Editing Grammatical tense (section)

==Possible tenses==

Not all languages have tense: [[tenseless language]]s include [[Chinese language|Chinese]] and [[Dyirbal language|Dyirbal]].<ref name="Comrie1985">{{cite book|last=Comrie|first=Bernard|author-link=Bernard Comrie|year=1985|title=Tense|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-28138-5}}</ref>{{rp|50–53}} Some languages have all three basic tenses (the [[past tense|past]], [[present tense|present]], and [[future tense|future]]), while others have only two: some have past and [[nonpast]] tenses, the latter covering both present and future times (as in [[Arabic]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], and, in some analyses,{{which|date=February 2021}} [[English language|English]]),<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kosur |first1=Heather Marie |title=A Form-Function Description of the Grammar of the Modern English Language: Book 1 (Level 7) |date=November 18, 2021 |publisher=Rock Pickle Publishing |location=Illinois |isbn=979-8769812316 |pages=80–88, 258–268}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kosur |first1=Heather Marie |title=A Form-Function Description of the Grammar of the Modern English Language: Book 2 (Level 8) |date=November 18, 2021 |publisher=Rock Pickle Publishing |location=Illinois |isbn=979-8769826191 |pages=21–25}}</ref> whereas others such as [[Greenlandic language|Greenlandic]], [[Quechua languages|Quechua]], and [[Nivkh languages|Nivkh]] have future and [[Nonfuture tense|nonfuture]].<ref name="Bittner"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nedialkov |first1=Vladimir P. |last2=Otaina |first2=G. A. |last3=Geniushene |first3=E. S. |last4=Gruzdeva |first4=Ekaterina |title=Syntax of the Nivkh language: The Amur dialect |date=2013 |publisher=John Benjamins Pub. Company |location=Amsterdam}}</ref> Some languages have four or more tenses, making finer distinctions either in the past (e.g. remote vs. recent past) or in the future (e.g. near vs. remote future). The six-tense language [[Kalaw Lagaw Ya]] of Australia has the remote past, the recent past, the today past, the present, the today/near future and the remote future. Some languages, like the Amazonian [[Cubeo language]], have a historical past tense, used for events perceived as historical.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morse |first1=Nancy L. |last2=Maxwell |first2=Michael B. |title=Studies in the languages of Colombia 5|chapter=Cubeo grammar |date=1999 |publisher=The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington |location=Arlington, TX|page=45}}</ref>

Tenses that refer specifically to "today" are called [[hodiernal tense]]s; these can be either past or future. Apart from Kalaw Lagaw Ya, another language which features such tenses is [[Mwera language|Mwera]], a [[Bantu language]] of Tanzania.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}} It is also suggested that in 17th-century French, the ''[[passé composé]]'' served as a hodiernal past.<ref name="Bybee">{{cite book |last1=Bybee |first1=Joan |last2=Perkins |first2=Revere |last3=Pagliuca |first3=William |title=The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World |date=1994 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |page=101}}</ref> Tenses that contrast with hodiernals, by referring to the past before today or the future after today, are called pre-hodiernal and post-hodiernal respectively. Some languages also have a [[crastinal tense]], a future tense referring specifically to tomorrow (found in some Bantu languages); or a [[hesternal tense]], a past tense referring specifically to yesterday<ref name="Nettle">{{cite book |last1=Nettle |first1=Daniel |title=The Fyem language of northern Nigeria (Languages of the world) |date=January 1, 1998 |publisher=LINCOM Europa }}</ref> (although this name is also sometimes used to mean pre-hodiernal).<ref name="Stevick">{{cite book |last1=Stevick |first1=Earl W. |title=Adapting and writing language lessons |date=1971 |publisher=U.S. Foreign Service Institute |location=Washington, DC |page=302 |url=https://www.livelingua.com/fsi/General/FSI%20-%20Adapting%20and%20Writing%20Language%20Lessons.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210717000927/https://www.livelingua.com/fsi/General/FSI%20-%20Adapting%20and%20Writing%20Language%20Lessons.pdf |archive-date=2021-07-17 |url-status=live |access-date=17 July 2021}}</ref> A tense for after tomorrow is thus called post-crastinal, and one for before yesterday is called pre-hesternal.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Another tense found in some languages, including [[Luganda]], is the persistive tense, used to indicate that a state or ongoing action is still the case (or, in the negative, is no longer the case). Luganda also has tenses meaning "so far" and "not yet".{{dubious|reason=These sound like aspects.|date=February 2022}}

Some languages have special tense forms that are used to express [[relative tense]]. Tenses that refer to the past relative to the time under consideration are called ''anterior''; these include the [[pluperfect]] (for the past relative to a past time) and the [[future perfect]] (for the past relative to a future time). Similarly, ''posterior'' tenses refer to the future relative to the time under consideration, as with the English "[[future-in-the-past]]": ''(he said that) he '''would go'''.'' Relative tense forms are also sometimes analysed as combinations of tense with aspect: the [[perfect aspect]] in the anterior case, or the [[prospective aspect]] in the posterior case.

Some languages, such as [[Nez Perce language|Nez perce]] or [[Cavineña language|Cavineña]] also have [[periodic tense]] markers that encode that the action occurs in a recurrent temporal period of the day ("in the morning", "during the day", "at night", "until dawn" etc) or of the year ("in winter").<ref>{{cite journal|author=[[Guillaume Jacques]]|year=2023|title=Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources.|journal=Folia Linguistica |volume=57|issue=3|pages=539–562|doi=10.1515/flin-2023-2013|url=https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04239547}}</ref>

Some languages have [[cyclic tense]] systems. This is a form of temporal marking where tense is given relative to a reference point or reference span. In [[Burarra language|Burarra]], for example, events that occurred earlier on the day of speaking are marked with the same verb forms as events that happened in the far past, while events that happened yesterday (compared to the moment of speech) are marked with the same forms as events in the present. This can be thought of as a system where events are marked as prior or contemporaneous to points of reference on a timeline.<ref name="Green">{{cite book |last1=Green |first1=Rebecca |title=A sketch grammar of Burarra (Honours thesis) |date=1987 |publisher=Australian National University |location=Canberra |doi=10.25911/5d778709e1631 |hdl=1885/109283 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1885/109283 |access-date=17 July 2021}}</ref>