English Tense Usage: a BullVEye View 97

Of these, Hl-3 clearly exist in English, but their use is much more
restricted than in the othei tongues indicated and the expressions
normally retain more of their original semantic content. H4 is a
clear case of total divergence from foreign 'equivalents' and leads
on to the wider problems of false friends and semantic divergence
in general. Good teaching will ensure that the responses in Hl-3
will be admitted as correct only when they really are the responses
called for, and that the idiomatically English responses of course,
by all means, etc. will be regarded as the correct usage in all other

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circumstances.

English Tense Usage: a Bull's-Eye

View
P. S. TREG1DGO
Consider the three tenses in the following: 'During the afternoon a
few wounded soldiers came in. One of them had trodden on a mine,
and would never walk again.'
Obviously these are all past tenses, in the sense that their point
of view, so to speak, lies somewhere in past time. But they suggest
three different past times. The main time is that implied by came.
Had trodden indicates an earlier time. Would walk indicates a later
time. We can represent this diagrammatically as follows:

Had trodden came would walk

i-y 1 K+)
Thus if came is past, had trodden is pre-past or before-past, and
would walk is after-past.
It is typical of English and many other languages to divide time
up in this sort of way, and grammarians have made various
attempts to analyse the whole of time, and consequently tense, into
corresponding units of three. Thus Jespersen, for example,
suggested the following system:
before-past
PAST
after-past
PRESENT
before-future
FUTURE
after-future
98 P. S. Tregidgo

—though he thought that an after-future might be left out of

account, as having practically no grammatical expression.1
A more thorough-going system is that proposed by W. E. Bull in
Time, Tense, and the Verb, University of California, 1960. The
following diagram is a modification of Bull's own as applied to
English.2
has done does will do
( ) . K

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had y would will have
done did /' do done N
(2) X (3)
would h
done
( |
(4)
The four horizontal lines in this diagram represent four main times
(in Bull's terminology four 'axes of orientation') corresponding to
what we might call (1) present, (2) past, (3) future, and (4) future-
in-the-past. Each of these times has three aspects: a negative
backward-looking aspect, a positive forward-looking one (i.e. a
'before' and an 'after' aspect), and a main neutral aspect in the
middle. There are thus twelve 'slots' altogether, eight of which are
here occupied by appropriate forms of the verb do. The remaining
four slots have no formal realisation in English. Bull applied the
system more specifically to Spanish, but claimed it to be valid for
all known languages. I have certainly found it valid for English, at
least to the extent that it throws light on several dark corners, as I
hope to show.

The perfect
Notice first of all that all four 'minus' or backward-looking slots
are occupied by so-called 'perfect' tenses. The label 'perfect'
suggesting completed action, is of course quite misleading.
Recognising this most grammarians have sought to distinguish
the present perfect from the past simple by saying that we choose
the former to denote a past event or state which lasts into present

'Jespersen, O.: Essentials of English Grammar, 23. 12. Allen and Unwin,
1933.
'Jespersen, O. op. dt., p. 31.
English Tense Usage: a Bull's-Eye View 99

time or which at least has present consequences. This is implied in

the neat term 'current relevance' applied to the perfect by F. R.
Palmer1 following Twaddell.2 It seems to provide an apt
explanation of certain common uses of the perfect, such as, for
example:
1. I have been a teacher for ten years (or, since 1964). (implying
I am still a teacher).
2. I have broken my leg. (implying the leg is broken now).
But other common uses of the perfect are a little more awkward

