subordinate clauses. There are various modal auxiliary verbs. There is a progressive construction using "to be" which is used only for abstract concepts like "learn" and not for activities like "sit": ég er að læra "I am learning".

English

The English language allows a wide variety of expressions of combinations of tense, aspect, and mood, with a variety of grammatical constructions. These constructions involve pure morphological changes, conjugated compound verbs, and invariant auxiliaries. For English from the perspective of modality, see Palmer; and Nielsen for English from the perspective of tense, see Comrie and Fleischman; for English from the perspective of aspect, see Comrie.

The unmarked verb

The unmarked verb form is the infinitive with the particle to omitted. It indicates nonpast tense with no modal implication. In an inherently stative verb such as feel, it can indicate present time or future in dependent clauses. In an inherently non-stative verb such as run, the unmarked form can indicate gnomic or habitual situations or scheduled futurity, often with a habitual reading. Non-stative verbs in unmarked form appearing in dependent clauses can indicate even unscheduled futurity.
The unmarked verb is negated by preceding it with do/does not. Here do has no implication of emphasis, unlike the affirmative.

Morphological changes

The aspectually and modally unmarked past tense is usually marked for tense by the suffix -ed, pronounced as,, or depending on the phonological context. However, over 400 verbs are irregular and their morphological changes are internal. This aspectually unmarked past tense form appears in innately stative verbs and in non-stative verbs, in which case the aspect could be habitual or perfective, but not progressive.
This form is negated with an invariant analytical construction using the morphologically unmarked verb. As with do and do not, no emphasis is imparted by the use of did in combination with the negative not.
For the morphological changes associated with the subjunctive mood, see English subjunctive.

Conjugated compound verbs

There are two types of conjugated compound verbs in English, which can be combined.
Both of these morphological changes can be combined with the compound verbal constructions given below involving invariant auxiliaries, to form verb phrases such as will have been taking.

Invariant auxiliaries

Aside from the above-mentioned auxiliary verbs, English has fourteen invariant auxiliaries, which are used before the morphologically unmarked verb to indicate mood, aspect, tense, or some combination thereof. Some of these have more than one modal interpretation, the choice between which must be based on context; in these cases, the equivalent past tense construction may apply to one but not the other of the modal interpretations. For more details see English modal verbs.
Although several verbal categories are expressed purely morphologically in Basque, periphrastic verbal formations predominate. For the few verbs that have synthetic conjugations, Basque has forms for past tense continuous aspect and present tense continuous aspect, as well as imperative mood.
In the compound verbal constructions, there are forms for the indicative mood, the conditional mood, a mood for conditional possibility, an imperative mood, a mood of ability or possibility, a mood for hypothetical "if" clauses in the present or future time, a counterfactual mood in the past tense, and a subjunctive mood. Within the indicative mood, there is a present tense habitual aspect form, a past tense habitual aspect form, a near past tense form, a remote past tense form, a future-in-the-past form, and a future tense form.
There are also some constructions showing an even greater degree of periphrasis: one for progressive aspect and ones for the modalities of volition, necessity/obligation, and ability.

Hawaiian

Hawaiian is an isolating language, so its verbal grammar exclusively relies on unconjugated auxiliary verbs. It has indicative and imperative mood forms, the imperative indicated by e + verb. In the indicative its tense/aspect forms are: unmarked, ua + verb, ke + verb + nei, and e + verb + ana.
Modality is expressed non-grammatically in Hawaiian: Pono conveys obligation/necessity as in He pono i na kamali'i a pau e maka'ala, "It's right for children all to beware", "All children should/must beware"; ability is conveyed by hiki as in Ua hiki i keia kamali'i ke heluhelu "Has enabled to this child to read", "This child can read".