Grammar question: aspect vs tense

[jbradfor]

I've been reading the wikipedia articles about aspect and tense (they never taught me this stuff in school!), trying to get my head around the assertion that "Chinese does not have tense". I think I understand the basic difference: tense describes when an event occurs, aspects describes the duration/closure.

But yet, it is possible to describe when an even occurs in Chinese: 昨天晚上六点我吃饭. So why is that considered not "tense", since it clearly specifies when the event occurs?

[David Wong]

Your first mistake is trying to get information from wikipedia articles. Haha.

I take that to mean the verbs are not altered to indicate tenses.

[hackinger]

Hi,

I have also been puzzled by this question and I understand it as follows.

European grammars obviously emphasize tenses. How to conjugate a verb expressing different tenses is taught very early on when learning a language. The grammar of the Chinese language does not use tense constructions as European languages do, but uses aspect particles and other grammar tools instead. At the end of the day pretty much everything which can be expressed in a European language can also be expressed in Chinese and vice versa. Therefore, the Chinese grammar does not use or at least does not emphasize tenses much, but of course using the grammar tools one can construct sentences which express a tense.

Cheers

hackinger

[cababunga]

So why is that considered not "tense",

Wikipedia is correct. It's just definition of the word "tense" is different from what you think it is.

tense Noun

tenses plural

1. A set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes also the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance
   

By this definition, Chinese indeed doesn't have tenses, as the verbs have only one form.

[jbradfor]

OK, that makes (some) sense: tense and aspect just refer to what the verb does.

However, in Chinese verbs do not conjugate to indicate aspect either, rather auxiliary particles are added. But I guess that's acceptable to still be counted as "part of the verb".

[skylee]

I like reading you guys' posts, asking questions that have never occurred to me. They get me to think more about Chinese and look at it from different perspectives.

[歐博思]

However, in Chinese verbs do not conjugate to indicate aspect either, rather auxiliary particles are added. But I guess that's acceptable to still be counted as "part of the verb".

Aspect: English verbs don't conjugate aspect on the main verb either. It adds auxillary verbs like 'be' or 'has'. In that respect 'aspect' in both languages is similar in that extra parts are added.

Tense: Regarding tense English is different in that core of the verb is altered with different suffixes to express tense. English tense is accomplished largely through adverbs in Chinese.

[hackinger]

Hi,

I personally prefer this definition of "grammatical tense" to the definition of "tense" in #4:

"A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place." "The tenses are past, present, and future."

See http://en.wikipedia....ammatical_tense for a further discussion.

As the lecturer in the beginner course in physics explained to us when clarifying terms like Theory, Definitions etc. "Definitions are never right or wrong, just more useful or less useful."

If one accepts the definition in #4 which uses a particular grammatical construction instead of a more general definition, then IMHO it is better to directly explain the definition in #4 instead of just using the somewhat confusing statement "Chinese does not have tenses" . I believe many people understand "tense" in the sense of the definition I quoted above. So do I. Of course I do not know how linguists define it...

Cheers

hackinger

[michaelS]

Tense and aspect relate to how verbs are 'marked' - change from the base form or infinitive. In English there are two ways to mark for tense - present and past (no future as in, say, Spanish). There are also two ways to mark for aspect - the perfect (go -> gone) and progressive (go -> going).

Based on that I would say that Chinese doesn't mark for tense or aspect, as the verbs only have one form. But I'm only a beginner

[liuzhou]

"Definitions are never right or wrong, just more useful or less useful."

What utter nonsense.

To go to extremes, "grammatical tense is a type of scrambled egg."

Not wrong?

There may not be absolute definitions in some cases, but there sure as hell are wrong definitions.

I concur that Wikipedia is no place to be looking for anything authoritative.

[hackinger]

@ #10

- What utter nonsense.

It is a philosophical question:

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/can-a-definition-be-wrong-52177.html

Beats me though, why you get so excited. It was tongue-in-cheek anyway.

-I concur that Wikipedia is no place to be looking for anything authoritative.

