Talk:Tense–aspect–mood

Notability

Intended primarily as a link explanation for "tense" in articles which do not actually cover tense, but instead some combination of tense-aspect or TAM. — kwami (talk) 19:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this a case of Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue? I am no expert, so offer this link as help, and leave the article to expert help. Widefox (talk) 14:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Article for Deletion tag

Count Truthstein has put an Article for Deletion tag on this article but has given no explanation on this talk page. The explanation on the articles for deletion page is as follows:

Body of article is a list of languages, with some commentary on each. It is impractical to have a discussion of every language in the world on this page. It is not certain whether "tense-aspect-mood" is an established concept in the study of grammar.

I've transcluded the discussion in here, because the proper place to dicuss an AfD is in its AfD entry. Eduemoni^↑talk↓ 20:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 01:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Tense-aspect-mood

Tense-aspect-mood (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD)

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Body of article is a list of languages, with some commentary on each. It is impractical to have a discussion of every language in the world on this page. It is not certain whether "tense-aspect-mood" is an established concept in the study of grammar. Count Truthstein (talk) 15:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose deletion. The article is well-sourced, with 28 references. The separate articles on tense, aspect, and mood are not by themselves sufficient in that they don't cover the interactions among the three concepts (except slightly in passing).

As for the impracticality of discussing every language in the world, the same could be said for a lot of other linguistics articles. The value in discussing how some languages handle tense-aspect-mood (or some other feature of language) is obvious to me: Doing so illustrates the variety of possibilities. Beyond a certain point, which I think has not been reached in this article, there would be diminishing returns in adding more examples, so there is no need to try to cover every language.

As for whether tense-aspect-mood is an established concept, here are some quotes from titles of articles in the reference list:

"Tense, Aspect, and Modality"

"Tense, Mood and Aspect"

"Tense, Aspect and Mood"

"Tense/Mood/Aspect"

"the Tense-Mood-Aspect System"

"Tense-Mood-Aspect Systems"

Clearly from this, tense, aspect, and mood are often analyzed as a unit, and that unit is an established concept Duoduoduo (talk) 19:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep It should of course not be a list of languages, though it will need examples. The term is common in the lit, as is the abbreviation TAM, because in many if not most languages, tense, aspect, and mood are conflated, so that the individual terms are often inadequate. — kwami (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 15:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep, the choice of title seems a bit weird (I would have chosen Tense, aspect and mood) but this definitely is an established linguistic concept. - filelakeshoe ^{(SAVE WIKIPEDIA)} 15:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: An article which covered interaction among these could be useful. One problem I have with the article is that the section on English overlaps a lot with English modal verb and English verbs (and English grammar as well) and thus there are more places between these articles where problematic material can creep in. I feel it should focus on grammatical structures which express several of tense, aspect and mood rather than trying to give an overview of the grammar.

Another difficulty I have is with terminology. I saw "tense, aspect and mood" as indexes to give the appropriate form of a verb lexeme. This is based on Latin grammar (Latin_conjugation), which is where these words come from and what they were originally used for. (Aspect was a category of tenses, with three tenses in each of two aspects. There were also voice, person and number.) Conflation of structure and meaning is a problem which seems to be common in the study of grammar. What we need is precise semantic vocabulary (perhaps "time" instead "tense") but this might not be possible. Perhaps a note should be put in the article to say that "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are being used semantically. I am also worried about the use of phrases like "modality of permission", and am not sure if there really is such a thing. The concept of modality may be being used as a bag for a jumble of semantic concepts. Count Truthstein (talk) 23:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I've added some examples to the lede. As far as I noticed, the sections of the article on specific languages focus on the interaction of tense, aspect, and mood (or the absence of interaction if that is a distinguishing feature of the language -- that too is one way that some languages handle TAM).

