In this section, we will give an overview of what can be found in general reference grammars of English. For the purpose of this study, Biber et al. (2000), Huddleston and Pullum (2002), and Quirk et al. (1985) were selected as the main sources with some additional information
93 taken from Baugh and Cable (2002), van Gelderen (2006), König and Gast (2012), Miller (2012), and Swan (2005), and others.
English is typically regarded as belonging to the West-Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family (Baugh and Cable 2002; van Gelderen 2006; among others). Yet, structurally, morphologically, and lexically, English does not behave as a typical Germanic language because Modern English shows heavy influence from multiple languages of other language families (Miller 2012: 236). One major feature that provides insight into how dissimilar English is in comparison to other Germanic languages is the simplification and loss of inflectional endings (Baugh and Cable 2002: 13). This naturally affects the representation of tense and aspect because, as we have seen earlier, both tense and aspect are typically formed by adding inflectional endings to the verbal stem. In English, however, tense and aspect (and also mood, but this will be disregarded here) are generally marked analytically, hence with auxiliaries that are added to the verb phrase (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 115). There is only one tense distinction, namely that between simple present and simple past, that is marked inflectionally (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 115). Therefore, English is not regarded as having a three-way distinction between present, past, and future, because “English has no future form of the verb in addition to present and past forms” (Quirk et al. 1985: 176). Before having a closer look at the tenses available in English, we take a brief detour to the inflectional categories of the verb.
English distinguishes two types of verbs, lexical verbs on the one hand, and auxiliary verbs on the other hand. All lexical verbs have six inflectional forms – we call this the six-term paradigm (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 74). You can find the full verbal paradigm, exemplary for three verbs, in Table 2. Auxiliary verbs behave differently in that they additionally (i) have negative forms, such as haven’t or couldn’t, (ii) that all modal auxiliaries lack the secondary forms (i.e. the plain form, gerund and past participle form), (iii) that some of them (for instance must) lack the preterit forms, and (iv) that be, as a special type of an auxiliary verb, has additional person-number agreement forms (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 75). See Table 3 (taken and adapted from Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 75) for the paradigm of the verb be. A further feature of auxiliary verbs is that they precede lexical verbs if they occur together in one clause (Bauer et al. 2013: 61). Auxiliary verbs can be further subdivided into modal auxiliaries (i.e. can, could, dare, may, might, must, need, ought, shall, should, will, would) and non-modal auxiliaries (i.e. be, do, have) (Bauer et al. 2013: 63). The auxiliaries of the latter group are used for different types of verb phrases. Be can be both a lexical verb and an auxiliary verb and is used to form the passive of an active verb. Be and have are needed to form complex tenses (for
94 instance present and past progressive and present or past perfect) and do is needed for the negation of lexical verbs (e.g. we drink vs. we don’t drink and *we not drink or *we drink not) (Bauer et al. 2013: 63).
let catch look
preterit let caught looked
Primary 3rd sg lets catches looks
present tense plain let catch look
plain form let catch look
Secondary gerund participle letting catching looking
past participle let caught looked
Table 2: Inflectional forms of the English lexical verb
Lexical verbs can be grouped into regular and irregular verbs. Regular lexical verbs form their past tense forms with the suffix –ed, irregular lexical verbs have irregular past tense forms (Bauer et al. 2013: 66). In Table 2, there are two irregular verbs (let and catch) and one regular verb (look). Irregularity could mean that the preterit and the past participle form are identical to the plain form, or that both past forms are identical but different to the plain form, or that all three forms are unique. If two or more forms of a lexeme have an identical form, we call this syncretism (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 76).
Neutral Negative
1st sg 3rd sg other 1st sg 3rd sg other
present tense am is are aren’t isn’t aren’t
Primary preterit was were wasn’t weren’t
irrealis were - weren’t -
plain form be -
Secondary gerund participle being -
past participle been -
Table 3: Inflectional forms of the verb be (taken and adapted from Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 74)
Due to the historical development that English underwent, many inflectional endings are now lost, and we find a considerable number of verbal syncretism (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 76).
In English, there exist identical forms, for instance, for numerous preterit and past participle forms. As can be seen in Table 2, the preterit and past participle forms of all three verbs are identical. There are, however, other examples, where the preterit and the past participle are not identical (see for example the lexical verb go: the preterit form is went, and the past participle form is gone). But even if verbs have the same form, their specific meaning can be derived from the context.
