Title: Getting Tense in Englh: A Linguitis for Our Time*
Abstract: Teaching English tense to speakers of tenseless languages proves as difficult as teaching speakers of English a tenseless language. Although it is generally realized that tense and time are not coterminous, the relationship between the syntactic phenomenon of tense and the semantic concept of time is not clearly understood. By relating syntactic time markers such as tense to semantic concepts such as time and aspect, an attempt will be made to explain many of the apparent discrepancies between time and tense in English. Furthermore, it will be shown that there are apparently four time/aspect categories which seem to underlie the marking of time in all languages. In conclusion, some suggestions will be made as to how time can be taught in a more timely manner.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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