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Grammatical tense
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==Tense marking== ===Morphology of tense=== Tense is normally indicated by the use of a particular verb form – either an [[inflection|inflected]] form of the main verb, or a [[periphrasis|multi-word construction]], or both in combination. Inflection may involve the use of [[affix]]es, such as the ''-ed'' ending that marks the past tense of [[English verbs|English regular verbs]], but can also entail [[word stem|stem]] modifications, such as [[ablaut]], as found as in the [[Germanic strong verb|strong verb]]s in English and other Germanic languages, or [[reduplication]]. Multi-word tense constructions often involve [[auxiliary verb]]s or [[clitics]]. Examples which combine both types of tense marking include the French ''[[passé composé]]'', which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected [[past participle]] form of the main verb; and the [[Irish grammar#Verbs|Irish past tense]], where the proclitic ''do'' (in various surface forms) appears in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the main verb. As has already been mentioned, indications of tense are often bound up with indications of other verbal categories, such as [[tense-aspect-mood|aspect and mood]]. The [[grammatical conjugation|conjugation]] patterns of verbs often also reflect [[agreement (linguistics)|agreement]] with categories pertaining to the [[subject (grammar)|subject]], such as [[grammatical person|person]], [[grammatical number|number]] and [[grammatical gender|gender]]. It is consequently not always possible to identify elements that mark any specific category, such as tense, separately from the others. Languages that do not have grammatical tense, such as most [[Chinese language|Sinitic languages]], express time reference chiefly by [[Lexical (semiotics)|lexical]] means – through [[adverbial]]s, time phrases, and so on. (The same is done in tensed languages, to supplement or reinforce the time information conveyed by the choice of tense.) Time information is also sometimes conveyed as a secondary feature by markers of other categories, as with the [[Chinese grammar#Aspects|aspect markers]] {{lang|zh|了}} ''le'' and {{lang|zh|過}} ''guò'', which in most cases place an action in past time. However, much time information is conveyed implicitly by context – it is therefore not always necessary, when [[translation|translating]] from a tensed to a tenseless language, say, to express explicitly in the target language all of the information conveyed by the tenses in the source. ====Nominal Tense==== A few languages have been shown to mark tense information (as well as aspect and mood) on [[noun]]s. This may be called '''nominal tense''', or more broadly '''[[nominal TAM]]''' which includes nominal marking of [[Grammatical aspect|aspect]] and [[Grammatical mood|mood]] as well.<ref name="Nordlinger">{{cite book |last1=Nordlinger |first1=Rachel |last2=Sadler |first2=Louisa |editor-last1=Butt |editor-first1=Miriam |editor-last2=King |editor-first2=Tracy Holloway |title=Proceedings of the LFG 00 Conference University of California, Berkeley |chapter=Tense as a Nominal Category |date=2000 |publisher=CSLI Publications |location=Berkeley |pages=196–214 |url=https://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/LFG/LFG5-2000/pdfs/lfg00.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170216203141/http://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/LFG/LFG5-2000//pdfs/lfg00.pdf |archive-date=2017-02-16 |url-status=live |access-date=17 July 2021}}</ref> ===Syntax of tense=== The syntactic properties of tense have figured prominently in formal analyses of how tense-marking interacts with word order. Some languages (such as French) allow an adverb (Adv) to intervene between a tense-marked verb (V) and its direct object (O); in other words, they permit [Verb-'''Adverb'''-Object] ordering. In contrast, other languages (such as English) do not allow the adverb to intervene between the verb and its direct object, and require [Adverb-'''Verb'''-Object] ordering. Tense in syntax is represented by the category label T, which is the head of a TP (tense phrase).
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