a cognitive grammar perpective on tense and aspect

8/11/2019 A Cognitive Grammar Perpective on Tense and Aspect

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Chapter 1. A Cognitive Grammar perspective on tense and aspect

Susanne Niemeier (University Koblenz-Landau, Germany)

1. Introduction

Cognitive Grammar (CG), belonging to the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (CL), is

founded mainly on earlier work by Langacker (1987, 1991) andis a relatively recent lin-

guistic approach. As such, it has not yet been thoroughly tested in classroom applications,

however, some first preliminary tests seem to indicate that the approach may become a

very useful tool in the foreign language classroom. Focusing on the English tense/aspect

(TA) system, this chapter will outline the theoretical basis for CGs view on tense and

aspect and also provide reasons for CGs didactic potential. In keeping with Langacker

(2008), the chapter will argue that due to the central role of meaning and function in CG

and by virtue of its usage-based nature, this theoretical model may lend itself well as a

basis for teaching and learning English tense and aspect.

Although CG is not a completely uniform approach, the theoretical description of the Eng-

lish TA system takes a prominent place within all of the various CL approaches to

grammar (e.g., Fauconnier 1994, 1997 Fauconnier and Turner 2002; Langacker 1991a,b,

2000, 2001, 2002, 2008a,b,c; Radden and Dirven 2007; Taylor 2002). All of these

frameworks have in common that they treat language as an integral facet of cognition and

regard grammatical phenomena such as TA as meaningful. A crucial role is assigned to

the notion of construal, based on the assumption that situations are not reflected directly in

linguistic forms but by means of elaborate cognitive construals.

More recently, a range of edited publications has been dedicated to CG applications to the

areas of second language acquisition and grammar instruction (e.g., Achard and Niemeier


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2004; De Knop and De Rycker 2008; Ptz, Niemeier and Dirven 2001a,b; Robinson and

Ellis 2008) in which researchers argue that due to its usage-based nature and its focus on

(conceptual) meaning, cognitive grammar may offer EFL learners a descriptively adequate

and intuitively comprehensible account of grammar.

In this contribution, I will mainly focus on Langackers foundational approach to tense

and aspect and will outline his theoretical perspective on the phenomena in question,

integrating further approaches along the line, such as Fauconnier 1994, 1997; Niemeier

and Reif 2008; Radden and Dirven 2007; as well as Tyler and Evans 2001. The main

issues to be discussed are the interaction of situation type (or lexical/inherent aspect) and

grammatical/viewpoint aspect, the explanation of apparent restrictions on the combination

of certain TA components and the role of the ground in the conceptualization of situations

expressed by tensed verbs as well as the account of non-temporal uses of tense.

It will be demonstrated how a prototype account of TA categories might render extended

or more peripheral uses which in traditional TEFL approaches tend to be treated as

exceptions plausible to the language learner. Concerning non-prototypical uses of

aspect, the focus will be on the use of the progressive with iterative processes, the use of

the progressive with involuntary sensory perception and the use of the non-progressive

with performatives. With respect to tense, the following non-temporal uses of the present

and past tenses will be discussed: the expression of actuality/reality and non-

actuality/irreality (epistemic stance), the designation of salience

(foregrounding/backgrounding), and the attenuation of speech acts (politeness

phenomena), which all seem to rely on the image schema of proximity vs. distance, be it

in a temporal or in a non-temporal way.


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Finally, I will briefly comment on the necessity of empirical research in the foreign lan-

guage classroom, outlining potential research topics and methodological procedures.

2. Basic CL assumptions

CLand as such also CG - is based on the assumption that meaning is embodied and at-

tempts to explain facts about language in terms of other properties and mechanisms of the

human mind and body. It furthermore holds that language is a reflection of human cogni-

tion and conceptualization. Based on the premise that human perceptions of the world are

always filtered through our particular physical and neurological architecture, CL argues in

a rather constructivist way that humans do not have direct access to an objective, external

reality. Rather, what we have direct access to are our own subjective conceptualizations.

Conceptualizations arise from the complex interactions of a persons rich cognitive

abilities and our species-specific interactions with the external spatial physical-social

world. Crucially, while claiming that human access to the external world is indirect and

filtered, CL also argues that our interactions with the physical-social world are

fundamental to how our cognition is shaped. Basic force dynamics, such as our

understanding of gravity or motion along a path, provide foundational schemata which

give structure to our understanding of many other domains of experience.

