![]() For the linguaphiles among you, here’s the table: German past tense In German, there are two completely different forms of past tense, used primarily in written vs. The historical present tense: a counterpoint to the above As we add our own voices to long literary traditions, it’s worth considering what has been done in the past, why it has been, and that it may have value. To narrate the ensuing tale in anything but the past tense would be ludicrous, and I think it worth consideration that convention is worth something. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority. The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. My favorite example is Washington Irving’s 1819 short story, “Rip Van Winkle,” which opens with the following author’s note: The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. Some stories in fact employ this author-as-storyteller conceit as a way to lend authenticity to their writing. In that regard, if the story indeed takes place in the past, it makes sense to tell it in the past tense. This makes sense, really, if we think about the author as a storyteller–we usually have the sense as we read that the story has already happened the author is simply relaying the events. Historically, traditionally, past tense is convention and default. the distant future, and even (and I think this sounds marvelous) tenses that mean specifically “tomorrow.” Tense in literature Convention: use the past tenseįrom A Tale of Two Cities to Harry Potter to Toni Morrison’s Sula, past tense is standard for fiction in English. We distinguish present and past morphologically (meaning that the verb actually changes form ), but a lot of other languages have a morphological future tense (which English doesn’t we instead use the modal verb “will”), and some languages have tenses that refer specifically to the recent past vs. As writers, however, it’s worth noting that when writing in the present tense, all of the present tense aspects are still available to you: “I eat,” “I am eating,” “I have eaten,” “I have been eating.” In past, the same holds true: “I ate,” “I was eating,” “I had eaten,” “I had been eating.”Īs languages go, English is actually fairly light on tense (although some languages actually are considered tense-less!). In school, we usually don’t distinguish between tense and aspect rather, we refer to each of the different tense-aspect combinations as actually its own tense. Both are present tense, but each extends from the present time differently. So “I eat” refers to a general, habitual action, while “I am eating” situates the action specifically at the time of speaking. ![]() ![]() Note that English also has a number of grammatical aspects, which mark the extension of an action through time. In English, “I eat” happens in the present, while “I ate” happens in the past. Linguistically, tense denotes how languages mark the time an action occurred. You can find more of Rackham’s illustrations here. The images in this post are selected from Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for “Rip van Winkle.” This story, with its playful treatment of time, is a worthy accompaniment for a discussion of tense. ![]()
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