Tense, aspect, and mood in Germanic
- Tense, aspect, and mood are grammatical categories concerned with different notional facets of the event or situation conveyed by a given clause. They are prototypically expressed by the verbal system. Tense can be defined as a category that relates points or intervals in time to one another; in a most basic model, those include the time of the event or situation referred to and the speech time. The former may precede the latter (“past”), follow it (“future”), or be simultaneous with it (or at least overlap with it; “present”). Aspect is concerned with the internal temporal constituency of the event or situation, which may be viewed as a single whole (“perfective”) or with particular reference to its internal structure (“imperfective”), including its being ongoing at a certain point in time (“progressive”). Mood, in a narrow, morphological sense, refers to the inflectional realization of modality, with modality encompassing a large and varying set of sub-concepts such as possibility, necessity, probability, obligation, permission, ability, and volition. In the domain of tense, all Germanic languages make a distinction between non-past and past. In most languages, the opposition can be expressed inflectionally, namely, by the present and preterite (indicative). All modern languages also have a periphrastic perfect as well as periphrastic forms that can be used to refer to future events. Aspect is characteristically absent as a morphological category across the entire family, but most, if not all, modern languages have periphrastic forms for the expression of aspectual categories such as progressiveness. Regarding mood, Germanic languages are commonly described as distinguishing up to three such form paradigms, namely, indicative, imperative, and a third one referred to here as subjunctive. Morphologically distinct subjunctive forms are, however, more typical of earlier stages of Germanic than they are of most present-day languages.
Author: | Thilo WeberGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-122089 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.983 |
Parent Title (English): | The Oxford Encyclopedia of Germanic Linguistics |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Place of publication: | Oxford |
Document Type: | Part of a Book |
Language: | English |
Year of first Publication: | 2023 |
Date of Publication (online): | 2023/10/30 |
Publishing Institution: | Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) [Zweitveröffentlichung] |
Publicationstate: | Postprint |
Reviewstate: | Peer-Review |
Tag: | Germanic; aspect; future; modality; mood; past; present; progressive; subjunctive; tense |
GND Keyword: | Aspekt <Linguistik>; Germanische Sprachen; Modus; Morphologie <Linguistik>; Syntax; Tempus |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 38 |
Note: | Dieser Beitrag ist aus urheberrecchtlichen Gründen online nicht frei zugänglich. |
DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik |
Open Access?: | nein |
Program areas: | G1: Beschreibung und Erschließung Grammatischen Wissens |
Licence (German): | Urheberrechtlich geschützt |