The primary function of language is communication, and humans, who are fundamentally

social in character, use language as a tool to interact with others. One key aspect of social

interaction involves externalizing internal conceptualizations - for instance, ideas about

entities and events that are not immediately present - in order to make them accessible to

other humans. We learn language by using it in communicative contexts. Thus, linguistic


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meaning is not referential and objective, but subjective, dynamic, flexible, encyclopaedic

and usage-based.

Since language is understood to reflect conceptualization, language is all about meaning.

Not only words and expressions but also the grammar, or morpho-syntax, of a language re-

flects conceptualization and is therefore meaningful. This is one more reason why CG may

be useful to second language pedagogy, especially because of its focus on the motivated,

meaningful connections between forms that are often ignored by other theories of

language. What is motivated and meaningful can be explained. This means furthermore

that so-called exceptions are no exceptions after all but that there are explainable reasons

why they behave in a different way than the prototypical forms. CL applications thus invite

a change of perspective in that they do not posit a clear borderline between rules and

exceptions but instead refer to language phenomena as situated within a radial network of

meaning with more prototypical instances at the core and more marginal instances on the

fringes, all of them related and explainable.

Learners should not be expected anymore to learn by heart seemingly idiosyncratic

exceptions, which they cant understand and which are therefore hard for them to

memorize, but to reconstruct them via the connections to the prototypes. Such an approach

is also believed to be helpful for the teachers as they can use the motivated connections as

explanatory tools. The main aim then is to make learners aware of the motivation behind

linguistic phenomena and to help them understand how language works, as understanding

is seen as a precondition for learning. This seems to be possible via the inherent

explanatory power of CL approaches. Furthermore, grammar and lexis are not seen as

separate from each other (as EFL textbooks until today have tried to make learners believe)

but as two poles of a continuum, thus structured by the same organizational principles.


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In the following subchapters, the above assumptions will be outlined using the English TA

system as an example.

3. Aspect

Although every single English verb is by definition always marked for aspect as well as for

tense (and also for modality) at the same time, aspect and tense will be looked at separately

in the following paragraphs. At some important points, however, the interaction between

the two subsystems will be highlighted. Assuming that grammatical units, just like lexical

ones, are meaningful in the sense that they possess a phonological and a conceptual pole

(cf. Langacker 1991b), the aspect system and the tense system also carry meaning. In

contrast to lexical units, however, grammatical units are used to express rather abstract

meanings, such as, for example, "being relevant for a time before the communicative

present" in the case of the past tense marker. These different meanings may interact and

influence each other. When we look at tense, we take an external perspective on situations

which specifies the time of a situation as well as its reality status, whereas when we look at

aspect we adopt an internal perspective, i.e. we are concerned with the internal temporal

structure of a situation (see Comrie 1976: 3), which is actually part of the situation itself.

Situations can be viewed from different perspectives and the language user can normally

choose between different ways of presenting a situation. Langacker calls a perspective a

viewing arrangement, which he sees as the overall relationship between the viewers and

the situation being viewed (Langacker 2008a: 73) and defines it as follows:

Inherent in every usage event is a presupposed viewing arrangement, pertaining

to the relationship between the conceptualizers and the situation being viewed.

The default arrangement finds the speaker and hearer together in a fixed location,


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from which they report on actual occurrences in the world around them. There

are however numerous kinds of departures from this canonical circumstance. The

departures help make it evident that the default arrangement, so easily taken for

granted, is nonetheless an essential part of the conceptual substrate supporting

the interpretation of expressions. Whether canonical or special, the viewing

arrangement has a shaping influence on the conception entertained and conse-

quently on the linguistic structure used to code it.(Langacker 2001: 16 f.)

In other words, our own perspective onthe situation to be represented linguistically is inte-

grated into the upcoming representation itself, because the neutral situation i.e. speaker

and hearer conceptualizing the same situation from exactly the same perspective will be

extremely rare. The speaker encodes his/her subjectivity grammatically and the hearer

decodes itnot necessarily in exactly the same way which, at least from a constructivist

point of view, is seen as an impossibility - but the speaker has at least provided the hearer

with valid hints concerning his/her subjective perspective, for example whether an action is

seen as being in progress or as completed.

3.1 Interaction of situation type and grammatical aspect

Following Langackers work on aspect as well asRadden and Dirven 2007 and Niemeier

and Reif 2008, this section on aspect will outline a theory of aspect that takes into account

both lexical (or inherent) aspect and grammatical aspect, assuming that lexis and grammar

interact with each other on a conceptual level during communication, as already mentioned

above.

