Grammaticalisation of Tenses
Many languages do not grammaticalize all three categories. For instance, English has past and non-past ("present"); other languages may have future and non-future. In some languages, there is not a single past or future tense, but finer divisions of time, such as proximal vs. distant future, experienced vs. ancestral past, or past and present today vs. before and after today.
Some attested tenses:
- Future tenses.
- Immediate future: right now
- Near future: soon
- Hodiernal future: later today
- Vespertine future: this evening
- Post-hodiernal: after today
- Crastinal: tomorrow
- Remote future, distant future
- Posterior tense (relative future tense)
- Nonfuture tense: refers to either the present or the past, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with future.
- Present tense
- Still tense: indicates a situation held to be the case, at or immediately before the utterance
- Nonpast tense: refers to either the present or the future, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with past.
- Past tenses. Some languages have different past tenses to indicate how far into the past we are talking about.
- Immediate past: very recent past, just now
- Recent past: in the last few days/weeks/months (conception varies)
- Nonrecent past: contrasts with recent past
- Hodiernal past: earlier today
- Matutinal past: this morning
- Prehodiernal: before today
- Hesternal: yesterday or early, but not remote
- Prehesternal: before yesterday
- Remote past: more than a few days/weeks/months ago (conception varies)
- Nonremote past: contrasts with remote past
- Historical Past: shows that the action/state was part of an event in the past
- Ancestral past, legendary past
- General past: the entire past conceived as a whole
- Anterior tense (relative past tense)
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Tense