Re: where do so many tenses come from?


Alexei A. Frounze a écrit :

Can someone enlighten me on the origin of the numerous grammatical tenses we
have in our languages like in English and Spanish?
Specifically, I find the many tenses describing past actions (completed or
started in the past) kind of redundant. Not all languages have that broad
spectrum of tenses and I'm basically interested in the reason for that. What
happened in the past to come up with so many of them in some languages?

E.g. in English:

I had done smth.
I did smth.
I have done smth.

I had been doing smth.
I was doing smth.
I have been doing smth.

Why does English have these all these slightly different in meaning tenses?
Why did it happen to English to emphasize the relative time between an
action in the past and other actions?

Why did it not happen to Russian, for instance? Why is it enough for it to
have just two forms (perfect and imperfect/continuous) instead of the six I
listed above?

Spanish is like English in this respect. Interestingly, Spanish seems to
have even more grammatical tenses, some of which are rarely used.

Have there been any studies on this?

Alex

The reason for the existence of different tenses shows a need of a
specific group of people. For example time concept became more
important after iIndustrialisation. Needs are there to be satisfied
but needs are subject to change as with American English using past
simple tense instead of the British present perfect simple tense:
He didn't come yet.
He hasn't come yet.

In Arabic there is a need to show whether an action is complete or
incomplete. Other tenses are formed with the help of particles. After
all, all human reference is based on the concept "complete/incomplete".
The past (complete) is realtively clear whereas the present
(complete/incomplete) is more ambivalent. It can include past, present
and future). There are three moods in the present (indicative,
subjunctive, imperative).

The use of the verbs "to be" and "to have" to form various ADDITIONAL
tenses in English shows: it was not a primary need but a secondary
one. You can of course recommend books but discussions lead to more
insight.

.

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