95
Type A (modal) modal auxiliary + base form of a verb should finish Type B (perfective) auxiliary have + -ed participle have finished Type C (progressive) auxiliary be + -ing participle is finishing Type D (passive) auxiliary be + -ed participle is finished Table 4: Basic types of complex verb phrases (adapted from Quirk et al. 1985: 151)
Furthermore, the English verb phrase can either be simple or complex. Simple verb phrases consist of a single verb. This verb can be in present tense or past tense, it can be an imperative or a subjunctive form (Quirk et al. 1985: 151). Complex verb phrases consist of two or more lexical items and can be further subdivided into four complex verb phrase types. Table 4 lists these four basic types. These types could also combine with each other to form further complex verb phrases of more than two words. The different types of verbs and the morphological features are relevant for forming tenses and for expressing aspectual meaning. From a morphological perspective, we distinguish only between two tense oppositions: past versus non-past (König & Gast 2012: 82). From this perspective, there is no future tense in English, because future time reference is expressed with auxiliary forms in combination with lexical verbs (König & Gast 2012: 82). Along this line, there are also no complex past tenses because all past tense forms are combinations of the auxiliary verb or perfect marker have in addition to a past participle form (König & Gast 2012: 82). Yet, for the purpose of the comparison later on, we will follow König and Gast (2012) and their inventory of six English tenses. This is done purely because (i) in German we find parallel tenses which therefore facilitates a direct comparison, (ii) even if there are no distinguished forms but only combinations, they nevertheless express a unique meaning different than the simple present or simple past, and (iii) because this classification is commonly used in classrooms for didactic purposes (König & Gast 2012: 83). The latter is especially relevant since we are analyzing learner language and these learners receive formal training in English. These learners are most likely confronted with exactly this classification.
Simple Present I look at a fish.
Simple Past I looked at a fish.
Future I will look at a fish.
Present Perfect I have looked at a fish.
Past Perfect I had looked at a fish.
Future Perfect I will have looked at a fish.
Table 5: Six tenses in English (adapted from König & Gast 2012: 83)
96 The simple present is normally used for present time reference, such as situations located at or around the moment of utterance, regularly occurring situations, scheduled situations, or habits;
future time reference is only possible if it is a scheduled event (König & Gast 2012: 85). With stative verbs, the simple present form can be used to make timeless statements, which are generally true and located at a specific moment in time (Quirk et al. 1985: 179). The simple present form can also refer to the past in the historic present (a situation described, or a story told from the perspective of an eyewitness; it is clearly a past event but the simple present form is used) or it can be used in fictional narrative (similar to the former, yet here it is an invented story that happened in the past but which uses the present tense form) (Quirk et al. 1985: 181-183). All these different uses of the simple present are formed with a single verb in the plain form, or as it is also called in the base form. The only exception is the third person singular, which is marked with the –s form (Quirk et al. 1985: 97). This means that in English, there is person agreement and number concord in the simple present tense but only between the third person singular and all other singular or plural persons (Quirk et al. 1985: 149). As was already presented in Table 3, the verb be is an exception here and shows more person concord than any other verb.
(15) Today is Friday! [Present time reference]
(16) We go to the gym three times a week. [Regularly occurring situation, habit]
(17) Water boils at 100°C. [Timeless statement]
(18) It was really crazy. I was standing there, and then suddenly, this person comes and looks at me as if … [Historic past]
Simple past locates a situation anterior to the moment of utterance (Huddleston & Pullum 2002:
137), the situation lies completely in the past and is over at the time of the utterance. This tense is formed with the preterit form of the verb. As was explained before, regular verbs form the preterit with –ed and irregular verbs have a unique preterit form that cannot be derived but needs to be learned individually for every verb (Swan 2005: 282-285). Typically, adverbials of time that refer to a time that lies in the past combine with simple past tense verb forms.
Examples are yesterday, last week, a year ago, etc.
Although we explained that there is no future tense in English, there are several strategies to express future time reference; the one given in Table 5 is only one example. This strategy is the most basic form of referring to a future event and its form consists of will, or less frequently shall, and the plain form of a lexical verb (König & Gast 2012: 85). Very often, the will-future is used to express some kind of condition and is therefore frequently used in if-clauses (König & Gast 2012: 86). The second most frequent future marker is a form of be going
97 to and the infinitive form of a lexical verb. Originally, it derives from the progressive form, but the meaning of motion and moving was lost over time and it is now used to refer to the future.
