VERB PATTERNS 5. Creating 'TENSES' is Only Part of What ASPECT Does To Convey Meaning in English

      We previously mentioned that TENSE refers to the 'position' of an 'action' in a timeline, that is 'where' an 'action' is located in 'time'. We also mentioned that ASPECT tells us how we 'experience' 'that time'. 

     The Now point shows our 'present moment': we can 'place' what we DO in our present day or what we ARE DOING at our 'present moment', right now or as a 'continual', 'progressive' or 'ongoing' action.  In the Past segment we can 'place' a 'completed' action (I walked to school yesterday) or an action in progress in the past (I was walking to school when I run into Mary). As in English we only have two 'tenses' ('present' verbs represented with DO and 'past' verbs reprented with DID) the Future segment shows 'future' actions represented with different 'forms' (I will walk to school tomorrow, I'm waking to school, I'm going to walk to school).

     When we 'see' or 'experience' actions in a 'continual', 'progressive' or 'ongoing' way, ASPECT makes us use auxiliary verbs such as WILL, BE and HAVE with the simple form, the past participle form or the '-ing/gerund/present participle' form to grammatically 'create' some other 'tenses':

     But creating 'TENSES' is only part of what ASPECT does to convey meaning in English. In our next post we won't see what a 'gerund' is and what it 'does', we won't see what an 'infinitive/to infinitive' is and what it 'does'. We need first undertand the term 'aspect'. See you soon.