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Intended primarily as a link explanation for "tense" in articles which do not actually cover tense, but instead some combination of tense-aspect or TAM. — kwami ( talk) 19:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Count Truthstein has put an Article for Deletion tag on this article but has given no explanation on this talk page. The explanation on the articles for deletion page is as follows:
I've transcluded the discussion in here, because the proper place to dicuss an AfD is in its AfD entry. Eduemoni ↑talk↓ 20:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I have reworded the introduction and added a disclaimer that this article is about a group of related theoretical systems which various people have proposed. They are not established linguistic theory, set practice, nor is the information in this article or references provided referring to a single one of these systems but rather a conglomeration of them all. TAM systems are neither accepted nor are they practical in that they fail to effectively analyze for all of the information they purport to include.
As an expert on this subfield of linguistics, my instinct would be to delete this article entirely because I know it to be wrong. However, as these systems have been proposed and they are sometimes mentioned, having an article on them for encyclopedic purposes is merited. But, this article is written far too supportively and seems to promote rather than document such proposals. It should be rewritten as a discussion of the various attributes of TAM proposals and not as an article which sounds like it's outlining an (if not THE) established linguistic system. I have added a disclaimer about its style until such time as it is rewritten into an objective document.
Also, this page should be linked only from relevant pages discussing theoretical frameworks and not listed on pages such as tense and aspect. Drew.ward ( talk) 23:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I will quote here something I wrote in the deletion discussion: 'Another difficulty I have is with terminology. I saw "tense, aspect and mood" as indexes to give the appropriate form of a verb lexeme. This is based on Latin grammar (Latin_conjugation), which is where these words come from and what they were originally used for. (Aspect was a category of tenses, with three tenses in each of two aspects. There were also voice, person and number.) Conflation of structure and meaning is a problem which seems to be common in the study of grammar. What we need is precise semantic vocabulary (perhaps "time" instead "tense") but this might not be possible. Perhaps a note should be put in the article to say that "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are being used semantically.'
I will try to clear up parts of the article where this could be confusing. For example, the article starts: "Tense-aspect-mood, also called tense-modality-aspect and commonly abbreviated tam, is the grammatical system in a language that covers tense (grammatical expression of location in time)". I propose removing the words "grammatical expression of" to remove any implication that a particular structure within a language is being referred to which has been labelled with the name of "tense".
However, later on in the article the words "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are used to refer to specific structures. For example: "In all Slavic languages, most verbs come in pairs with one member having an imperfective aspect and the other having a perfective one." Here "aspect" is used as a label for a grammatical structure, which may not always match up with the aspect that is conveyed by the use of the structure. (I cannot say whether that is true in this case but it is true in others.) Count Truthstein ( talk) 20:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Starting with the word "tense", out of all of the instances where it is used in the article, many examples can be identified of it being used to identify a grammatical structure. Some examples:
I hope this illustrates this problem. It would take quite heavy editing to get rid of it. Hopefully the need for unwieldy turns of phrase like 'Portuguese contains a grammatical structure conventionally labelled as "future tense" which, as in Italian, can also indicate present tense etc.' can be avoided.
All talk of tense being "indicated" is using it in the sense that you say that linguists use it, so does not need to be changed. Count Truthstein ( talk) 21:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
The article states: had better indicates obligatory mode (He had better do that soon). There is no corresponding past tense form. Not a grammar expert but I think there is? The past tense form of "He had better do that" is "He better have done that". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.232 ( talk) 20:14, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
In support, I came here to make the comment that my father often used this past tense form ("He had better have (e.g. cleaned his room).)" Carabaoboy ( talk) 05:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I'd like to comment on something in the article, but I apologize that I don't know the accepted format for doing so.
The article says:
"In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek, the imperfective aspect as a whole is fused with the past tense in a form traditionally called the imperfect. This fusion can occur because the imperfective aspect only exists in the past"
I believe that when the author, in the above passage, said "imperfective", he meant "perfective" (also called "punctual").
184.32.32.187 ( talk) 19:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)Michael Ossipoff
This statement from the article seems incorrect but it's hard to get what it is trying to say:
In both Spanish and Modern Greek, the present tense is also imperfective. It is the perfective aspect that is only found in the past. Stephen C. Carlson ( talk) 02:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Who used the term mode and who mood? Perhaps a misunderstanding at some point in time caused this shift?
