Tense

Tense is a category used in the grammatical description of verbs (along with aspect and mood), referring primarily to the way the grammar marks the time at which the action denoted by the verb took place. It can be broadly classified as:

• absolute tense: indicates time in relationship to the time of the utterance (i.e. "now").
• relative tense: in relationship to some other time, other than the time of utterance.

Natural language

In the UNLarium framework, the attribute tense is represented by the following values:

{#tree:id=nl_tense|openlevels=0|root=Tense|

• absolute tense (ATE)
  • past (PAS)
    • hesternal past tense (HEP)
    • prehesternal past tense (PEP)
    • hodiernal past tense (HOP)
    • prehodiernal past tense (POP)
    • immediate past tense (IPT)
    • nonrecent past tense (NCP)
    • recent past tense (RCP)
    • nonremote past tense (NMP)
    • remote past tense (RMP)
    • preterit (PTR)
  • nonpast (NPAS)
  • present (PRS)
  • future (FUT)
  • nonfuture (NFUT)
  • still (STL)
  • not-yet (NYET)
• relative tense (RTE)
  • relative past (RPT)
  • relative nonpast (NRPT)
  • relative present (RPS)
  • relative future (RFT)
  • relative nonfuture (NRFT)

}}

Tense, mood and aspect

In synthetic languages, the distinction between grammatical tense, aspect and mood is fuzzy and at times controversial, because they are often amalgamated in single morpheme. In those cases, the corresponding values can be conjoined with "&":

• aorist: PAS&PFC
• imperfect (past imperfect): PAS&NPFC
• past perfect (pluperfect): PAS&RPT
• present perfect: PRS&PFC
• future perfect: FUT&PFC

Simple and compound tenses

The difference between simple and compound forms must be informed only if they represent different alternatives for the same tense. If this is the case, the compound is indicated through the attribute "CPW":

• French
  • passé simple: PAS
  • passé composé: PAS&CPW
  • plus-que-parfait: PAS&RPT (and not PAS&RPT&CPW: although compound, there is no simple form for this tense in French)

Examples

List of grammatical tenses:

• English tenses
• French tenses

UNL

In UNL, tense is to be represented as attributes indicating the actual time of the event.
The corresponding values for the attribute tense are the following:

The UNL representation should indicate the time rather than the grammatical tense of a form.

There is no simple one-to-one relationship between tense forms and time. In English, for instance, the present (grammatical tense) may be used to represent the future (time)

I’m going home tomorrow = go.@future.@recent (and not go.@present)

@present is used to indicate an action at the present and not habits, routines and statements

I'm in Frankfurt. = @present

I always come to school by cycle. = no tense information

The sun sets in the Occident. = no tense information

Tense values may be combined.

I'm going home tomorrow = go.@future.@recent

I had been there = @past.@anterior

Examples

List of grammatical tenses:

• English tenses
• French tenses