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to explain. The idea of current relevance is less easy to see, for
example, in cases like the following:
3. (Have you ever been abroad?) Yes, Fve been to England.
4. Often in the past Fve lied, Fve cheated, Fve done anything
for money.
5. (I haven't seen you for a long time.) No, Fve been ill—but
I'm quite all right now.
6. (Do you give lectures?) Well, I "have done.
Notice that all these, except perhaps example 5, are cases of
Zandvoort's 'perfect of experience', the intonation in No. 6
suggesting a rather rare or remote experience.
Further, even Nos. 1 and 2 do not necessarily imply 'current
relevance' in any obvious sense. For example, if somebody asked
me, 'Have you ever been injured playing football ?', I might well
answer 'Yes, I've broken my leg', even though it happened fifty
years ago. And in answer to the question 'How is it that you know
so much about children?' a person could easily say 'Well, I've been
a teacher for ten years' without necessarily implying he is a teacher
now. In fact, the bare statement 'I've been a teacher1 without the
how longi phrase almost inevitably implies the speaker is not a
teacher now.
Obviously, then, the traditional view of the perfect in English,
implying as it does that the present perfect is a sort of past tense
looking forward into the present, is not entirely satisfactory. Bull's
view is the opposite, i.e. that the present perfect is a present tense
looking backwards into the past. This not only helps to explain
awkward cases like the ones we have quoted, but also covers all the
other perfect tenses (and perfect participles and infinitives too), for
which the term 'current relevance' is often ludicrously in-
appropriate. All these forms with have are backward-looking or
retrospective. Jespersen himself called the present perfect tense a
'retrospective present'.8 In Czechoslovakia and other places it has
X
F. R. Palmer, A Linguistic Study of the English Verb. Longman, 1965.
•W. F. Twaddell, The English Verb Auxiliaries. Brown U. P., 1963.
•Jespersen, O.: op. cit. 23. 61.
100 P. S. Tregidgo

sometimes been aptly called the 'pre-present'. The same view is

fundamental to a brilliant and invaluable work by R. L. Allen.1
Unfortunately the view is still not very familiar among]teachers of
English.
What then is the essential factor that determines the choice
between the present perfect (more accurately the pre-present) and
the past? As Robert Allen has shown (in the book just mentioned)
the 'past' tense in English always refers to the definite past, i.e. the
speaker chooses it only when he is referring to a wholly past time

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which he either defines himself, e.g. by an expression such as
yesterday or last year, or which is somehow defined for him by the
context. The 'present perfect' tense, on the other hand, refers
either to a period of time extending up to the present (as in
example 1), or to a wholly past moment or period which for some
reason is undefined (as in examples 2-6). The degree of 'current
relevance' is actually, as we have shown, very variable.
The present nature of the 'present perfect' is of course further
confirmed by the way it tends to pattern in tense sequence.
Compare:
7. (a) I think he's sorry. He tells me he is, anyway.
(b) I think he's sorry. He's told me he is, anyway.
(c) I think he's sorry. He told me he was, anyway.
After he told (past), there is a strong tendency for is to change to
was, but this is not true after he's told (present perfect). In other
words, as far as tense sequence is concerned the 'present perfect'
functions like the ordinary 'present', and not like the 'past'.

The past perfect

We have seen that when the present perfect refers to a time that
is wholly past, it is always indefinite. Can the same be said of the
past perfect or pre-past, e.g. had done! Consider:
8. (a) 'I've seen her,' said John.
(b) John told me he had seen her.
9. (a) 1 saw her yesterday' said John.
(b) John told me he had seen her the day before.
If we accept the (b) sentences as fair reported versions of the (a),
we observe that both the indefinite 've seen and the definite saw
shift to had seen. In other words, with the past perfect or pre-past,
there is no longer any way of distinguishing between definite and
indefinite time, or between the presence or absence of 'current
relevance'.
On the other hand, it is also perfectly normal to say 'John told
me he saw her yesterday' (where John's speech is being reported on
'Allen, R. L. The Verb System of Present-Day American English. Monton,
1966.
English Tense Usage: a Bull's-Eye View 101

the same day). Nor is there anything unusual about: 'John told me
he saw her the day before'. In other words, the choice between a
past and a pre-past often appears somewhat arbitrary. This
contradicts the impression given in certain textbooks, e.g. that of
W. Stannard Allen1 where it is stated that the past automatically
shifts in reported speech to the past perfect, so that for example 'I
met him last year' automatically changes to 'He said he had met
him the year before.' But what about, for example:
10. John said he was born in 1926.

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Why is was so much more likely here than had beeni Surely
because in this sentence there is absolutely no need to point any
significant relationship between the time of John's speech and that
of his birth. It seems fairly clear, then, that (apart from straight-
forward shifts from present perfect as in example 8), we choose the
past perfect only when we are establishing a significant relationship
between two different past times. (This often occurs in association
with q/lfer-clauses and Z?e/bre-clauses, and with adverbial
expressions like the day before and the previous year. The past
perfect is also common in relative clauses, and in novelistic
flashbacks to events preliminary to the main narrative.)

