Tense and aspect: the essentials
What follows refers only to English. Languages deal with these two issues very differently indeed.
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What's the difference between Tense and Aspect? |
The distinction between tense and aspect is the most important thing
to know about verbs in English and it is not parallelled in a range of
other languages which do not have aspect at all or have aspects of verbs
which signal very different relationships in time.
This make it difficult for may learners to acquire the aspectual system
in English.
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Tense |
Tense refers to the time of an event and is often marked by a change in the verb ending. So we have, e.g.:
- Rita believes in ghosts (present)
- Rita believed in ghosts (past)
In these examples, the tense is marked by a suffix, -s for the
present tense (which also shows that it is third-person singular) and
-d
for the past form.
Depending on the form of the stem of the verb, English also uses -es
and -ed to mark these tense forms so we get:
Rita pushes
Rita pushed
and so on.
Other, irregular verbs mark the past form by changes to the internal
sounds such as:
Rita bought
Rita came
etc.
and some make no changes at all so we have, e.g.:
Rita bet £10
Rita put the money on a horse
etc.
However, unlike many languages, English often has no inflexion on the
base form of the verb in many cases. For example, in:
They believe in ghosts
the verb is in its base form with no marker to show tense or person but it is
still a present tense.
Arguably, too, English has no future tense because we don't have a form of
the verb to signify future time. We denote the future in many
ways, for example:
She is going to talk to me
She will talk to me
etc.
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Aspect |
Aspect refers to how an event or state is perceived with reference to time. So we have, e.g.:
- Rita has broken the rule
- Rita is breaking the rule
Sentence 3 tells us not only that the rule was broken in the past but
also that it changes the present. The fact that she
has broken the rule has consequences now. It is a present tense in
this respect making the present situation clear in relation to the past.
It will come as no surprise that this tense form is referred to as the
present perfect.
Sentence 4 gives a different aspect. The -ing ending on the verb
is called a present participle ending and in English that tells us that
the event is happening now or happens repeatedly. Unfortunately, English present tenses
are a bit complicated. Think what these actually mean and then
click
here for the answers.
- Rita walks to school
- Rita is walking to school tomorrow
- Rita is walking to school now
Sentence 5 implies that this is her habit, not necessarily
what she is doing right now.
Sentence 6 is actually the present progressive used for a future event
that has been arranged in some way. It refers to the present and
relates the current arrangement to the future.
Sentence 7 is the only one which is truly a present form.
It can, however, imply that this action is repeated (because, e.g.,
she has lost her bicycle or has moved to a home nearer her school
and needs no transport).
Aspect and tense are very closely related. We can use other
tenses with progressive (be + -ing) aspects and with perfect
aspects (have + the past participle of the verb).
We form the perfect aspect in English with the verb have so we
get, e.g.:
John has arrived
with the present-tense form of the verb have and the form
of the main verb known as the past participle.
We form the progressive aspect in English with the verb be
so we get, e.g.:
John is arriving
with the present tense of the verb be and the -ing
form of the verb known, in this case, as the present participle.
Here are two more examples:
- Rita had walked to school
Perfect aspect, past tense – we call this the past perfect tense. It relates a past event to another past event. - Rita was walking to school
Progressive aspect, past tense – we call this the past progressive tense. It is often used in conjunction with a simple form in, e.g.:
Rita was walking to school when she met her friends
and this is, again, a relational tense providing the background (walking) to the event (met).
Before we go on, here's a summary of the all the present and past tenses and aspects with their names, along with the future forms English also uses.
| Example (form in italics) | Tense name |
| She often speaks to her boss | Present simple (habit) |
| She is speaking to her boss | Present progressive |
| She spoke to her boss | Past simple |
| She was speaking to her boss | Past progressive |
| She has spoken to her boss | Present perfect |
| She has been speaking to her boss | Present perfect progressive |
| She had spoken to her boss | Past perfect |
| She had been speaking to her boss | Past perfect progressive |
| She used to speak to her boss | used to for past habits |
| She would speak to her boss | would for past habits |
| She will speak to her boss | Future simple (factual future) |
| She is speaking to her boss tomorrow | Present progressive (future) |
| She is going to speak to her boss | going to future (intentionality) |
| She will be speaking to her boss | Future progressive (ongoing future) |
| She will have spoken to her boss | Future perfect (past in the future) |
| She will have been speaking to her boss | Future perfect progressive (past in the future) |
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Relativity |
An important concept to understand when talking about tense and aspect is the distinction between an absolute tense and a relative or relational tense.
- Absolute tenses set an event or a state in time
with no need for any reference to any other event or state.
For example:
- She ate lunch at 1 o'clock
which sets the action in the past and tells us exactly when it happened - He lives in London
which sets the state in the present with no need for any further information - The London train always leaves at 6
which sets the action as a definite, timetabled event. We know it refers to the present, the past and the future. - I will be forty years old on Monday
which sets the state (being 40) in a specific time frame (Monday)
- She ate lunch at 1 o'clock
- Relative / relational tenses relate two actions together and
cannot be fully understood without some kind of context or
additional information. For example:
- He has lived in India for 20 years
which may be considered as a reference to the past but is only fully understandable if it comes with some additional information, for example
... so he can tell you (now) something reliable about India
or
but he is moving to Germany soon
or
and he will continue to do so - She had already eaten
which clearly refers to the past but is not understandable without some more information, for example:
so didn't want anything
or
but was happy to have a little lunch with us - They will have been at university for 2 years
which tells us about the future but is incomplete. We need to add information, for example:
and have learned a good deal about geology
or
and will graduate next year - She was sitting on the bus
which tells us that an event was ongoing in the past but needs to be completed with something like
when she realised she had missed her stop
or
when she started to feel ill - She had been running
which combines two aspects (the perfect and the progressive) and is incomplete unless we know what the tense relates to with, for example:
because she was late for work
or
and was exhausted
- He has lived in India for 20 years
This is important because many languages do not make a clear distinction between the two types of tense and the concepts are not easy to grasp.
This page, slightly abbreviated, is available to download as a PDF document.
Click to go on to a test.
| Related guides | |
| a lesson plan | if you would like to see how considerations of aspect might work in a full lesson |
| a lesson for elementary learners | on using past simple and past progressive |
| the tenses index | this has links to many other guides about tenses |
| the tenses map | this is a map of all the tenses on which you can click to select the guide you need |
| time lines for tenses | this is a set of time lines which will help you and your learners understand the concepts which the tense forms encode |
| voice | with a focus on the active and passive |
| copular verbs | for a guide to how be and other verbs work to link the subject and complement |
| the present perfect | for a guide to how have works to form the language's most troublesome and misunderstood tense |
| aspect | a more technical guide to the area in the in-service training section of this site |