Ebook Grammar for Teachers - A Guide to American English for Native and Non-Native Speakers (Second Edition): Part 2 presents the following content: Modal Auxiliary Verbs and Related Structures; Basic Sentence Patterns and Major Variations; Compound Sentences and Introduction to Complex Sentences: Adverbial Clauses; Complex Sentences Continued: Relative Clause; . Please refer to the documentation for more details. | Chapter 6 Time Tense and Aspect of Verbs Abstract In the previous chapter we began our observation of verbs as a class. In this chapter we will be examining how English verbs function to express the time of an event tense and information regarding the duration or completion of an event aspect . The chapter is divided into five sections. Section reviews verb inflections one more time and introduces the concept of time tense and aspect. Sections delve into the different English verb tenses Sect. looks at the present Sect. the past Sect. the future and Sect. the perfect. Keywords verb tenses Á present tenses Á progressive tenses Á aspect Á perfect tenses Section 1 Verbs and Inflections You may recall our discussion in Chap. 1 of how early English grammarians attempted to impose Latin and Greek grammatical concepts and terminology onto English and how these are often inadequate for describing the structure of English. This is particularly true in the case of verbs because English is a language that does not inflect to show tense to the degree that Latin Greek and many other European languages do. Traditional descriptions of English verb tenses are often unsatis- factory complicated and confusing. This chapter attempts to present clearly the essentials of English verbs and time reference in view of what ESL EFL learners need to know when learning English. We have examined verb inflections in various chapters previously. Each time we have emphasized that in English form is not equal to function. We have also observed repeatedly that although English has only eight inflections these inflec- tions cause many of the difficulties ESL EFL learners encounter. The following chart summarizes again the inflections for English verbs. Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 163 A. DeCapua Grammar for Teachers Springer Texts in Education DOI 978-3-319-33916-0_6 164 6 Time Tense and Aspect of Verbs English Verb Inflections he she it s simple