Will and going to

Now let us turn to the 'plus' slots in Bull's diagram, and in
particular to will, which Bull places in the 'after-present' position.
Why should he place it there rather than at the central point of the
'future' axis, which he leaves blank? Should there be a distinction
between an 'after-present' tense and a 'future' tense, parallel to the
distinction between 'pre-present' and 'past'?
It is very tempting to equate this theoretical distinction with the
practical distinction between the forms going to and will. Compare:
11. (Shall we hold the party in the garden?)
(a) No, it'll rain.
(b) No, it's going to rain.
12. (Why don't you write him a letter?)
(a) All right, I think I will.
(b) Don't worry, I'm going to.
Example 1 l(b) implies present evidence of rain, whereas 11 (a) does
not. Similarly 12(b) implies an already existing intention to write,
whereas 12(a) indicates a newly conceived idea. (Fm going to would
hardly be possible here). Hence is going to always includes
'extended present' time, whereas will refers purely to the future,
starting from the moment of speaking:
1
Uv{rtg English Structure. Longman, 1947. p. 256.
102 P. S. Tregidgo

Moment of Speech

'I'll write'.

Extended Present >C 1 "»

H 1)
v
'I'm going to write.'

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Now T m going to write' may also be expressed Tve decided to
write*. This suggests an interesting match between going to and the
perfect (also hinted at by Joos1), both tense-forms referring to the
extended present as illustrated below:

have decided to
f
Extended Present >•(+)
am going to

For these reasons, it is tempting to regard is going to as an

'after-present' tense and will as a 'future', and to alter Bull's
diagram as follows:

has is going
done does to do
<-x - k^- «+)
will have \ will
done \do
(-h H K+)
(3)

This however would be incorrect Why? First, because the

match between going to and the perfect is more apparent than real.
Our earlier examples showed that the perfect tense does not of
itself indicate a continuing state in the present, and the degree or
nature of the implied 'current relevance' actually varies very
considerably with the context. Examples like Jespersen's biblical
quote, 'He hath been dead four days'2 are misleading because of

Uoos, M. The English Verb. University of Wisconsin Press, 1964. p. 141

(footnote).
•Jespersen, O. op. cit., 23. 54.
English Tense Usage: a Bull's-Eye View 103

the influence of the lexical meaning. Obviously a person cannot

normally stop being dead, though even here we may note that 'He
hath been dead four days* could have been said of Lazarus either
before or shortly after his resurrection I Similarly one can perfectly
well say, for example: Tve been a teacher for ten years, but I've
just been dismissed,' or Tve lived here all my life but now I'm
going away*. Thus the perfect is in reality purely retrospective, and
the correct match for the present perfect is not going to but will, as
Bull implies:

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Moment of
speech

r v
has done will do
Further, we have already noticed that the essential difference
between pre-present and past in referring to wholly past events is
that the latter is definite in time whereas the former is indefinite.
But both going to and will may be either definite or indefinite: i.e.
we can say either indefinitely Til do it' (or T m going to do it'), or
definitely Til do it tomorrow' (or 'I'm going to do it tomorrow').
With will (and going to), as with the pre-past with had, the definite-
indefinite distinction is 'neutralised', and Bull's theoretical
distinction between after-present and future, as far as English is
concerned, is an idle one with no practical importance.
The point about is going to is that it is both present and future
simultaneously. There is nothing unusual about this. The same is
true of all present-tense forms with a future reference, including
for example:
13. I start tomorrow, (the 'time-table future') and
14. Fm seeing him this afternoon (the 'future of arrangement*)
'Present prospective' would be a fair label for all these cases.
The question of 'colouration', i.e. whether or not will, going to,
etc. are coloured by a notion of volition, potentiality, etc., is a
large and interesting one which we cannot go into here. We may
simply note that a coloured will does sometimes function as a true
present tense, especially in the negative, e.g.
15. John won't divorce her. ( = refuses to).
16. The door won't open. ( = resists any effort to open it).
17. (Smith works quite hard.) Oh yes, he will. (That is his
nature.*)