There is a meaning difference to the will-future form: the going-to-future is more than predicting something, it indicates intention of future fulfillment or is based on some kind of (outside) evidence (i.e. you could say It is going to rain! if there are dark clouds in the sky) (König & Gast 2012: 85). The present progressive form can also refer to the future, yet the underlying meaning of arrangements or plans that have already been made is present here (König & Gast 2012: 86). The least infrequent form of expressing future is with the auxiliaries will or shall and the progressive form. The meaning of this future form can either be drawn from putting together the meaning of the two individual parts or, and this is more a stylistic matter, it can express a more cautious sentence by indicating that a situation is not planned but the necessary consequence of another action (König & Gast 2012: 86). For the matter of clarification, the following examples are meant to underline these theoretical explanations.
(19) I will win this competition! [Hidden condition: if I stick to my training schedule]
(20) I am going to study tonight. [Intention]
(21) She is flying to Hanoi later this week. [Arrangements have already been made]
(22) You can come with us, we will be driving to Jena anyways. [Consequence]
In addition to future marking in the verb phrase, adverbials that express future time reference, such as later today, tomorrow, next year, etc., very often co-occur.
The present perfect is used to refer to a situation that has started in the past and is still relevant at the moment of utterance; it goes up to the present moment or could even include it (König & Gast 2012: 89). It is formed with the auxiliary have in the present tense and the past participle of a lexical verb. König and Gast differentiate between four different uses of the present perfect that heavily interact with aktionsart (2012: 90-91). The universal use, which refers to states or habits that reach up to the present moment, is formed with state or activity verbs. The existential use is restricted to bounded events that are clearly in the past but not definitely located in time. The resultative perfect occurs with achievement and accomplishment verbs because they indicate a change that has current relevance. The last type is the hot-news perfect. It can be used to introduce a yet unknown event in the recent past. Sentences (23) to (26) represent typical examples of each type. They were inspired by König and Gast (2012: 90-91).
(23) I have lived in Hamburg for nearly 3 years now. [Universal use]
(24) I have been to Vietnam once. [Existential use]
(25) Someone has been here before. [Resultative use]
98 (26) They have finally come to an agreement. (News about the German government
after the coalition negotiations in February 2018). [Hot-news perfect]
Only adverbials that include the present moment can combine with the present perfect.
Examples could be this week, so far, until now, and today. Adverbs that are used in combination with the simple past, hence, that refer to a definite point in the past, disqualify for being used with the present perfect (König & Gast 2012: 89).
The past perfect is a compound tense that combines the meaning of the simple past and the perfect. This means that the past perfect refers to a situation that is located anterior to a situation that lies in the past, or differently said that is anterior to the moment of utterance (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 140). Hence, we find a double anteriority.
(27) I had finished the book before he came home.
After having discussed the six tenses available in English, we will now turn to aspect. It should have become clear by now that in this study, the perfect tenses (i.e. present perfect and past perfect) are regarded as tenses and not as aspect. This is not entirely uncontroversial, and many scholars have addressed this issue (see for instance Radden & Dirven 2007: 206) or regarded the present perfect as a form of aspect (Klein 1994; Quirk et al. 1985). We will follow König and Gast and consider English a language that has only one aspectual contrast, namely progressive aspect versus non-progressive aspect (2012: 92) and we will disregard perfect in this section on aspect.
Biber et al. define the progressive as being “used to describe activities or events that are in progress at a particular time, usually for a limited duration. The present progressive aspect describes events that are currently in progress or are about to take place in the near future”
(2000: 470). Huddleston and Pullum outline that the progressive aspect has to do with the perspective: it is a way of looking at a situation, activity, or event from an internal point of view (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 117). You could clearly use a simple form instead, but the meaning of the situation would differ. A typical example of a progressive sentence would be the following, taken from König & Gast (2012: 93):
(28) Charles is working.
This sentence stands in direct opposition to its simple form Charles works. The former expresses a situation where Charles is right now in the middle of doing an action (i.e. work), whereas we can classify the simple aspect in the present tense as habitual, i.e. the general property of Charles of having a job.
The progressive in English is not restricted to a specific time; it is rather that someone is referring to a particular situation which is happening at a moment that could lie in the past,
99 the present, or the future. In that sense, the progressive combines with all tenses available in English. In addition to tense interacting with the progressive aspect, the aktionsart of the verb plays a crucial role. Biber et al. state that the progressive aspect can only be used with verbs expressing activities or describing events, so-called dynamic verbs (2000: 471). Such verbs are, for example, to dance, to march, to bring, to laugh, to play, to work (Biber et al. 2000: 471).