In contrast to non-aspectual languages, for instance German, Swedish, or Danish, every

single verb in English has to be marked for aspect1. English also differs from other

aspectual languages, such as for example Slavic languages, in which aspect is an important


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formal category marking imperfective and perfective construals of situations (see

Schmiedtov and Flecken 2008), whereas English only has a clearly marked progressive

aspect, but no special marker for the contrasting element in the pair. Although there is no

wide-spread agreement about the existence of a non-progressive aspect in English, I will

assume in this chapter (following Radden and Dirven 2007: 177-196) that there is a cross-

wise aspectual contrast in English, affecting both processes and states which are, according

to Langacker, subtypes of situations.

According to Radden and Dirven (2007: 47), the term situationis to be understood in the

sense of events that happen or states that things are in, although the distinction between

events (which I prefer to call processes) and states is not always a clear-cut one, as will be

discussed below. Processes can further be subdivided into durative and punctual processes,

and states can be subdivided into permanent and transitory states.

Starting with prototypical scenarios, situations can thus be classified into two categories

according to their inherent temporal structure: they either refer to inherently unbounded

situations (which Langacker calls imperfective, 2008: 147) or to inherently bounded

situations (which Langacker calls perfective, ibid.). However, as will be discussed

below, categorisation is flexible and subject to subtle conceptual influence from a variety

of sources (Langacker 2008:148).

Inherently unbounded situations are internally homogeneous and insusceptible to change.

They are not expected to come to an end. This is not the same as saying that they will

never end and they must of course have had a beginning at some point in time, it is just

that the verb itself excludes them [i.e., the beginning and the end, SN] from what it puts

onstage for focused viewing (Langacker 2008: 147). Such situations can either be

permanent states, such as , which - according to our commonsensical


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world knowledge - is normally not going to change throughout the lifetime of a person, or

they can be potentially transient states, such as , for which a change

cannot be ruled out, but is neither probable nor predictable and is thus not part of our

viewing frame.

By contrast, inherently bounded situations are internally heterogeneous and susceptible to

change, because they allow internal development and are expected to come to an end at

some point. Inherently bounded situations can either have explicit boundaries, such as

which is by definition over once the snowman is finished2, or

they can have implicit boundaries, such as , a process

which, although it does not have a fixed endpoint, is very unlikely to last forever.

As already mentioned above, our world knowledge provides us with an intuitive

understanding of the default readings of situations, due to which the prototypical

interpretations of situations like those outlined above develop naturally. We may, however,

not want to focus on the prototypical perspective but indicate that we see a given situation

differently or want the hearer to see it differently. This is where grammatical aspect comes

into play.

Grammatical aspect, i.e. the use of either the non-progressive or the progressive form,

interacts with lexical aspect in that it offers the speaker a means to construe an idealized

situation in different ways. Depending on the type of situation, i.e., whether it is inherently

bounded or unbounded, and depending on whether it is construed as a single situation or as

a repeated situation, grammatical aspect can have different conceptual effects. If we

compare the following two sentences:

(1) a. Nick built a snowman.

b. Nick was building a snowman.


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We see that they both refer to the same idealized situation, i.e. ,

an inherently bounded situation with explicit boundaries. However, this situation is

realized differently in (1a) and (1b) as far as grammatical aspect is concerned. (1a) is the

default mode, as the situation as such is inherently bounded, thus involving change through

time, and because its beginning (initial boundary) and endpoint (final boundary) are part of

the mental representation. At some point in time, Nick starts to roll the snowballs that are

then stacked up one upon another and decorated with a hat, a scarf, a broom and so on in

order to become the finished snowman in the end.

While the non-progressive aspect in (1a) expresses that the situation is viewed in its

entirety and that both its beginning and its endpoint fall within the scope of predication, the

use of the progressive aspect in (1b) has the effect of unbounding the situation3. The higher

order schematic conception of an inherently bounded situation here functions as a base

which provides the possibility of defocusing the boundaries (cf. Langacker 2000: 227;

Schmiedtov and Flecken 2008). Another notable difference between (1a) and (1b)

consists in the fact that while the situation in (1a) is perceived as being complete in itself

and is thus not susceptible to change anymore, the situation in (1b) is construed as being in

progress and is thus (at least potentially) susceptible to change (cf. Williams 2002: 88).