Would
The foregoing observations on will and is going to also apply
(mutatis mutandis) to would and was going to. Would is normally an
104 P. S. Tregidgo

'after-past' or 'future-in-the-past'. A moment's thought will reveal

that the after-past may quite well extend into and beyond the
actual present, as when we say for example 'He said he would
come tomorrow'. It is therefore easy to understand how would
often appears to be a sort of indirect present or future tense
suggesting mere hypothesis, rather than actual fact (a marker of
'mood'). Hence cases like the following:
18. I would say he is/was wrong. (Either tense possible.)
19. Would you like to come too?—Thank you, that would be

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wonderful!
The above are examples of what has been called the 'hesitant
conditional' or 'polite conditional'.
The same basic concept of 'hypothesis' ('unreality', 'condition')
is frequently present in could, should (often strongly 'coloured'),
and might, e.g.:
20. One more storm could prove disastrous.
21. I don't know why you should think that.
22. You might at least be polite. ( = an indirect rebuke.)
23. It may be too late, mightn't it? (In my own speech, at least,
mayn't never occurs, but is easily replaced by mightn't.)
Note that the 'conditional' or 'unreal' could in example 20 is
conceptually distinct from the simple past could in cases like
'When I was young I could run quite fast.'
The 'after-past' form would do, together with its retrospective
form would have done, is closely associated with the so-called
'unreal past', or in Jespersen's terminology the 'preterite of
imagination'.1 It is interesting to note that in the great majority of
cases a verb in the 'unreal past' is actually subordinate to another
verb in the 'conditional' (with would). Consider:
24. He would get what he deserved.
25. He would do it because it was right.
26. If I thought that, I'd be furious.
27. If you had been more careful, we wouldn't be in this mess.
All the italicised past or pre-past tenses here (examples of the
'unreal past') are subordinate to would-fonns. Why are they not
themselves would forms? Think again of Bull's 'past' axis:

had done did would do

(-h 1 K+)
The form had done indicates a time earlier than a given past time.
The form would do indicates a time later than a given past time.
But if the verb in question is subordinate to some other verb, the

Uespersen, O. op. dt., 24. 2.

English Tense Usage: a Bull's-Eye View 105

given past time is the time established by that other verb, whatever
time that is. Thus in examples 24-27, if the italicised verb contained
would, it would indicate a time later than the time of the main
verb—e.g. in No. 20 it would imply that the deserving occurred
later than the getting. That is why the subordinate verbs here
(italicised) are in the past (or pre-past), indicating 'same time as (or
'earlier time than') that of the main verb'. This at least is Robert
Allen's argument,1 and after considerable initial scepticism I now
accept it in principle.

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An obvious objection is that in some such cases the subordinate
verb can be changed to the 'conditional' without any apparent
change of relative time. This is certainly true of No. 25 ('... because
it would be right'), and perhaps also of No. 24 ('... would deserve').
But if so, the verb would no longer be subordinate. The whole
question of tense-subordination deserves further study, well
beyond the well-trodden field of tense sequence. It is clearly quite
distinct from the question of subordinate clauses.

The after-future
Support for Robert Allen's argument (and for Bull's 'future' axis)
comes from a case which Jespersen mentioned briefly, and which
Robert Allen himself tried to explain—in my view only half
correctly 1 It is the case of the (/"-clause containing non-modal will,
which most grammar-books say is impossible. Jespersen's example
was:
28. I will come if it will be of any use to you.2
Allen, referring to a very similar case, thought that the future tense
in the //"-clause denoted a 'free' clause instead of a 'bound' one, so
that the verb was no longer subordinate.8 This may be. But even if
it is a bound clause the future is still consistent with Allen's own
rules. For in Jespersen's sentence, the usefulness to the person
addressed will be subsequent to the speaker's coming. It is an
after-future, signalled by the use in the (/"-clause of a future tense
instead of the 'normal' present. Here are two further examples:
29. If it'// make you feel any better, I'll take it back.
30. If you'// be at home on the 11th, please let me know as
quickly as possible. (— where the imperative has a future
reference.)
If this interpretation is correct, Jespersen was wrong to say that the
after-future has no grammatical expression. And the 'plus'
position on Bull's 'future' axis can be filled in after all.
'Allen, R. L. op. cit. 7. 12.
•Jespersen, O. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles,
IV 16. 5, also p. 400. London, 1909^9.
'Allen, R. L. op. cit., p. 179.
106 P. S. Tregidgo

