Introduction

‘It is important to keep the two concepts of time and tense strictly apart,’ (Otto Jespersen, 1933). This unit attempts to unravel the relationship between real time and grammatical tense.

Tasks

1 Present and past

• a Identify the present and past tense verbs in this extract:

• Ola’s experience of English in her own words

• My name is Ola. I’m Polish. I was introduced to English for the first time at school at the age of 18. Until that time my only foreign language had been Russian. I made two brief visits to English- speaking countries in my 20s, and then, at the age of 28, I moved to Dublin, where I have now been living for seven years. My English is by no means perfect but quite a lot of English-speakers I talk to think I’m Irish.

• (Cook and Singleton 2014)

• b How many different forms of the present and past tense does the extract include? (If necessary, check the chart in Unit 17 Task 7, on page 112.)

2 Time and tense

a Here are some sentences, all instances of authentic speech or writing, taken from the Cambridge English Corpus. Some of the verbs are in the present tense and some are in the past. First, assign a tense to each underlined verb. Then decide if the present tense verbs refer to present time, and if the past tense verbs refer to the past time. If not, what do they refer to? The first one has been done for you:

• a Oh here comes the bus … and it’s packed. present tense; present time reference

• b Just yesterday I had to pay $6 for 10 oranges.

• c Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov heads to Washington next week.

• d I want a normal life for myself and my children.

• e She’s a vegetarian, except she eats chicken.

• f Then I get a call from him a day or two later and he says, ‘Dude, you don’t understand’.

• g Angela did you want some of the raspberry too? ∼ Yes please.

• h If only I was 60 kilos lighter and slightly more attractive.

• i She said she earned $460 a week, and at least $200 more in tips.

• j Richard lives to marry his nurse, and dies in 1962.

• k I hear you’re going to take that house in Italy.