This means that verbs, according to their aktionsart, combine more or less easily with the progressive: activities and accomplishments typically combine with the progressive, but achievements and states are less likely to be used in the progressive form. In addition to the verbs commonly used in the progressive, Biber et al. (2000) present verbs that only rarely occur in the progressive aspect. Some examples are: to agree, to believe, to know, to want, and to appreciate (Biber et al. 2000: 472). These belong to the group of mental/attitudinal state verbs.
Other linguists agree and also claim that verbs expressing states do not normally occur in the progressive (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 119; Smith 1983: 482). Swan even gives a list of common non-progressive verbs (Swan 2005: 457). Those are: to believe, to doubt, to feel, to hate, to imagine, to know, to (dis)like, to love, to prefer, to realize, to recognize, to remember, to see, to suppose, to think, to understand, to want, and to wish (Swan 2005: 457). Hirtle and Bégin, however, claim that, even though it is not common and occurs only infrequently, state verbs can, under certain circumstances, appear in the present progressive (1991: 101). This can somehow be considered a recent innovation in English. Originally, the progressive appeared in Middle English, or even Old English, and was far more limited in its use (Hundt 2004: 47). It was shown that the progressive started out to be restricted to animate subjects, and that it has now spread to inanimate subjects as well (Hundt 2004: 51). In other words: “the meaning of the progressive has extended well beyond the original definition of progressivity as the combination of continuous meaning and nonstativity” (Comrie 1976: 38). In Kranich, you can also find the notion of an extended use of the present progressive as “a modern invention” (2010: 202). The use of the progressive with dynamic verbs that describe events and actions is, as we have seen, very frequent, but this grammatical structure seems to be spreading to state verbs, too (Aarts et al. 2010: 162). This use is still not widely dispersed (Kranich 2010: 251) and only a small number of state verbs are infrequently used in the progressive aspect as an addition to the more or less restricted, standard use of the present progressive. Only in certain contexts, it is appropriate to use them in the progressive aspect. This latter use is by far not the most frequent use and certainly associated with highly advanced learners, because in order to express such fine nuances, one needs to have a very high command of that language. The present progressive has in general been demonstrated to be a problematic area for English as a Second Language
100 (ESL) learners (Bland 1988: 55, Mauranen 2017: 239). For this study, the progressive will be one of the focus areas because of the general features of the progressive and because of its changing nature (see more about the progressive aspect in Chapter 4.8.2).
Apart from the type of verb, genre also plays an important role in the frequency of the progressive aspect. In speech, the progressive is used significantly more often than in written English (Aarts et al. 2010: 158). Furthermore, it is more frequently used in informal registers than in formal registers (Axelsson & Hahn 2001: 12; Hundt 2004: 61; Kranich 2010: 251).
Again, this information is important for the current study, because we will analyze written and spoken language and the expected genre is neutral or colloquial as opposed to formal style.
Furthermore, we have to stress (again) that in English, we find a fully grammaticalized system for progressive vs. non-progressive aspect (König & Gast 2012). Fully grammaticalized refers to its obligatoriness: for every utterance, we must choose between the progressive, i.e.
the auxiliary be plus the –ing ending at the main verb, or the simple form of the verb. The progressive and the simple form are not (always) interchangeable (Comrie 1976: 33) as they express different meanings. The progressive adds dynamicity, duration and ongoingness to the, so-called, basic meaning expressed in the simple tenses. In some instances, it would be grammatical to use either form.
(29) They go to the lake.
(30) They are going to the lake.
Considering sentences (29) and (30), we notice that both are grammatically correct and could be uttered or written when describing a picture where you can see some people who are on their way to a lake. The only difference is that the focus shifts: the simple present sentence focuses on the general situation that people are on their way. The present progressive, however, focuses on the actual action, the activity of going somewhere. This choice, however, as we have seen earlier, is said to not be possible for all verbs. This is another reason of why the use of the progressive aspect is a problem area, especially for learners of English.
Verbs of perception, for example hear or see, can be used either with an object following a verbal infinitive or the –ing form of the verbs (Swan 2005: 222). Consider examples (31) and (32) (taken from Swan 2005: 222) to understand the meaning difference between the infinitive and the progressive form:
(31) I saw her cross the road.
