Basic Clause Patternsc. She will like her linguistics classes. [Future tense]If there is no auxiliary verb in a clause, the tense is marked on the main
verb, as in (56a,b). If the clause does contain an auxiliary, the tense will be
marked on the first auxiliary. Will in (56c) is in the present tense; its past
tense is would. Compare the present and past tense forms of the auxiliaries
in:
(57) a. Oscar is/was playing bridge.
b. Oscar has/had dealt the cards.
Exercise
To convince yourself that only the first auxiliary verb in a sequence may
be marked for tense, observe what happens when you move the tense
marking from the first to the other verbs in The pie might have been
eaten by the cat, e.g., *The pie may had been eaten by the cat. You
should find that placing the tense marker on any verb other than the
first one results in ungrammaticality.
Very simplistically, the past tense indicates that the situation represented by
the clause occurred prior to the time at which the clause is uttered; the present
tense indicates that the situation represented by the clause overlaps the time
at which the clause is uttered; and the future tense indicates that the situation
is spoken about prior to when it occurs (if it ever does). For instance, in (58),
note the correlations between the time adverbs, yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
and the verb forms in the clauses they belong to:
(58) Yesterday, Oscar inherited a million dollars; today he owns a
Testarossa; tomorrow he will be broke again.While these tense forms are quite simple, their actual uses are quite
complex, and we deal with them more fully in the Appendix to this chap-
ter.
Exercise
The following text is from Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth
(1905/1989: 10-11). (a) Identify all the tense forms in the text. (b)