The article tense (grammar) correctly states: "Tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, that indicates when the situation takes place." This is standard in linguistics, even though teaching grammars of some languages use the term in a looser sense. Likewise, aspect and mood are being used in the standard linguistic way -- see those articles. I don't see the point in putting in something to say that these terms are being used in the linguistically correct way, especially since the lede explicitly defines them. And no, the term "modality" is not being used as a bag for a jumble of concepts; it's being used as linguists use it -- see the article linguistic modality, which defines it as "According to [a set of rules, wishes, beliefs,...] it is [necessary, possible] that [the main proposition] is the case." So the modality of permission refers to clauses such as "You may go [in accordance with the speaker's rules or wishes]". Take a look at the references [1] and [7], whose titles contain the word "modality." Note that mood and modality refer to the same kinds of information being conveyed: for mood, the information is conveyed morphologically, while modality refers to the information being conveyed morphologically or otherwise. Duoduoduo (talk) 01:24, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the examples are good. To demonstrate the meaning of "tense" as used in the article, consider this sentence from the lede: "Often any two of tense, aspect, and mood (or all three) may be conveyed by a single grammatical construction". It is meaning which is being conveyed by the grammatical construction, so tense, aspect and mood are being treated as categories of meaning. However, depending on the language, the grammatical construction in question may be labelled as a particular "tense", "aspect" or "mood". For example, in English the present tense (grammatical meaning) construction "He does not run every day" denotes a habitual aspect (semantic meaning). The present tense (grammatical meaning) construction "We are going tomorrow" denotes future tense (semantic meaning). Count Truthstein (talk) 01:42, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The thing is that terminology used within a language to describe itself, like you describe with the forms in Latin grammar, is pretty arbitrary and meaningless. This article shouldn't talk about what we think a tense is in English, for example the fallacy that the concept of a "future tense" exists, when the formation used most commonly to talk about the future is the one we call the "present continuous". No, this should be written solely from a language-neutral linguistic perspective, not making correlations to English or Latin or any "standard" as we would have done in the 16th century. - filelakeshoe 17:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• Keep I am all in favour of articles that address issues in a connected way, rather than pretending that (say) tense, aspect, and mood can be managed each in isolation. Years ago I contributed to Grammatical aspect (if I have the name right; cf. links above); and I may do so again. I wish editors well with the present article. I might drop in and see how things are progressing, if I can find the time. Noetica^Tea? 23:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
• Strong keep. TAM certainly is "an established concept in the study of grammar", as the first ten cited references clearly attest. The state of the article just prior to nomination showed that the topic is notable and verifiable, sources are available, and no original research is necessary to create a solid encyclopedic article. While it is true that the article cannot and should not try to describe the TAM system of every world language, I don't think there is an attempt to do that. Instead, there are examples of analyses of TAM. If the examples seem inapt, they might be cleaned up, reduced, or changed, but there is no cause for deletion. Cnilep (talk) 02:01, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
• Keep, interconnectedness of these three category domains is a legitimate topic even if each of the three has its own article. Discussion of this interconnectedness is a very well-established topic in research. Content as it stands is decent enough. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:10, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

Kept but noted as theory

I have reworded the introduction and added a disclaimer that this article is about a group of related theoretical systems which various people have proposed. They are not established linguistic theory, set practice, nor is the information in this article or references provided referring to a single one of these systems but rather a conglomeration of them all. TAM systems are neither accepted nor are they practical in that they fail to effectively analyze for all of the information they purport to include.

As an expert on this subfield of linguistics, my instinct would be to delete this article entirely because I know it to be wrong. However, as these systems have been proposed and they are sometimes mentioned, having an article on them for encyclopedic purposes is merited. But, this article is written far too supportively and seems to promote rather than document such proposals. It should be rewritten as a discussion of the various attributes of TAM proposals and not as an article which sounds like it's outlining an (if not THE) established linguistic system. I have added a disclaimer about its style until such time as it is rewritten into an objective document.

Also, this page should be linked only from relevant pages discussing theoretical frameworks and not listed on pages such as tense and aspect.Drew.ward (talk) 23:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, this edit to the article needs a lot of work. First, for an article on grammar, it is ungrammatical in several places, like it wasn't proofread before "Save page" was clicked. For example: "TAM theories are one of many various proposals": They are one? "TAM systems propose that the grammatical systems of a language covers...." Systems covers? "TAM systems are not accepted....many linguists argue that the system fails...." Systems or system? "...many linguists argue that the system fails to account for several key attributes and numerous alternative systems exist." Many linguists argue that numerous alternative systems exist? (A comma is needed.) "In some cases, evidentiality (whether evidence exists, and if so what kind, for the statement) may also be included, and that these components together convey the necessary information of the verb.": A passage intended for one spot has been tacked onto the wrong spot, leading to a nonsense sentence.

