Nonpast tense
Thenonpast tense(also spellednon-past) (abbreviatedNPST) is agrammatical tensethat distinguishes an action as taking place in times present or future. The nonpast tense contrasts with thepast tense,which distinguishes an action as taking place prior to the moment of utterance.[1]
The nonpast tense is observed in many languages. Due to a lack offuture tenseinflectional morphologyon the verb stem, many languages which are popularly conceived as having a three-way tense distinction (between past,present,andfuture), can in fact be understood as having a two-way past-nonpast tense distinction. For example, in English, future sentences often take present tense verb morphology, and do not contain specialized future tense verb morphology. In contrast, past tense sentences require specialized past tense morphology. Compares for instance the sentence:I hope hegets[nonpast]better tomorrow(in which the main verbgetsis conjugated in the present tense, and the future is indicated lexically through the wordtomorrow), and the sentenceI hope hegot[past]better yesterday(which requires the use of a specialized past tense form,got,for the main verb; use ofgetsis ungrammatical).
| Language | Sentence | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| English | I hope he gets better tomorrow | |
| German[2] | Ich gehe morgen | I go-1PS.NPSTtomorrow |
| Finnish[2] | mina menen huomenna | I go-1PS.NPSTtomorrow |
References
[edit]- ^"Nonpast Tense".Glossary of Linguistic Terms.2015-12-03.Retrieved2023-08-20.
- ^abComrie, Bernard (2006).Tense.Cambridge textbooks in linguistics (8. pr. 2004 transferred to digital printing 2006 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-23652-2.
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