How many tenses are in the German language?

How many tenses are there in english language?

• Answer:

  "English has two tenses by which verbs are inflected, a non-past tense (present tense) and a past tense". However, "there's an ongoing dispute among modern English grammarians (see English grammar) regarding whether tense can only refer to inflected forms". 1) "Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs. Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express." "The number of tenses in a language may be controversial, since its verbs may indicate qualities of uncertainty, frequency, completion, duration, possibility, and even whether information derives from experience or hearsay." "English has two tenses by which verbs are inflected, a non-past tense (present tense) and a past tense (indicated by ablaut or the suffix -ed). What is commonly called the future tense in English is indicated with a modal auxiliary, not verbal inflection." "Grammarians and linguists typically consider will to be a future marker and give English two non-inflected tenses, a future tense and a future-in-past tense, marked by will and would respectively. In general parlance, all combinations of aspects, moods, and tenses are often referred to as "tenses"." "The distinction between grammatical tense, aspect, and mood is fuzzy and at times controversial. The English continuous temporal constructions express an aspect as well as a tense, and some therefore consider that aspect to be separate from tense in English. In Spanish the traditional verb tenses are also combinations of aspectual and temporal information. Going even further, there's an ongoing dispute among modern English grammarians (see English grammar) regarding whether tense can only refer to inflected forms. In Germanic languages there are very few tenses (often only two) formed strictly by inflection, and one school contends that all complex or periphrastic time-formations are aspects rather than tenses." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputes_in_English_grammar 2) "In English grammar, tense refers to any conjugated form expressing time, aspect or mood. The large number of different composite verb forms means that English has the richest and subtlest system of tense and aspect of any Germanic language. This can be confusing for foreign learners; however, the English verb is in fact very systematic once one understands that in each of the three time spheres - past, present and future - English has a basic tense which can then be made either perfect or progressive (continuous) or both. Simple Progressive Perfect Perfect progressive Future I will write I will be writing I will have written I will have been writing Present I write I am writing I have written I have been writing Past I wrote I was writing I had written I had been writing Because of the neatness of this system, modern textbooks on English generally use the terminology in this table. What was traditionally called the "perfect" is here called "present perfect" and the "pluperfect" becomes "past perfect", in order to show the relationships of the perfect forms to their respective simple forms. Whereas in other Germanic languages, or in Old English, the "perfect" is just a past tense, the English "present perfect" has a present reference; it is both a past tense and a present tense, describing the connection between a past event and a present state. However, historical linguists sometimes prefer terminology which applies to all Germanic languages and is more helpful for comparative purposes; when describing wrote as a historical form, for example, we would say "preterite" rather than "past simple". This table, of course, omits a number of forms which can be regarded as additional to the basic system: the intensive present I do write the intensive past I did write the habitual past I used to write the "shall future" I shall write the "going-to future" I am going to write the "future in the past" I was going to write the conditional I would write the perfect conditional I would have written the subjunctive, if I be writing, if I were writing. Some systems of English grammar eliminate the future tense altogether, treating will/would simply as modal verbs, in the same category as other modal verbs such as can/could and may/might. See Grammatical tense for a more technical discussion of this subject." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_verb#Tenses Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar#Time.2C_tense_and_aspect