The English Language english language

Delahunty and Garvey

do it sometime during 6/25/2008. Yesterday refers to the day before the day
in which the expression is said, and tomorrow refers to the day following the
day during which the expression is said. Expressions that depend for their
full interpretation in this way on when (where, and by whom) an expression
is uttered are called deictic expressions and the time (place, and speaker)
are called the deictic centers.

Tenses
It is important to distinguish time from tense. Time is a non-linguistic phe-
nomenon experienced by human beings; tense is a grammatical category,
one of several ways that languages may use to refer to time. English and
many (though by no means all) other languages have grammaticized ways
of indicating temporal characteristics of states of affairs, that is, ways that
have become part of the grammar (rather than the vocabulary) of the lan-
guage.
A tense is a grammaticized way to indicate when a state of affairs occurs
relative to the time of utterance, that is, the time at which that situation is
spoken about. Generally, past tense refers to a time earlier than the time of
utterance; future tense refers to a time later then the time of utterance; and
present tense refers to a time that is identical to, or more typically, overlaps
the time of utterance.

Past tense
We begin with the English past tense because we think that its regular forms
and meanings are simpler than those associated with the other tenses.

Past tense forms
The regular past tense is formed by adding the suffix {-ed} to the word stem,
for example: delay, delayed; print, printed. This suffix has three main al-
lomorphs: [t], [d], and [Id] or [@d]. {-ed} is pronounced [I/@d] when the
word it is attached to ends in a [t] or [d], e.g., lifted; [t] when it is attached
to a word that ends in a voiceless sound other than [t], e.g. kissed; and [d]
otherwise, e.g., rowed.
The past tense marker {-ed} is spelled in various way. If the word ends in