Second, the passage "proposals which attempt to provide a common cross-lingual method of comparing utterances of similar content" is so non-specific and hence overly broad that it is very misleading (how about at least "verbal utterances"? And what does "of similar content" mean?). The same comment applies to "these components together convey the necessary information of the verb" (something more specific than "necessary information" is in order here). The passage "are not accepted linguistic principle" needs some sources that reject TAM. The passage "should be treated as such" is inappropriate -- Wikipedia is not for giving advice. The passage "many linguists argue that the system fails to account..." needs many citations. The passage "numerous alternative systems exist" needs numerous citations, or at least one citation discussing many of the alternatives. The sentence "The following information is a description and defense of TAM systems and is written from a non-subjective point of view and should thus be viewed as promoting this approach" is inappropriate; instead, within the following parts of the article, things like "Advocates of TAM systems assert...", etc., should be inserted. Also, when this sentence says "from a non-subjective point of view", do you instead mean "from a subjective point of view"? In the early inserted passage "refers to a group of similarly proposed theoretical frameworks for analyzing languages for verbal (verb-related) information", "similarly proposed" is puzzling and should instead be "similar proposed" (two adjectives both describing the same noun), and "verbal (verb-related)" should simply be "verb-related".

Most fundamentally, consider the new assertion "TAM systems propose that the grammatical systems of a language covers tense (grammatical expression of location in time), aspect (expression of fabric of time — a single block of time, continuous flow of time, repetitive occurrence), and mood or modality (expression of degree of necessity, obligation, probability, ability)." Is the editor really saying that some linguists don't think that languages' grammatical systems cover tense, aspect, and mood? Obviously this needs to be clarified.

In light of all these problems with the new edit, I'm reverting it, and I invite the editor to take another stab at it. Duoduoduo (talk) 01:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Conflation of structure and meaning

I will quote here something I wrote in the deletion discussion: 'Another difficulty I have is with terminology. I saw "tense, aspect and mood" as indexes to give the appropriate form of a verb lexeme. This is based on Latin grammar (Latin_conjugation), which is where these words come from and what they were originally used for. (Aspect was a category of tenses, with three tenses in each of two aspects. There were also voice, person and number.) Conflation of structure and meaning is a problem which seems to be common in the study of grammar. What we need is precise semantic vocabulary (perhaps "time" instead "tense") but this might not be possible. Perhaps a note should be put in the article to say that "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are being used semantically.'

I will try to clear up parts of the article where this could be confusing. For example, the article starts: "Tense-aspect-mood, also called tense-modality-aspect and commonly abbreviated tam, is the grammatical system in a language that covers tense (grammatical expression of location in time)". I propose removing the words "grammatical expression of" to remove any implication that a particular structure within a language is being referred to which has been labelled with the name of "tense".

However, later on in the article the words "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are used to refer to specific structures. For example: "In all Slavic languages, most verbs come in pairs with one member having an imperfective aspect and the other having a perfective one." Here "aspect" is used as a label for a grammatical structure, which may not always match up with the aspect that is conveyed by the use of the structure. (I cannot say whether that is true in this case but it is true in others.) Count Truthstein (talk) 20:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Count Truthstein! You say that "conflation of structure and meaning is a problem which seems to be common in the study of grammar." This is true among writers of grammar textbooks for specific languages, while linguists are careful to distinguish them. Linguists do have a precise vocabulary: "tense" is "location in time". I think your proposed wording "are being used semantically" may not be clear to all readers -- maybe a better wording would be "are being used conceptually".

I agree with your proposal to remove "grammatical expression of". You might consider borrowing from the wording in the lede of the article tense: "Tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time", and replace "grammatical expression of" with "a grammatical category for".

As for 'Here [in Slavic languages] "aspect" is used as a label for a grammatical structure, which may not always match up with the aspect that is conveyed by the use of the structure.' That's not correct -- "aspect" is being used here as a property of particular Slavic verbs -- it's not grammatical, but rather lexical, and the property referred to is precisely the way the word is used. Duoduoduo (talk) 20:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Starting with the word "tense", out of all of the instances where it is used in the article, many examples can be identified of it being used to identify a grammatical structure. Some examples:

• there are optional irregular past tenses sin or saw = wen si "saw"
• The past is indicated only once in a sentence since it a relative tense.
• suffixes are used to form the past tense indicative mood ["past tense" is being used as a morphological index]
• The indicative mood has, in addition to the future-as-viewed-from-the-past usage of the conditional mood form, the following synthetic tenses [clearly "synthetic" is a property of language structure, not of an event occurring in time]
• and a future tense which, as in Italian, can also indicate present tense combined with probabilistic modality. [The "future tense" is a structure used to indicate present tense. The two uses of the word "tense" in this quotation have different meanings.]

