[Music]
grammatical tense is how languages talk
about time without explicitly naming
time periods by instead modifying verbs
to specify when action occurs so how
many different tenses are there in a
language like English at first the
answer seems obvious
there's past present and future but
thanks to something called grammatical
aspect each of those time periods
actually divides further there are four
kinds of aspect in the continuous or
progressive aspect the actions are still
happening at the time of reference the
perfect aspect describes actions that
are finished the perfect progressive
aspect is a combination describing a
completed part of a continuous action
and finally there's the simple aspect
the basic form of the past present and
future tense where an action is not
specified as continuous or discrete
that's all a little hard to follow so
let's see how it works in action let's
say your friends tell you they went on a
secret naval mission to collect evidence
of a mysterious sea creature the tense
sets the overall frame of reference in
the past but within that there are many
options your friends might say a
creature attacked their boat that's the
past simple the most general aspect
which gives no further clarification
they were sleeping when it happened a
continuous process underway at that
point they might also tell you they had
departed from Nantucket to describe an
action completed even earlier that's an
example of the past perfect or that they
had been sailing for three weeks
something that was ongoing up until that
point in the present they tell you that
they still search for the creature today
their present simple activity perhaps
they are preparing for their next
mission continuously as they speak and
they have built a special submarine for
it a completed achievement plus if they
have been researching possible sightings
of the creature it's something they've
been doing for a while and are still
doing now making it present perfect
progressive so what does this next
mission hold you know it still hasn't
happened because they will depart next
week the future simple
your friends will be searching for the
elusive creature an extended continuous
undertaking they tell you the submarine
will have reached uncharted depths a
month from now
that's a confident prediction about what
will be achieved by a specific point in
the future a point at which they will
have been voyages in the future perfect
progressive the key insight to all these
different tenses is that each sentence
takes place in a specific moment whether
it's past present or future the point of
aspects is that they tell you as of that
moment the status of the action in total
they give us 12 possibilities in English
what about other languages some like
French Swahili and Russian take a
similar approach to English others
describe and divide time differently
some have fewer grammatical tenses like
Japanese which only distinguishes past
from non past bully and to Kong becae
which only distinguish future from non
future and Mandarin Chinese with no verb
tenses at all only aspect on the other
hand languages like ya Gua split past
tense into multiple degrees like whether
something happened hours weeks or years
ago in others tenses are intertwined
with moods that convey urgency necessity
or probability of events this makes
translation difficult but not impossible
speakers of most languages without
certain tenses can express the same
ideas with auxilary words like wood or
did or by specifying the time they mean
are their variations from language to
language just different ways of
describing the same fundamental reality
or do their diverse structures reflect
different ways of thinking about the
world and even time itself and if so
what other ways of conceiving time may
be out there ted-ed is a non-profit if
you value our work please consider
supporting it on patreon.com slash
ted-ed
[Music]