Verbs in context

MY article “Tensed up over tenses” (MOE, Jan 7) elicited some feedback which, together with my response, I wish to share with other readers. Kengt wrote that the sentence “Kong-kong kong kong kong kong-kong” demonstrates an example of wordplay concerning parts of speech rather than tenses. I agree – but it also shows that verbs in the proper context can show tense without a change in morphological form, i.e. without an internal change in spelling (e.g. write/wrote, go/went) or without the addition of inflectional suffixes (e.g. walk/walks/walked).

Jonathan Chapman wrote: “I think it’s helpful to distinguish tense (past, present, future) from aspect (simple, continuous, perfect) If you say ‘present tense’ and ‘perfect tense’, you obscure the fact that, for example, ‘present perfect’ and ‘present continuous’ are two aspects of the same verb.” I did indeed make these distinctions. My first table showed the simple aspect of the past, the present, and the future tenses. The second table, in my original copy, also showed the continuous and the perfect aspects of the past/present/future tenses.