verbs contain a lot of information about time and action/state of being in a simple word or phrase. (i’m a fan of economy of language: using a little, saying a lot.)

an incomplete list of verb tenses in English (thanks to here here and here)

• simple present (i do), present continuous (i am doing), present perfect (i have done), present perfect continuous (i have been doing)
• simple past (i did), past continuous (i was doing), past perfect (i had done), past perfect continuous (i had been doing), imperfect (i used to do)
• simple future (i will do), future continuous (i will be doing), future perfect (i will have done), future perfect continuous (i will have been doing)
• conditional (i would do)
• wishes: past (use past perfect: i wish i had done); present (use past: i wish i did; i wish i were); future (use would: i wish i would do)

as if language weren’t complicated enough, I’d like to suggest some new verb tenses:

• a tense (or phrase) that conveys “i became like this just now at this very moment and will continue to be like this for the rest of my life.”
• or the reverse “i was like that until just now and will never be again.”
• a tense that’s somewhere between past and present for people who have disappeared from our lives but are not necessarily dead (they are not “was” but not “is”).
• a tense that says “this is a possible past, but not the real past” and same for present and future (though for future it would have to be more like “this is a possible future, but not the one likely to occur”?? i don’t know. i’m not an expert at inventing tenses yet.)

This entry was posted on November 11, 2008 and is filed under language, lists, topics.