Delahunty and Garvey
Because the placement of the first auxiliary verb is affected by whether its
clause is interrogative or indicative, we place it in a special phrase, which we
call AUX, for auxiliary. Because every clause may include auxiliary verbs, we
include AUX in all the formal patterns that we present below. We will deal
in more depth with the placement of multiple auxiliaries in our chapter on
Modifications of Basic Clause Patterns.
tense and aspect.
What we are calling “basic clauses” here are sentences consisting of a single
clause, which we referred to as “simple sentences” in our Skeleton of English
Grammar chapter.
All English main clauses and many types of subordinate clause must be
marked for tense and may be marked for aspect. We briefly introduce these
two grammatical categories here and discuss tense more thoroughly in the
Appendix to this chapter.
Tense
Both tense and aspect involve reference to time. Time is a continuum on
which events succeed each other from the past through the present to the
future. The past is prologue and the future is the yet-to-be-written postscript.
English allows many ways to refer to time. In John Kennedy was assassinated at
12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, for example, the PPs, at 12:30 p.m. and on
November 22, 1963, identify the time of day and the date of Kennedy’s assas-
sination. The time is given in terms of the two twelve hour periods into which
we divide days; the date is given in terms of the day of the month and the year
in the western calendar.
Tense is the set of grammatical categories that languages use to relate the
time of the situation denoted by the clause to the time at which the clause
is said or written. Grammatical categories, as we have seen, are represented by
elements of the grammar of a language rather than by its words. English gram-
matically distinguishes three tenses: past, present, and future. The past and
present tenses are indicated by inflectional morphemes: the regular past tense
is indicated by {-ed}, though there are many irregular forms, such as was/were,
had, did, won, bought. The regular present tense has no marking, unless the
subject of its clause is third person singular, in which case the verb takes the
{-s} inflection, though, again, there are a few exceptions, such as is, has. The
future is typically indicated by a modal verb, especially by will. For example:
(56) a. She liked her linguistics classes. [Past tense]
b. She likes her linguistics classes. [Present tense]