Syntax Design: verb tenses and aspects

So you have come up with a number of ways to change the morphology of your verbs (take a look at this post for the basics of morphology creation: Creating Morphology: a basic look at things). Now you need to decide what all these variations mean!

A key concept in the grammar of any language is that of verb tense. Broadly speaking, the tense of a verb shows what place in time the verb is referring to, usually boiling down to either the present, the past or the future. It would be quite efficient for languages to have only three forms for each given verb and three corresponding tenses, one for the present, one for the past and one for the future. In reality, this almost never happens! The reason is that there is an almost endless variety of nuances to the concept of present, past or future; and when we speak we naturally want to be able to express them.

Let's give a few examples in existing languages, starting from the present tense. In English, the simple present tense can refer to the actual present moment, as in the sentence

I think I'll go to the shop

Where "I think" refers to moment the speaker is uttering the sentence. But consider this:

I always go jogging in the morning

Where "I always go" doesn't refer to the actual present, but rather to a habit that you've presumably had for a while and will still have in the foreseeable future. One may argue that this should still be perceived as an "abstract present", but there is a significant difference between the two uses exemplified above.

Similarly, in the sentence

My plane leaves at two

"My plane leaves" refers to a (scheduled future action). Nothing "present" about that!

All these different uses for the same morphological form of the verb are called aspects. Languages often have multiple aspects for each of their tenses. Conversely, some languages have a specific morphological tense where another has an aspect within a larger verb tense.

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