(32) I saw her crossing the road.
Example (31) communicates that the entire situation, i.e. the crossing of the road, from the beginning to the end was observed; sentence (32), however, expresses that we focus on the an
101 action in progress, hence, we saw her while she was crossing (without implying the starting or endpoint of this action) (Swan 2005: 222). Notice, that for this progressive use, we do not find the auxiliary verb be (Swan 2005: 222). Yet, very often, verbs of perception are not used in the progressive; if we refer to a particular moment and want to express that we see or hear something, the modal verb can is commonly used, i.e. can hear or can see (Swan 2005: 102).
Last but not least, one further use of lexical verbs will be introduced. In numerous utterances, lexical verbs are used that do not show tense marking. These are called nonfinite forms as opposed to the finite forms that have previously been discussed (Quirk et al. 1985:
153). There are four nonfinite forms of the verb: (i) the bare infinitive, (ii) the to-infinitive, (iii) the present participle with –ing, and (iv) the past participle with –ed (Quirk et al. 1985: 150).
Nonfinite verb phrases cannot be the only verb phrases of an independent clause which means that they cannot occur with a subject (Quirk et al. 1985: 150, 153). There is always another finite verb phrase present. The following example sentences represent the four types of nonfinite verbs. There are two examples of an –ing form given, one is a gerund (that acts as a noun in the sentence, see sentence (36)) and one is a present participle (35). For more information on the difference between gerund and present participle see Swan (2005).
(33) She may move to a different city. [bare infinitive]
(34) I wanted to talk to her yesterday. [to-infinitive]
(35) Before going out, I always check my purse. [-ing participle]
(36) I don’t like swimming. [gerund]
(37) Papers submitted later than on Friday will not be accepted. [-ed participle]
This was only a very brief summary of important points concerning the English verb phrase.
For further explanations on each individual topic, it is recommended to consider one of the main reference grammas mentioned in the beginning (Biber et al. 2000; Huddleston & Pullum 2002; Quirk et al. 1985). The information given was meant to point out how English marks tense and aspect and which areas may be difficult for learners. Throughout the next sections, by explaining tense and aspect categories of other languages, it should become even more pronounced where learners of English with certain native languages may produce non-target-like structures. In section 4.8.1, we will discuss this even further, by joining the findings of all individual discussions within one chapter.
102 4.3 Tense and aspect marking in German
German belongs, like English, to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family and therefore shares numerous grammatical categories with English. Yet, in many respects, German differs from English because both languages developed differently due to their specific historical situation (for an overview see Baugh & Cable 2002; Chambers & Wilkie 2014; and Hogg & Denison 2008; see also König & Gast 2012 for a detailed comparison of German and English). Whereas German belongs to the group of fusional or inflecting languages, English is developing into an isolating or analytic language (König & Gast 2012: 314; Iggesen 2013;
Siemund 2004; Velupillai 2013: 96). Even though this is a fundamental difference between German and English, both languages have, nevertheless, syntactic constructions, which means that affixes attach to the stem of a word to express grammatical categories (Bickel & Nichols 2013a). English can maximally express two categories (tense and person) with one inflected verb form and the same can be said about German (Bickel & Nichols 2013a). In German, three categories, i.e. tense, person, and mood, can be expressed by inflectional morphology; but according to Bickel and Nichols (2013a), they appear as cumulated exponents, and therefore, we find maximally two categories attached to a. Overall, both languages mark tense mostly with affixes, hence, as a syntactic string of elements (Bickel & Nichols 2013a; Dryer 2013a), which is an important feature, as the ongoing debate will show.
Präsens/simple present Präteritum/simple past 1SG ich tanze I dance ich tanzte I danced 2SG du tanzt you dance du tanztest you danced 3SG er/sie/es tanzt he/she/it dances er/sie/es tanzte he/she/it danced 1PL wir tanzen we dance wir tanzten we danced 2PL ihr tanzt you dance ihr tanztet you danced 3PL sie tanzen they dance sie tanzten they danced
Table 6: Conjugation in German and English (adapted from Hentschel 2010: 378)
To start off with, we will consider the differences that can be observed in the area of verbal morphology. In German, the verbal ending changes depending on person, number, tense, and mood (Hentschel 2010: 378; König & Gast 2012: 69). We have seen that in English, we only find a few inflectional endings (König & Gast 2012: 71). For example, we only add the suffix {-s} to the stem of the verb to form the third person singular in the present tense (an exception is the verb be), but all other forms of the verb in present tense do not change. This is the result of the historical development that English has undergone. German, however, has preserved
103 many inflectional endings (König & Gast 2012: 69). Consider the conjugations of the German verb tanzen (‘dance’) and the English equivalent in simple present and the simple past tense (Table 6). We can clearly see that the German verbal morphological system is much more complex and diverse than in the English one.
