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Here Whorf analyzed Hopi as having a tense system with a distinction between three tenses: one used for past or present events (which Whorf calls the Factual tense or present-past); one for future events; and one for events that are generally or universally true (here called usitative). This analysis was repeated in a 1937 letter to J. B ...
English has only two morphological tenses: the present (or non-past), as in he goes, and the past (or preterite), as in he went. [26] The non-past usually references the present, but sometimes references the future (as in the bus leaves tomorrow). In special uses such as the historical present it can talk about the past
As time passes, the moment that was once the present becomes part of the past, and part of the future, in turn, becomes the new present. In this way time is said to pass, with a distinct present moment moving forward into the future and leaving the past behind. One view of this type, presentism, argues that only the present exists. The present ...
Presentism is a view about temporal ontology, i.e., a view about what exists in time, that contrasts with eternalism—the view that past, present and future entities exist (that is, the ontological thesis of the 'block universe')—and with no-futurism—the view that only past and present entities exist (that is, the ontological thesis of the ...
Hartog explored the relationship of the past, present, and future as understood at moments of crisis in history. Like other thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Reinhart Koselleck, Hartog maintains that there is no difference between past and present since all history is "actually contemporary history". [6]
If Tom says "John will say that he paid for the chocolate", the past tense paid refers to a past time relative to the moment of John's expected utterance, and not necessarily to a past time relative to the moment of Tom's present utterance. The same is found in some languages even in past indirect speech (where English tends to preserve ...
Summaries of the narratives (plots) of works of fiction are conventionally presented using the present tense, rather than the past tense. At any particular point of the story, as it unfolds, there is a now and so a past and a future, so whether some event mentioned in the story is past, present, or future, changes as the story progresses.
The third person singular present tense is formed regularly, except in the case of the modal verbs (can, shall, etc.) which do not add -s, the verb be (which has three present indicative forms: am, is and are), and the three verbs have, do and say, which produce the forms has, does (pronounced with a short vowel, /dʌz/), and says (pronounced ...