In Tenses^x, Inflections^x

Hello Japan I'm interested in the topic you raised. I am now living in Tokyo and on my way to work I can see an English-like phrase on the signboard of a jewelry store, that reads 'Well come!'. You may feel it's funny, but I don't think that use of 'well come' is not so rare in Japan. Actually...

Re: using "perfect" and "pluperfect" as tenses based on Latin. Sorry, merhdad, I don't quite seize your point. Normally we say "present perfect" and "past perfect" for these tenses, not "pluperfect". But regardless of the names, yes, it's true that English is much more dominated by analytic...

Very true, Aeolus29. There are only two tense inflections in English - the "s" for the present (only for third person singular), and the "ed" for the past. In this sense there are only two tenses. All the other verbal machinery of English depends on combining auxiliaries and/or modals with the...

"If my child were caught shoplifting,

Hello Xavier, you're right of course: Communication is one of the tasks of language. The Grammar is "late": Language follows special patterns (word order, inflection, cases, conjugation, etc) - language has to follow those patterns as without them, communication wouldn't be possible. The only...

There are English lexifier creoles in which one can talk about one "tools." The "'s" is no longer an inflectional morpheme. Such is the case here, in my opinion. If one would like to assert the right to have "tense" mean whatever they should like it to mean, then I don't suppose there is much...

Can/could exhibit some past/non-past alternation. They make time distinctions, but they are not marked for tense. In order to call this "tense," one needs to utilize a personal definition of "tense" and, consequently, "inflection," it seems to me.

These are not linguistic definitions. I see one form (other than the extinct "canst" and "couldst") which is "can." The form of the word is not modified. There is no inflection, therefore no tense distinction. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

It's interesting that the central modals can be grouped into related pairs that sometimes distinguish between past and non-past time. My thinking was just that, though they are related, they are not a single modal that's being inflected for tense. So, if they can refer to time, how does that...

Hi Cacarr OED says about 'tense' as :any one of the different forms of a verb which indicate the different times at which the action or state denoted by it is viewed as happening or existing. It also says about 'inflection' as: the modification of the form of a word to express the different...