In the following, we will look at individual tenses and explain how tense and aspect is realized in German. In order to establish comparability, we will mainly rely on König and Gast (2012) and Hentschel (2010) in this Chapter and explain the use of tense distinctions and aspectual distinctions of German in comparison to English.
In general, there is much formal overlap with English when it comes to the formation of the six tenses that were already explained in much detail in the previous chapter. Table 7, which includes example sentences for each tense in English and German, shows this formal parallelism. Yet, the meaning and use of the German tenses show remarkable differences to the English tenses, and this will be outlined and explained in the remainder of this section.
English German
Simple Present Präsens I look at a fish. Ich schaue den Fisch an.
Simple Past Präteritum I looked at a fish. Ich schaute den Fisch an.
Future Futur I I will look at a fish. Ich werde den Fisch anschauen.
Present Perfect Perfekt I have looked at a fish. Ich habe den Fisch angeschaut.
Past Perfect Plusquamperfekt I had looked at a fish. Ich hatte den Fisch angeschaut.
Future Perfect Futur II I will have looked at a fish. Ich werde den Fisch angeschaut haben.
Table 7: Six tenses in German in comparison with English (adapted from König & Gast 2012: 83)
Let us start with the use of the simple present/Präsens. In German, we use the present tense to refer to situations that refer to non-past situations or to the present moment (examples (38) and (39)), that are currently ongoing (40), and to express future time reference (41) (Hentschel 2010:
27; König & Gast 2012: 92).
(38) Ich trinke morgens Kaffee.
1SG drink.PRS.1SG morning coffee.
‘In the morning, I drink coffee.’
(39) Ich wohne seit drei Jahren in Hamburg.
1SG live.PRS.1SG for three year.PL in Hamburg.
‘I have lived in Hamburg for three years.’
104 (40) Es regnet.
3SG rain.PRS.3SG.
‘It is raining.’
(41) Morgen gehe ich ins Kino.
tomorrow go.PRS.1SG 1SG into cinema
‘Tomorrow, I will go to the cinema.’
As can be noticed from the English translations, only in sentence (38) is the simple present tense used. This marks a clear contrast between German and English: in German, we can use the present tense for all four situations, even situations that started in the past but are still relevant at the time of speaking, for situations that are currently ongoing, or for future situations.
In English, however, it would not be target-like to use the simple present for situations that started in the past and have current relevance, but we would use the present perfect instead.
Similarly, future time reference is expressed with the will-future or the going-to-future. There is one situation, where in English, we can also use the present tense to refer to the future, but this is restricted to scheduled events (see again Chapter 4.2). Furthermore, situations that are currently ongoing are not uttered in the simple present tense, but the present progressive is used instead (more on how progressive aspect is expressed in German can be found towards the end of this section).
We have already seen that in German, future time reference can be expressed with the verb in present tense. In fact, the present tense is the default tense that is used to refer to the future (König & Gast 2012: 84). There is, however, another way of referring to prospective situations namely by using the future marker werden, an auxiliary verb, and the infinitive form of the main verb (König & Gast 2012: 84). This means that sentence (41) could also be expressed by using the future marker werden (Futur I), as shown in sentence (42).
(42) Morgen werde ich ins Kino gehen.
tomorrow will.PRS.1SG 1SG into cinema go.INF
‘Tomorrow, I will go to the cinema.’
Both the present tense and the werden-future (Futur I) are used in German to make a statement about situations or events that are yet to come. There is, however, a slight meaning difference which has to do with certainty or definiteness – the present tense is associated with a higher degree of certainty, when compared to Futur I (König & Gast 2012: 84).
The simple past/Präteritum is used to refer to situations in the past, without implying how long this situation has lasted (Hentschel 2010: 273). Furthermore, it is used to tell stories (Hentschel 2010: 273). Especially in spoken discourse, however, this tense is rarely used, but
105 the present perfect/Perfekt is used instead (see Hentschel 2010: 40). Yet, in written texts, the simple past is more frequently used for past time reference and it is considered more formal than the present perfect form (Hentschel 2010: 41). Example (43) and (44) demonstrate this use. Both sentences refer to a completed situation in the past; yet, the former is more common in writing and the latter in spoken discourse.