Who was the first to use this abbreviation, and when did the three terms individually become to mean what they mean here. I'm quite sure that Tense meant only "past, present and future". When was the breakup into perfected actions vs. imperfect introduced into grammar studies? Is this an ancient notion from the time of the Babylonians and Greeks or something new. In short, it would be nice to have a small section on the history of the abbreviation and the three terms within. פשוט pashute ♫ ( talk) 19:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
I had always learned in my linguistics courses that it was "TAME" including evidentiality. Why is evidentiality excluded in this article? Danachos ( talk) 04:37, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
|
Intended primarily as a link explanation for "tense" in articles which do not actually cover tense, but instead some combination of tense-aspect or TAM. — kwami ( talk) 19:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Count Truthstein has put an Article for Deletion tag on this article but has given no explanation on this talk page. The explanation on the articles for deletion page is as follows:
I've transcluded the discussion in here, because the proper place to dicuss an AfD is in its AfD entry. Eduemoni ↑talk↓ 20:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I have reworded the introduction and added a disclaimer that this article is about a group of related theoretical systems which various people have proposed. They are not established linguistic theory, set practice, nor is the information in this article or references provided referring to a single one of these systems but rather a conglomeration of them all. TAM systems are neither accepted nor are they practical in that they fail to effectively analyze for all of the information they purport to include.
As an expert on this subfield of linguistics, my instinct would be to delete this article entirely because I know it to be wrong. However, as these systems have been proposed and they are sometimes mentioned, having an article on them for encyclopedic purposes is merited. But, this article is written far too supportively and seems to promote rather than document such proposals. It should be rewritten as a discussion of the various attributes of TAM proposals and not as an article which sounds like it's outlining an (if not THE) established linguistic system. I have added a disclaimer about its style until such time as it is rewritten into an objective document.
Also, this page should be linked only from relevant pages discussing theoretical frameworks and not listed on pages such as tense and aspect. Drew.ward ( talk) 23:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I will quote here something I wrote in the deletion discussion: 'Another difficulty I have is with terminology. I saw "tense, aspect and mood" as indexes to give the appropriate form of a verb lexeme. This is based on Latin grammar (Latin_conjugation), which is where these words come from and what they were originally used for. (Aspect was a category of tenses, with three tenses in each of two aspects. There were also voice, person and number.) Conflation of structure and meaning is a problem which seems to be common in the study of grammar. What we need is precise semantic vocabulary (perhaps "time" instead "tense") but this might not be possible. Perhaps a note should be put in the article to say that "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are being used semantically.'
I will try to clear up parts of the article where this could be confusing. For example, the article starts: "Tense-aspect-mood, also called tense-modality-aspect and commonly abbreviated tam, is the grammatical system in a language that covers tense (grammatical expression of location in time)". I propose removing the words "grammatical expression of" to remove any implication that a particular structure within a language is being referred to which has been labelled with the name of "tense".
However, later on in the article the words "tense", "aspect" and "mood" are used to refer to specific structures. For example: "In all Slavic languages, most verbs come in pairs with one member having an imperfective aspect and the other having a perfective one." Here "aspect" is used as a label for a grammatical structure, which may not always match up with the aspect that is conveyed by the use of the structure. (I cannot say whether that is true in this case but it is true in others.) Count Truthstein ( talk) 20:13, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Starting with the word "tense", out of all of the instances where it is used in the article, many examples can be identified of it being used to identify a grammatical structure. Some examples:
I hope this illustrates this problem. It would take quite heavy editing to get rid of it. Hopefully the need for unwieldy turns of phrase like 'Portuguese contains a grammatical structure conventionally labelled as "future tense" which, as in Italian, can also indicate present tense etc.' can be avoided.
All talk of tense being "indicated" is using it in the sense that you say that linguists use it, so does not need to be changed. Count Truthstein ( talk) 21:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
The article states: had better indicates obligatory mode (He had better do that soon). There is no corresponding past tense form. Not a grammar expert but I think there is? The past tense form of "He had better do that" is "He better have done that". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.232 ( talk) 20:14, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
In support, I came here to make the comment that my father often used this past tense form ("He had better have (e.g. cleaned his room).)" Carabaoboy ( talk) 05:41, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
I'd like to comment on something in the article, but I apologize that I don't know the accepted format for doing so.
The article says:
"In some languages, such as Spanish and Modern Greek, the imperfective aspect as a whole is fused with the past tense in a form traditionally called the imperfect. This fusion can occur because the imperfective aspect only exists in the past"
I believe that when the author, in the above passage, said "imperfective", he meant "perfective" (also called "punctual").
184.32.32.187 ( talk) 19:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)Michael Ossipoff
This statement from the article seems incorrect but it's hard to get what it is trying to say:
In both Spanish and Modern Greek, the present tense is also imperfective. It is the perfective aspect that is only found in the past. Stephen C. Carlson ( talk) 02:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Who used the term mode and who mood? Perhaps a misunderstanding at some point in time caused this shift?
Who was the first to use this abbreviation, and when did the three terms individually become to mean what they mean here. I'm quite sure that Tense meant only "past, present and future". When was the breakup into perfected actions vs. imperfect introduced into grammar studies? Is this an ancient notion from the time of the Babylonians and Greeks or something new. In short, it would be nice to have a small section on the history of the abbreviation and the three terms within. פשוט pashute ♫ ( talk) 19:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
I had always learned in my linguistics courses that it was "TAME" including evidentiality. Why is evidentiality excluded in this article? Danachos ( talk) 04:37, 14 March 2021 (UTC)