Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time or place at which an event described by a sentence occurs. In English, this is a property of a verb? form, and expresses only time-related information (English does not have spatial tenses).

The exact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate. An example of some generally-recognized English tenses using the verb "go" is shown here:

• Simple present: "I go." For many verbs, this is used to express habit or ability ("I play the guitar").
• Simple past: "I went." In English (unlike some other languages with aorist? tenses), this implies that the action took place in the past and that it is not taking place now.
• Simple future: "I will go." Can be used to express intention, prediction, and other conditions.
• Present continuous: "I am going." This is used to express what most other language use the simple present tense for.
• Past continuous: "I was going."
• Future continuous: "I will be going."
• Present perfect: "I have gone." This is ususally used to express that an event happened at an unspecified or unknown time on the past.
• Present perfect continuous: "I have been going." This is used to express that an event started at some time in the past and continues to the present.
• Past perfect: "I had gone." Expresses that an action was completed prior to some other event.
• Past perfect continuous: "I had been going." Usually expressed with a duration, this indicates that an event was ongoing for a specific time, then completed before a specific event.
• Future perfect: "I will have gone."
• Future perfect continuous: "I will have been going."