Verb Tense and Aspect

Some languages, like English, mark their verbs to indicate the time at which events that are spoken about took place. We use a sequence of tenses to indicate how close the action we’re speaking about is to the time at which we speak.

The Tense Continuum

We can visualize the relationship between the time of action and the time of speaking more clearly if we use a time line.

On this time line, actions that take place at the time of speaking (now) are in present tense (“I write this handout”), actions that precede the time of speaking (back then) are in past tense (“I looked at articles about tense and aspect”), and actions that happen after the time of speaking (in the future) are in the future tense (“I will go to lunch”). (Click at the bottom of this page to see the PDF version of this handout, with a visual representation of this timeline.)

If we put these three sentences written in different tenses together, we have a sequence of tenses. “I will go to lunch after I write the handout, which I started after I looked at articles about tense and aspect.”

Adding Aspect

All three of these tenses are called “simple tenses”: they express information only about when the actions take place, not whether or not they are finished or ongoing. Aspect tells us whether an action is ongoing, completed, or describes a state.

Aspect has nothing to do with time, so we can’t use a time line to explain it. But we can use a diagram to help explain aspect. There are three aspects: indefinite (simple), complete (perfect), and continuous (progressive). The combination of tense and aspect in English creates what are often called “compound tenses.”

Since aspect describes the nature of an action, English speakers use aspect to help mark actions that are ongoing or complete. The combination of aspect and tense helps us to express when we’ve done something and whether or not it is complete or continuing.

Additional Online Resources

UWC Handout
Subject-Verb Agreement
Verbs of Attribution
Verbs That Take Prepositions

Purdue OWL
Verb Tenses

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