I hope this illustrates this problem. It would take quite heavy editing to get rid of it. Hopefully the need for unwieldy turns of phrase like 'Portuguese contains a grammatical structure conventionally labelled as "future tense" which, as in Italian, can also indicate present tense etc.' can be avoided.

All talk of tense being "indicated" is using it in the sense that you say that linguists use it, so does not need to be changed. Count Truthstein (talk) 21:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"there are optional irregular past tenses sin or saw": recommend change to "past tense forms"

"The past is indicated only once in a sentence since it a relative tense.": this is correct as is.

"suffixes are used to form the past tense indicative mood": recommend replace "to form" with "to indicate"

"The indicative mood has, in addition to the future-as-viewed-from-the-past usage of the conditional mood form, the following synthetic tenses": recommend change "synthetic tenses" to "synthetic tense forms"

"and a future tense which, as in Italian,": recommend change "future tense" to "future tense form"

Instead of "Portuguese contains a grammatical structure conventionally labelled as 'future tense'", recommend "...a form for future tense..."

So I think it can be done without the wording getting unwieldy, relying mostly on "indicates" and "tense form". Thanks for working on it! Duoduoduo (talk) 22:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

There, I think I've done all the changes necessary based on the above discussion. Thanks for pointing out that it needed it! Duoduoduo (talk) 23:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the article looks better now. Count Truthstein (talk) 21:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

"had better" in English

The article states: had better indicates obligatory mode (He had better do that soon). There is no corresponding past tense form. Not a grammar expert but I think there is? The past tense form of "He had better do that" is "He better have done that". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.232 (talk) 20:14, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

In support, I came here to make the comment that my father often used this past tense form ("He had better have (e.g. cleaned his room).)" Carabaoboy (talk) 05:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Carabaoboy: thanks for the comment. it seems to be a valid point. could you make the relevant changes? I added best as well as the note that had in had best/better is regularly elided ~ Johnfreez (talk) 00:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Apparently Incorrect Statement

I'd like to comment on something in the article, but I apologize that I don't know the accepted format for doing so.

The article says:

"In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek, the imperfective aspect as a whole is fused with the past tense in a form traditionally called the imperfect. This fusion can occur because the imperfective aspect only exists in the past"

I believe that when the author, in the above passage, said "imperfective", he meant "perfective" (also called "punctual").

184.32.32.187 (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)Michael Ossipoff

This statement from the article seems incorrect but it's hard to get what it is trying to say:

In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek, the imperfective aspect as a whole is fused with the past tense in a form traditionally called the imperfect.

In both Spanish and Modern Greek, the present tense is also imperfective. It is the perfective aspect that is only found in the past. Stephen C. Carlson (talk) 02:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about Spanish and Greek, but the sentence looks correct for French (see this table) with the exception of "as a whole". The sentence isn't intended to mean that the only appearance of the imperfective is in a fused form with the past tense -- it's just supposed to mean that that is something that happens in one tense-aspect form.

I'll edit out the confusing phrase "as a whole". Duoduoduo (talk) 22:11, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

But I didn't see the very next sentence in the article, which you didn't include: This fusion can occur because the imperfective aspect only exists in the past tense. I'll take out that sentence too -- if someone wants to, they can put back in a clarified version. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:21, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Who coined this term and how did it develop

Who used the term mode and who mood? Perhaps a misunderstanding at some point in time caused this shift?

Who was the first to use this abbreviation, and when did the three terms individually become to mean what they mean here. I'm quite sure that Tense meant only "past, present and future". When was the breakup into perfected actions vs. imperfect introduced into grammar studies? Is this an ancient notion from the time of the Babylonians and Greeks or something new. In short, it would be nice to have a small section on the history of the abbreviation and the three terms within. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 19:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the answer to this is mostly already covered in Grammatical mood specifically the first sentence and its hyperlink. Thus grammar vocabulary was "mood" and linguistics descriptively identified its function as "modality". Carabaoboy (talk) 06:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

TAME

I had always learned in my linguistics courses that it was "TAME" including evidentiality. Why is evidentiality excluded in this article? Danachos (talk) 04:37, 14 March 2021 (UTC)