CONTEXTUAL EXPLICATION OF ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE FORMS OF TENSE FORMS AND THEIR METHODS FOR TEACHING

Abstract

The overall scope of this work is to provide an account of tense from the viewpoint of language universals and linguistic typology, that is, to establish the range of variation that is found across languages in tense, and what the limits are to that variation. In chapter I, first some preliminary remarks are given concerning the notion tense and its relation to time, in particular defining tense as the grammaticalisation of location in time; this necessitates some discussion of other expressions of time in language, in particular of the conceptually distinct notion aspect, and of ways other than grammaticalisation in which location in time can be expressed in language.