Futurity is, instead, expressed through modal verbs, specifically will and shall. The base form of a verb in English is the infinitive without the preposition to functioning as an infinitive marker.ĭespite popular belief, English does not have a future tense. The general formula for forming the simple past tense in English is: The general formula for forming the simple present tense in English is: English has only two verb tenses: present and past. Grammatical tense only roughly relates to time. Tense is the expression of location in time of an action or state. The following sections discuss the tenses, aspects, moods, and voices of the English verb system. Three moods: indicative, subjunctive, imperative.Four aspects: simple, progressive, perfect, perfect-progressive.Periphrasis, in contrast to inflection, is “a phrase of two or more words used to express a grammatical relationship that could otherwise be expressed by the inflection of a single word.” All English verb forms except for the simple present and simple past are periphrastic.Īlthough some grammars identify anywhere between twelve and sixteen English tenses, the nineteen finite, or conjugated, verb forms in English express more than just tense. Unlike many other widely-spoken Indo-European languages such as Spanish and French, the English verb system is largely
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