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Tense, along with Mood , Voice and Person , are four ways in which Verb forms are frequently characterized, in languages where those categories apply. There are languages (mostly Isolating Language s, like Chinese ) where tense is not expressed anywhere in the verb or any auxiliaries, but only as adverbs of time, when needed for comprehension; in the same condition, grammatical tense in certain languages can be expressed optionally (such as Vietnamese ), for example, "sinh" meaning "birth" and "sanh" meaning "birthed"; and there are also languages (such as Russian ) where verbs indicate Aspect in addition to or instead of tense. The exact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate, since many languages include the state of certainty of the information, the frequency of the event, whether it is ongoing or finished, and even whether the information was directly experienced or gleaned from hearsay, as moods or tenses of a verb. Some grammarians consider these to be separate tenses, and some do not. Tenses cannot be easily mapped from one language into another. While all languages have a "default" tense with a name usually translated as "present tense" (or "simple present"), the actual meaning of this tense may vary considerably. ENGLISH TENSES Viewed in the strictest linguistic sense, English has only two tenses, marked in the verb alone: Nonpast Tense ( Present Tense ) and Past Tense . They are shown with the verb endings -Ø and ''-ed''. The following chart shows how T/M/A (tense/modal/aspect) is expressed in English: Since ''will'' is a modal Auxiliary , it cannot co-occur with other modals like ''can'', ''may'', and ''must''. Only aspects can be used in Infinitive s. Some linguists consider ''will'' a future marker and give English two more tenses, Future Tense and Future-in-past Tense , which are shown by ''will'' and ''would'' respectively. Also, in nonlinguistic language study, aspects and mode are viewed as tenses. COMPOUND TENSES The more complex tenses in Indo-European Languages are formed by combining a particular tense of the verb with certain Verbal Auxiliaries , the most common of which are various forms of "be", various forms of "have", and modal auxiliaries such as English ''will''. Romance and Germanic languages often add "to hold", "to stand", "to go", or "to come" as auxiliary verbs. For example, Spanish uses ''estar'' ("to be") with the present gerund to indicate the present continuous. Portuguese uses ''ter'' ("to have") with the past participle for the perfect aspect. Swedish uses ''kommer att'' ("come to") for the simple future. These constructions are often known as complex tenses or compound tenses (a more accurate technical term is Periphrastic tenses). Examples of some generally recognized Indo-European and Finnish tenses using the verb "to go" are shown in the table below. TENSE, ASPECT, AND MOOD 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. The abbreviation ''TAM'', ''T/A/M'' or ''TMA'' is sometimes found when dealing with verbal morphemes that combine tense, aspect and mood information. In some languages, tense and other TAM information may be marked on a noun, rather than a verb. This is called Nominal TAM . CLASSIFICATION OF TENSES Tenses can be broadly classified as:
Moving on from this, tenses can be quite finely distinguished from one another, although no language will express simply all of these distinctions. As we will see, some of these tenses in fact involve elements of modality (e.g. predictive and not-yet tenses), but they are difficult to classify clearly as either tenses or moods. Many languages define tense not just in terms of past/future/present, but also in terms of how far into the past or future they are. Thus they introduce concepts of closeness or remoteness, or tenses that are relevant to the measurement of time into days ( Hodiernal or Hesternal Tense s). Some languages also distinguish not just between past, present, and future, but also nonpast, nonpresent, nonfuture. Each of these latter tenses incorporates two of the former, without specifying which. Some tenses:
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