I was wondering about this too and I appreciate the confirmation by a recognised authority.

Cheers

hackinger

[liuzhou]

Yawn.

[roddy]

Double Yawn. Jbradfor, do you have further questions, or have we got your head round the concepts?

[jbradfor]

Not really.

As hackiner says "At the end of the day pretty much everything which can be expressed in a European language can also be expressed in Chinese and vice versa.". So if tense and aspect just refer to what verbs do, and is just a difference as to whether you conjugate a verb or add a temporal construct, then this whole "Chinese has no tense" statement is, to me, rather stupid.

It seems to me to much more useful to say "Chinese does not conjugate verbs to show tense, it adds a temporal construct (usually before the verb)".

And I still don't understand all this wikipedia hatred. I think you're just being elitist.

[creamyhorror]

Maybe one way to look at it is:

I walked to the supermarket.

我走到超市。

In English, the conjugation of verbs forces tense to be marked in the English sentence, but in Chinese, the lack of conjugation results in no tense marking. Stating the English sentence requires stating whether it happened in the past; not so for the Chinese - it could be in the past or present or future. Conversely, in Chinese you can't state whether it happened in the past or future - you can only locate it in time using time markers. Whereas adding time markers in English is by no means necessary and might be and overly specific.

[roddy]

It all comes down to what you mean by tense. A grammar teacher might use it to mean forms of the verb, and Chinese verbs only have one form, hence Chinese has no tense. But more commonly we think of tense as ways of expressing the time when something happened, which clearly Chinese does. Your formulation probably does make more sense, but it takes more words.

I quite often find Wikipedia very useful.

[liuzhou]

I still don't understand all this wikipedia hatred. I think you're just being elitist.

Oh. Really?

It will take me five minutes to change the Wikipedia page to say that grammatical tense is a kind of scrambled eggs. Except I've better things to do. Any serious research on any subject very quickly shows how often Wikipedia is utterly wrong. Some articles are good, many are nonsensical and any can be changed at any minute.

Any respected (as in peer respected by being academically scrutinised by colleagues) is going to be more reliable. You can call that elitism, if you like. But I prefer to get my information from recognised linguists with career histories rather than anonymous people who happen to have an internet connection.

Every current respected linguist I know of, and I studied and worked with some of them, agrees that grammatical tense requires inflection - i.e. the verb changes form. On this basis, English has two tenses - present and past. I sing. I sang. I dance. I danced.

English has no future tense. Instead it uses aspect to indicate futurity. I am going to Beijing. Present tense 'am'. Not 'was' . I am going to Beijing tomorrow. Still present tense.

'I will go' is also present tense. When using an auxiliary verb, only that auxiliary has tense. the 'go' is non-finite. This means it has no tense. 'Will' is present tense. The whole construct 'will go' has future aspect.

Chinese verbs never change. Therefore they only have one tense.

As has been mentioned before, Chinese also uses auxiliaries to indicate aspect. And it uses adverbs; but so does English.

"I go to Beijing tomorrow" is not an uncommon construction in some varieties of English.

Most Romamce language have future tense. Je danse. Je dansais. Je danserais. Three different forms of the verb.

Yes, we are looking the difference between the casual use of the term, 'tense' and its more formal definition. But I thought the OP wanted a more formal "definition".

[roddy]

Evidently. I still like Wikipedia. Being wrong is forgivable, I always maintain.

[liuzhou]

I like Wikipedia too. I even contribute.

My point was that in any serious context, it should be regarded with deep suspicion and supporting material should always be sought. It should never, ever be cited in any academic context.

I recently worked on one particular project and about 50% of the material on Wikipedia was demonstrably wrong.

[realmayo]

So one can ask for advice on an anonymous forum but not look it up on Wikipedia? (I rather liked Hackinger's definition quote).

I wonder how Chinese linguists would have described tense in the English language if roles were switched (ie China not the West having been the world's dominant economic/academic power over the last few hundred years etc etc).