Conclusion
The value of Bull's analysis, in my view, lies in the fact that he
treats tenses as concepts, not as forms. He has mapped out the
conceptual possibilities, and we are free to decide which forms
realise which concepts in which circumstances. As practical
teachers, we must always be concerned with the Unking of forms
with concepts. Academic linguists have tended in the past to
concentrate only on forms.
Two other problems that bother linguists more than they bother

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teachers deserve brief mention. Does English possess a future
tense? Most teachers are convinced that it does, but most linguists
doubt it, as did Jespersen. There seem to be two principal reasons
for this doubt. First, unlike French and Latin, English has no
composite future form—it has to employ a separate word,
sometimes will, sometimes shall, both of which are essentially
modals concerned with the notions of volition and obligation. But
it seems to me quite undeniable that in modern English will and
shall (particularly will) are often entirely non-modal, signalling
future time alone, as in examples 11 (a) and 28-30. Strang's hesitant
claim that 'pure futurity is probably rather rare*1 is simply incorrect.
Secondly, it is true that on the broadest analysis English has
only two sets of tenses: those orientated to the present, or moment
of speech (including the present perfect and future), and those
orientated to a time in the past. But to argue that English has only
two tenses (present and past) seems to me to be using the word
'tense' in a highly restricted sense which may be useful in certain
systems of linguistic analysis but which, except in teaching the
sequence of tenses, is quite useless for language-teaching purposes.
The fact that there is no formal difference in English between an
indefinite 'after-present' and a definite 'future' does not of course
impose the choice of the former label for will-forms rather than the
latter—indeed the existence of a before-future (will have done) and
an after-future (will do in certain subordinate clauses) helps to
justify the use of the more familiar label 'Future'.
The other problem of linguistic theory is the distinction between
tense and aspect. Tense is concerned with time; aspect is concerned
with action—whether the action is complete or incomplete, single
or repeated, regular or irregular, momentary or lasting, and so on.
In my opinion it is correct in this sense to refer to the 'continuous'
or 'progressive'2 aspect in English, but not to the 'perfect' aspect.
1
B. M. H. Strang, Modem English Structure (2nd edition), p. 167. Arnold,
1968.
•'Progressive', implying action in progress at a given moment, is a better
label than 'continuous', which is dangerously misleading. Thus for example 'I
studied English for four years' is 'continuous' in meaning but 'simple' in form.
An English Methods Programme 107

As this article has shown, the 'perfect' in English is a feature not of

aspect but of tense. For teachers, however, the theoretical
distinction is not important, and the term 'aspect' need not be used
at all except perhaps in a very general way (as 1 have done in this
article, following Bull). Strictly speaking, is doing is present tense,
progressive aspect. But teachers usually call it simply 'present
progressive tense', and there is no reason why they should not
continue to do so.

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(I am grateful to several people for reading and commenting on earlier
versions of this article, particularly W. E. Bull and N. S. Prabhu.)

An English Methods Programme

DONN BYRNE
British Council, Rome
The methodology programme is the most important part of any
teacher-training course, yet in many institutions it consists very
largely of lectures, supported at some stage by a few demonstra-
tion lessons (which are often set pieces). After this the trainees,
armed with elaborate lesson-plans, enter the classroom for a spell
of practice teaching.
Of course, a certain amount of theory has to be learnt and no
doubt this can be done economically through lectures, followed up
by directed reading on the part of the trainees. But methodology is
not just a subject to be talked about, least of all when training
foreign-language teachers: to approach it in this way is to fail to
practise what we preach. It is above all a programme of activities.
The lectures, for example, should relate to a series of demon-
stration lessons, organised daily over a period of several weeks, so
that they show to the trainees not only what techniques they can
use but also what language learning results from the application
of these techniques. The lectures, ideally no more than thirty
minutes long and delivered informally so as to encourage discus-
sion and exchange of ideas, provide a kind of commentary on the
demonstration lessons, and should be followed up by extensive
practical work by the trainees, who are further prepared for the
final stage of practice teaching through micro-lesson practice. For