A Comprehensive Comparison of Tense and Aspect between Traditional and Modern gr

1672-1578（2013）04-0001-03
　　

1 Introduction

　　Grammar is basically one of the most important elements for second language learners when learning English. Meanwhile， tense and aspect are two main items in English grammars. However， what are the different explanations that traditional grammars give for ‘tense and aspect’ with those offered by modern grammars of English？ How many tenses are there in English？ Do ‘perfect form’ and ‘progressive form’ belong to ‘tense’ or ‘aspect’？ What is the relationship between ‘tense’ and ‘aspect’ according to modern grammars？ What are their usages？ Towards these various problems， in order to make the comparison as clear as possible for second language learners， I will try to mainly present and describe the more general and more acceptable ideas in traditional and modern grammars respectively in terms of standard British English with active voice and give some implications for English grammar teaching as well.
　　

2 Tense

　　2.

1 Time

　　Time and tense are two different concepts. The former is universal and independent of any particular language （Jespersen， 1961） whereas the latter is the ‘linguistic expression of time-relations’ and sometimes serves for other purposes （Jespersen， 1961： 2）. According to Jespersen （1961）， we could suppose that time could be represented by a straight line， which at least could be divided by three points--past time， present time， and future time. However， in the daily life， states and events may appear not only at these three points. In more details， we can he time before the past time and after the past time. Likewise， we can he time before the future time and after the future time. In this case， there are seven points of time on this time line. That’s why we need different tenses or tense forms to express these different time points or different time duration.
　　2.2 Tense in traditional grammars
　　Traditional grammars he been greatly influenced by Latin. Since anything in Europe was most likely to be written in Latin， the study of Latin grammar was for what ‘grammar’ meant for over a millennium（Crystal， 1997b； Blake， 1988）. Most traditional grammarians claimed that English has six tenses， namely， past， present， future， past perfect， present perfect and future perfect tense （Herndon，1970）， although some of them he been labeled with different names by a number of grammarians （e.g.‘Present’ is called‘non-past’）. [For instance， another set of six tenses of traditional theories are present， imperfect， future， perfect， pluperfect， and future perfect （McCawley， 1971）.]