Summary of the 'Tenses' section of English Linguistics I
13 views 0 purchase
Course
Engelse Taalkunde (FOTT4A)
Institution
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
Full summary of “Tenses.” Other parts of the English Linguistics course are: 'Modality', 'The Noun Phrase' and 'Phonetics and Phonology' (see my other summaries). Teached by Dr. Maekelberghe. With my summaries, I achieved 16/20 for the full course.
The verb phrase:
o Finite: VP contains a finite verb form
e.g.: He baked a cake; She must have seen him; I have been thinking about you.
o Non-finite: VP only contains non-finite verb forms
e.g.: He always drinks coffee before walking his dog; To be or not to be, that is the question.
Finite verb phrases have TENSE CONTRAST:
e.g.: She sees him – She saw him
She has seen him – She had seen him
She is seeing him – She was seeing him
Tense:
a tense is the pairing of a morpho-syntactic form with a meaning
o Morpho-syntactic form= the tense form
o Meaning= the specification of the temporal location of a situation
E.g.: form of the future tense= will + infinitive
meaning of the future tense= ‘location after speech time’
The tense system locates situations in time
Situation:
o Process, event or state referred to by a clause
o Combination of a verb phrase with participants and (optional) circumstances
E.g.: She saw him; He is sleeping; The train leaves at 5PM; She has been living here since May.
The English tenses:
o Present tense, e.g. I work
o Past tense or preterite, e.g. I worked
o Future tense, e.g. I will work.
o Present perfect, e.g. I have worked.
o Past perfect or pluperfect, e.g. I had worked.
o Conditional tense, e.g. I would work.
o Conditional perfect, e.g. I would have worked.
Time vs. tense
Time is an extralinguistic category: it exists independently of language
Tense is a linguistic concept: it refers to the fact that a language has different verb forms
corresponding to the different ways in which a speaker can locate a situation in time.
o We will be concerned with the linguistic conceptualization of time (how temporal relations
are expressed between the time of the situation and a certain ‘orientation time’)
o How do we locate a situation in time? take a point in time whose location is known, and
then locate the situation in relation to this point
o A tense linguistically expresses the temporal relation between the actualization time of a
situation and some other time:
Temporal zero-point
Another situation time
An implicit time of orientation
,Temporal zero-point (t0)
o The temporal zero-point t0 is the time to which all the temporal relations expressed by a
tense are directly or indirectly related
o The temporal zero-point is nearly always the speech time or encoding time: the time of
uttering or writing the message.
o In certain contexts, it is possible for the speaker to choose the decoding time
(hearing/reading and interpreting the utterance) as the temporal zero-point:
E.g.: You are now entering Washington County
E.g.: when writing a letter that is sent before Christmas, but reaches destination after
Christmas: I hope you had a nice Christmas
BUT most of the time: encoding time=decoding time.
Time spheres: past and present (sectors/zones)
Time zones: past, pre-present, present and post-present.
4 absolute sectors
Relative and absolute tenses (weblecture 2)
Locating situations in time:
o A tense linguistically expresses the temporal relation between the actualization time of a
situation and some other time:
Temporal zero-point absolute tenses: directly related to t0
Another situation time relative tenses: indirectly related to t 0
An implicit time of orientation
E.g.: He said he will come: the ‘coming’ is after t0, still has to happen. Future tense.
vs. He said he would come: more ambiguous. Happens after the situation of saying. Relative tense
(conditional)
Absolute tenses:
o Absolute tense: relates its situation directly to t0:
o The past tense: establishes a domain in the past
o The present perfect: establishes a domain in the pre-present
o The present tense: establishes a domain in the present
o The future tense: establishes a domain in the post-present sector
E.g.: He said he will come:
both absolute (past and postpresent)
, Relative tenses:
Relative tense: relates its situation to a binding TIME OF ORIENTATION (of another situation)
o The past tense: expresses simultaneity in the past domain
o The past perfect: expresses anteriority in the past domain
o The conditional: expresses posteriority in the past domain
E.g.: He said he would come:
Temporal domains:
A temporal domain is a set of situations which are temporally related to each other by means of
tenses.
o Absolute tenses establish a new temporal domain (on timeline)
o Relative tenses expand an existing temporal domain
When introduction a new situation in the discourse, the speaker can:
o SHIFT to a new temporal domain: new situation is related directly to the temporal zero-point
of the speaker: absolute tense
E.g.: he said he will come
o Temporally SUBORDINATE the new situation to another situation in an already established
temporal domain: relative tense
E.g.: he said he would come
Shift of domain:
E.g.: He said he will come ; He started smoking after he turned eighteen.
(after: indicates an order of events)
A shift of domain within the past-time sphere requires that the temporal order of the
situations be clear form the use of time adverbials/the order of the clauses/the
context/general pragmatic knowledge (=knowledge about the world).
E.g.: They had planned [relative tense: before] to tease her, but they ended up being very nice to her.
VS. They planned [absolute tense] to tease her, but they ended up being very nice to her.
Temporal subordination:
E.g.: He said he would come; He started smoking after he had turned eighteen.
Temporal subordination (through the use of relative rather than absolute tense) does not
always go hand in hand with syntactic subordination!
o Syntactically subordinate clauses may or may not show temporal subordination:
E.g.: He said he will come: synt sub, but not temporal sub (absolute)
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller mayavermeulen. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $3.64. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
