Tense

83 what is possible in the languages under discussion. We can only give a rough overview.

Therefore, whenever advisable, further readings are suggested.

Following these five sub-chapters, there is a section that discusses the Aspect Hypothesis, a highly controversial yet potentially relevant theory in (non-native) language acquisition which developed from generative linguistics but is still relevant in recent linguistics studies. The subsequent part looks at the relevant languages from a comparative perspective and introduces contrastive analysis. Similarities and differences concerning tense and aspect will be revisited and summarized in Chapter 4.8.1, combining all languages that are of importance for the following analysis. Then, there is a section that reports on previous studies that investigated the acquisition of tense and aspect in English by non-native learners in general, and in the second part also specifically for L2 learners with a German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese background (Chapter 4.8.2). Finally, Chapter 4 finishes with a concise conclusion and reflects upon the main arguments put forward in this chapter.

84 111). Languages differ in how this category is represented: some have an obligatory grammatical marker for showing temporal relationships, others only use lexical marking to indicate temporal relationships (see Siemund 2013).

Perhaps one of the most influential works discussing tense was written by Comrie (1985). Right at the beginning of this publication, he visualizes time in form of a horizontal line (1985: 2). Onto this line, every situation happening in real live can be located at (Comrie 1985:

2). The present moment is situated in the middle of that line, with the past reaching to the left and the future reaching to the right side (Comrie 1985: 2).

Figure 5: Representation of time (adapted from Comrie 1985: 2)

As has been stated, languages differ in how individual points or longer lasting situations are represented on this line. Some languages may lack grammatical devices for expressing time reference and hence, they do not possess tense (Comrie 1985: 4). Yet, it would be incorrect to claim that there are languages that have no concept of time or that lack the ability of expressing time, just because they do not have tense distinctions (Comrie 1985: 3). It is now that it becomes clear that we need to differentiate between the concept of tense and the concept of time. Tense refers to the form, typically a specific verb form; time, however, can be defined as the resulting function or meaning (that may or may not be expressed with a tensed form).¹² Hence, tense refers to the particular grammaticalized convention with which specific situations or periods of time are expressed. What the statement above tries to express is that even if not all languages possess tense distinctions, these languages are nevertheless capable of expressing time.

In spite of the fact that there exist major differences between the languages of the world, the timeline represented in Figure 5 may serve as a simplification of how time can be represented in languages (since this timeline represents time distinctions and not tense

12 Let us take English as an example for a language that has tenses to make this difference between tense and time more tangible. English has a past tense form (-ed attached to the infinitive form or an irregular past tense form; for instance worked as the simple past tense form of work, or ran as the simple past of run) that can express past time reference. Hence, with using worked as opposed to work, one can refer to a situation that happened in the past, before the moment of utterance. Another example would be the present tense. It is formed with the plain form of the verb and can express, for instance, present time reference or future time reference in English.

85 distinctions). It is applicable to all natural languages. It is independent of the availability or lack of tenses, because “all human languages have ways of locating in time” (Comrie 1985: 7).

Comrie exemplifies that languages differ along two parameters when expressing time or time relations: “the degree of accuracy of temporal location” and “the way in which situations are located in time” (1985: 7). The latter is especially important for this study as this refers to the strategies a language uses to create time differences. There are lexical items on the one hand (single lexical items, such as now, yesterday, or composite expressions, such as ten hours later, three days ago), and there are grammatical forms on the other hand (for instance in the form of inflectional affixes attached to the verb) (Comrie 1985: 8). The respective significance or frequency of either or both strategies differs in each language (Comrie 1985: 7). A language that has grammatical categories to express location in time is said to possess tense distinctions, according to the definition given at the beginning of this chapter. In English, for instance, we find the past tense suffix –ed attached to the infinitive of a verb or an irregular past tense form of a verb, in order to express that something happened before the moment of speaking, hence that something happened in the past. The following two examples show this present-past-distinction.

(1) He looks at the fish.

(2) He looked at the fish.

Sentence (1) refers to a situation that is happening now, at the moment of utterance. The verb is in present tense. Sentence (2), though, refers to a situation that happened before the moment of utterance and is not true at the present moment anymore. It lies in the past. The structure and the lexical items are identical in both sentences; the only formal difference between sentence (1) and sentence (2) is the ending –ed.

Yet, it was stated, that not every language possesses grammatical tense distinctions (Comrie 1985: 9) and that these languages have strictly speaking no tenses. Such languages express time reference lexically (Comrie 1985: 51). This could be, for instance, done with adverbials, such as yesterday, or tomorrow, or with larger phrases, for example a week ago, in five days. Burmese would be an example of a tenseless language that is nevertheless able to communicate temporal distinctions (Comrie 1985: 50-53).

Moreover, languages that draw temporal distinctions via grammatical categories are not necessarily limited to only using these grammatical categories. The English sentence number (3) includes in addition to the past ending an adverbial to further specify the location of the situation in time. Both sentences, with or without the adverbial, express past time reference.

The only difference is that the latter sentence is more specific than the former. It is also common

86 that there is no adverbial present, because the context or aforementioned adverbials are still valid in the current utterance.

(3) He looked at the fish yesterday.

In addition, even if tense distinctions are available in a language, there can also be verb forms where the tense distinction is absent (Comrie 1985: 52). These are called nonfinite verb forms and their meaning can be derived from a tensed verb form that they are co-occurring with. We will make this clearer by choosing once again an English example.

(4) He promised to look at the fish.

The verb look that is following promised is in the infinitive form, hence, it does not show any tense distinction. Yet, as Comrie explains, due to our knowledge of the world, we understand that to look at the fish must chronologically follow the promise (Comrie 1985: 52) and should therefore be put further to the right on the timeline. It depends on the form of the verb to promise. The reading of the tenseless verb is in that sense relative to the tensed verb. Not only the interpretation of verb forms can be relative to some other verb form, but this concept of relativity leads us to another division: tenses can be classified into absolute tenses and relative tenses.

Absolute tenses take the time of utterance (or, in other words, the present moment) as the reference point; hence, the present moment is the deictic center (Comrie 1985: 36). Absolute tenses are therefore present, past, and future. The present tense signifies that the situation that is being referred to coincides with the present moment or lies around it; past tenses locate the time of the situation before the present moment; and future tenses locate the situation posterior to the present moment (this is only a simplification of the three absolute tenses; for more information see Comrie 1985: Chapter 2).

Relative tenses, however, do not necessarily take the present moment as a point of reference. Typically, there is a different reference point that is given by the context (Comrie 1985: 56). This relative relation can be triggered by adverbials such as on the same day, on the day before, etc. (Comrie 1985: 56). In English, for instance, present and past participles are used as relative tenses and hence, they express a relative time reference (more on relative tenses can be found in Comrie 1985: Chapter 3).

We have just briefly discussed three absolute tenses: present, past, and future. Generally, a three-way distinction of absolute tenses is possible, yet most languages have a two-way-split instead (Comrie 1985: 48-49). These binary tense systems make a distinction between either past versus non-past or between future versus non-future tenses (Comrie 1985: 49). The former is the most widely attested pattern.

87 After having discussed the topic of tense, we can now turn to aspect in the following chapter. Again, we will not limit this to any specific language, but we will discuss the notion of aspect on a general level.