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Absolute Tense
Relative tense and absolute tense are distinct possible uses of the grammatical category of tense. Absolute tense means the grammatical expression of time reference (usually past, present or future) relative to "now" – the moment of speaking. In the case of relative tense, the time reference is construed relative to a different point in time, the moment being considered in the context. In other words, the reference point (or center of deixis) is the moment of discourse or narration in the case of absolute tense, or a different moment in the case of relative tense. A further distinction has also been made between "strict relative" tense, which merely expresses time relative to the reference point, and "absolute-relative tense" (such as pluperfect), which expresses time relative to the reference point while also placing the reference point in time relative to the present moment.Comrie (1985), p. 64. A relative past tense is sometimes called an anterior tense, while a relative futur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Grammatical Category
In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include: * Case, varying according to function. * Gender, with values like male, female, animate, inanimate, neuter, and more general classes. * Number, varying according to the number of things. * Tense, varying according to when an action takes place, whether in the present, past or future. * Aspect, varying according to how much time an action will take, whether finished, repeated or habitual. * Mood, varying according to modality, or the speaker's attitude towards the action. Although the use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical categories (considered syntactic categories) largely correspon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Non-past Tense
The nonpast tense (also spelled non-past) (abbreviated ) is a grammatical tense that distinguishes an action as taking place in times present or future. The nonpast tense contrasts with the past tense, which distinguishes an action as taking place prior to the moment of utterance. The nonpast tense is observed in many languages. Due to a lack of future tense inflectional morphology on the verb stem, many languages that are popularly conceived as having a three-way tense distinction (between past, present, and future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ex ...), can in fact be understood as having a two-way past-nonpast tense distinction. For example, in English, future sentences often take present tense verb morphology, and do not contain specialized future tense verb morpho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |