Verb Tense Inflections

 

A verb tense, in the strictest definition of the term, is the time frame in which the action is placed; thus we have the traditional idea of past, present and future tenses and within these three basic time frames, we can also differentiate certain other aspects such as the subjunctive or progressive tenses, plus other ideas such as the imperfect past, the conditional tense, and imperative.

The tenses of the verbs, in reality, rely entirely on the directions we employ over them. Whereas conjugation is the movement in the pronunciation which indicates the relative position of the subject of the verb - personal vectors - the tense of the verb is a different relative positioning in our conception of time, thought and attitude.

In English, it may at first seem difficult to perceive the difference in verb tenses due to the absence of easily identifiable verb endings; the tags that identify both the tense and person; thus discerning the different senses (or directions) is also, at first sight, a confusing or even debatable issue. Nevertheless, in order to gain a general overview of how the dynamic works in principal, I have taken the liberty of using the verb Dar – Give  from Portuguese to clearly illustrate how each tense is modulated by the direction applied to it. The advantage of using a Portuguese example is that each aspect has a clearly defined form

                                         Portuguese verb tense inflections

With the concept of the different tense inflections clearly  demonstrated through the complex Portuguese verb system, it may now become somewhat easier to accept the parallel existence of the tenses in English and thus understand the varied pushes and pulls inherent in the verb tenses. As the directions are, in fact universal, we can now use the same inflections to map out the English verb tense system and understand better the inflections we use to express them.

 

                                          English verb tense inflections

 

Conclusions

What we can clearly see from the direct comparison of  sense directions between two different languages is a clear matching of verbal tense inflection. Clearly, an adoption of the inflections we know so well in our own language will help greatly in achieving the necessary pronunciation to produce the right communicative verbal forms when assimulating any new language. To these movements, we must further add the conjugation. For learners of English, however, this is generally based in the simple conjugation of the subject pronouns (with the notable exceptions of the three common and conjugated verbs be, do and have.