Are each of the following different tenses?
I run
I am running
I ran
I was running
I had been running
I was going to run
I will run
I will be running
I will have run
I will be going to run
Also, what are the names of each of those tenses? Are there any other tenses in English (or for that matter, in other languages)? And if some of those aren’t separate tenses, then what are the names for those constructions?
Just for completeness’ sake:
I have run.
I had run.
I were running / to run (fragment here).
I would run
I would have run
…
How about the Anglo-Irish: “I do be running”? Not sure what it’s called; perhaps the habitual present.
I’ve heard the different flavors within each tense called “aspects”…I am running, I run, and I do run are different aspects of the present tense.
“I were running” (as in “If I were running, I’d be breathing more heavily”) is a different mood, right? Like subjunctive mood instead of indicative mood?
I have been running.
I will have been running.
Dang, there sure are a lot of tenses.
So can anyone tell me what they’re all called?
I used to be a linguistics major, but I can’t promise much here. What you’re looking at in these different constructions isn’t JUST different tenses. The verb phrase can convey information about three things, usually listed as Tense, Mood, and Aspect (this is aside from any objects or prepositional phrases or such- just in the short example phrases you were giving).
Tense is just time- past, present, future.
Mood is imperative, indicative, interrogative, or subjuntive- indicative is just a statement of fact, imperative is an order, interrogative is a question, and subjunctive isn’t used much in english, but it’s a construction like “Were I a millionaire…”
Aspect signals completion- a perfect aspect indicates that the action has been done, a progressive aspect says it is in progress. Isn’t there another? Don’t remember.
Those are the three big inflections of verbs. The whole thing is complicated by voice (active or passive voice, that is the difference between “I threw the ball” and “the ball was thrown”) and by modality, that is, verbs that alter meaning and express things like obligation or probability (may go, can go, should go, could go…)
SO, putting it all together…
I run - present tense, indicative mood
I am running -present tense, progressive aspect, indicative mood
I ran -past tense, indicative mood
I was running -past tense, progressive aspect, indicative mood.
etc, etc, down your lists, including things like “run tommorow!” and “Will you have run at noon tommorow?” and “Were I to have run yesterday” and all sorts of hellish-to-diagram constructions like that.
Note that I haven’t had a real review of mood and aspect in a LOOOONG time… I’m not even sure what aspect you would call “I run.” Partly because it’s an odd english sentence there all by itself, so my intuition isn’t helping me.
Here’s a link that seems to have basically correct info- my old school links are on a different computer:
http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/engl_126/ph_verb.htm
Based on the helpful info others (Dragoness in particular) have posted, I was able to find this site
From this, I think the names of the tenses/aspects are as follows:
I run – (simple) present
I am running – present progressive
I have run – present perfect
I have been running – present perfect progressive
I ran – (simple) past
I was running – past progressive
I had run – past perfect
I had been running – past perfect progressive
I will run – (simple) future
I will be running – future progressive
I will have run – future perfect
I will have been running – future perfect progressive
It also seems like you could have the following constructions. Some of these are probably just the subjunctives versions of the ones above, but I’m not quite sure which is which.
Were I to run . . .
Were I running . . .
I would have run
I would have been running
Had I ran . . .
Had I been running . . .
I would run
I was going to run
and probably a whole bunch of other ones.