(43) Ich schlief den ganzen Tag.
1SG sleep PST.1SG DEF.ART.ACC whole day
‘I slept the whole day.’
(44) Ich habe den ganzen Tag geschlafen.
1SG have.PRS.1SG DEF.ART.ACC whole day sleep.PTCP
‘I slept the whole day.’
Having said this, we can now continue with the present perfect/Perfekt, because the narrative use of the present perfect (sentence (44)) cannot be expressed with the present perfect in English, but the simple past is used instead (König & Gast 2012: 92). In German, however, we can use past tense adverbials, such as gestern (‘yesterday’) or letzte Woche (‘last week’), together with the present perfect, which we excluded for English; this is called the narrative use according to König and Gast (2012: 87). In this narrative use, the simple past and the present perfect are, as already indicated, nearly always interchangeable, with the former being more formal than the latter.
Apart from this use, we can also find the present perfect in the resultative use (König &
Gast 2012: 87), which was explained in Chapter 4.2 for English. The resultative perfect indicates that something has recently changed, and it appears mostly with verbs that denote a change of state (König & Gast 2012: 91). For this function of the present perfect/Perfekt, we find similarities in form and function in German and in English, see sentences (45) and (46), taken from König & Gast (2012: 92).
(45) Jemand hat mein Auto gestohlen.
someone have.PRS.3SG my car steal.PTCP
(46) Someone has stolen my car.
The German Perfekt also works with future time reference, which could be seen as a special type of the resultative perfect (König & Gast 2012: 87). We can refer to some possible result or event that lies in the future. An example is sentence (47). In English, we would have to use the future perfect (see below). This would also be possible in German (sentence (48)), but the future perfect/Futur II expresses less certainty than the same situation expressed with a perfect form (see the discussion of the future perfect/Futur II below).
106 (47) Nächstes Jahr habe ich meine Dissertation fertig next year have PRS.1SG 1.SG my thesis finish geschrieben.
write.PTCP
‘Next year, I will have finished my thesis.’
(48) Nächstes Jahr werde ich meine Dissertation fertig next year will.PRS.1SG 1.SG my thesis finish geschrieben haben.
write.PTCP have.INF
‘Next year, I will have finished my thesis.’
Furthermore, another difference between the German Perfekt and the English present perfect has already been mentioned when we talked about present tense/Präsens. For situations, that started in the past but are still ongoing, we can use the simple present in German, but we have to use the present perfect in English (see sentence (39) again) (König & Gast 2012: 92).
We stated that there is formal overlap in terms of forming the German Perfekt and the English present perfect; however, there is a clear difference concerning word order. The present perfect in German is built with the present tense forms of the auxiliary verbs sein (‘be’) or haben (‘have’), instead of only one auxiliary form like in English (have), and the past participle form of the main verb (Hentschel 2010: 233).13
As we have seen in Chapter 4.2, in English, the main verb directly follows the auxiliary verb in the present perfect, or there may be an adverbial between the auxiliary and the main verb. Though, in German, we find the auxiliary verb in second position (for example after the subject) and the participle form at the end of the sentence as the last constituent (compare sentences (44) to (46)) (Hentschel 2010: 254; König & Gast 2012: 92).
Let us now briefly touch upon the two remaining tenses, the past perfect/Plusquamperfekt and the future perfect/Futur II, because there is not just formal similarity between these tenses in German and English, but they are also used in fairly similar contexts and functions. The Plusquamperfekt refers to a situation in the past that happened before another reference point in the past or also concurrently, see sentence (49) (Hentschel 2010: 250). In German, we also use the auxiliary verbs sein (‘be’) und haben (‘have’) plus the
13 The choice between the auxiliary verbs sein (‘be’) and haben (‘have’) depends on syntactic and semantic properties of the verb (Hentschel 2010: 233). Most verbs form the perfect with haben (‘have’), such as transitive verbs, reflexive verbs, modal verbs, and intransitive verbs that do not denote a change of state (Hentschel 2010:
233-234). The verbs sein (‘bleiben’) and bleiben (‘stay/remain’) and intransitive verbs that express a change of state form the perfect with sein (‘be’) (Hentschel 2010: 234). For a more detailed explanation see Hentschel (2010:
233-237).