We find the same principle at work if we look at inherently bounded situations with

implicit boundaries, such as in (2a,b):

(2) a. We wandered about the park at night.

b. We were wandering about the park at night.

The only difference between the snowman example and the park example is that the

boundaries of the situation are explicit, while the boundaries of

remain implicit. A walk in the park starts at some

point in time and needs to end at some point in time It is conceptualized as some kind of


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bounded episode, irrespective of whether a natural endpoint is discernible (Langacker

2001: 13). There is no change in state or any internal structuring involved (cf. also Klein

1994, 1995), so we are not dealing with a prototypical example of an inherently unbounded

situation here. Whereas in (2a) we speak about a completed instance of the situation

, in (2b) we zoom into the situation, defocus its

boundaries and focus instead on its middle part, i.e., its ongoingness.

As pointed out above, the use of the progressive aspect unbounds inherently bounded

situations. If we turn to inherently unbounded situations, it becomes obvious that the

progressive needs to have a different effect on themas in these cases there is no need to

unbound an already unbounded situation anymore.

(3) a. My best friend lives in London.

b. My best friend is living in London.

Example (3) shows that inherently unbounded situations such as (3a) are construed as

lasting states that are not susceptible to change when used in the default mode, i.e., with

the non-progressive aspect4. When used with the progressive as in (3b), however, implicit

boundaries are added to the situation and it is no longer seen as a lasting, but instead as a

temporary state, i.e. construed as having implicit boundaries and as being susceptible to

change. Instead of defocusing the boundaries - as it does with inherently bounded

situations as in (1b) and (2b)the progressive aspect with inherently unbounded situations

imposes boundaries.

Such a conversion from an indefinitely lasting state to a temporary state is often visible in

the description of characters or ofpeoples behaviour:

(4) a. You are arrogant.

b. You are being arrogant.


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When we utter a sentence like (4a), we are referring to a characteristic quality of a person

or to a persons general style of behaviour, whereas when we use (4b), we are referring to

the current, temporary behaviour of a person, independent of their normal behaviour and

character. They may not be arrogant at all, but in this one special moment they are acting

as if they were.

In other words, we are dealing here with a cross-wise aspectual contrast (cf. also Radden

and Dirven (2007: chapter 8), i.e. the progressive changing the default boundary situation,

a view which differs slightly from Langackers view.Langacker claims that the overall

effect of a progressive is () to convert a perfective process into an imperfective one

(2008: 155), which coincides with the defocusing of boundaries for inherently bounded

situations. However, he does not mention the cross-wise effect, namely that the progressive

can impose boundaries on an inherently unbounded situation but analyzes this latter

phenomenon differently: he claims that when an imperfective verb is construed as referring

to a bounded episode/temporary state, the progressiveonly admissible with perfectives

can be used because the normally imperfective verb in that case relates to a (non-

prototypical) perfective instance. Opposing these two views may seem akin to a chicken-

or-the-egg question, i.e. what came first: the concept that influenced the form or the form

that influenced the concept? I would like to interpret this potential dilemma rather as either

speaker- or hearer-oriented: for the speaker, the concept comes first and needs to be

expressed accordingly, i.e. seeing a situation as unbounded/imperfective may trigger the

use of the progressive, whereas for the hearer, the form used helps him/her to interpret the

concept/meaning that the speaker wants to get across5.

To sum up, the non-progressive and the progressive aspect have an effect on the construal

of a situation, indicating how the internal constitution of a situation is viewed. With


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inherently bounded situations, the non-progressive aspect construes the situation as

complete in itself, including its boundaries, i.e. its starting point and its endpoint, as in (1a)

and (2a). The progressive aspect, by contrast, has the effect of defocusing the boundaries

of the situation by zooming in on the situation (cf. Langacker 2000: 228) and thus

construing it as ongoing, as in (1b) and (2b).

With inherently unbounded situations, the non-progressive construes the situation as

continuing indefinitely, as in (3a) and (4a). The progressive, by contrast, imposes implicit

temporal boundaries on the situation, as in (3b) and (4b), seeing it as potentially

susceptible to external change and thus focusing on its temporariness and its possible

transition to adjacent states.

Although no extensive study containing empirical proof that such a CG approach on aspect

is effective in the foreign language classroom has been published so far, some preliminary

results seem to indicate that the approach may work, at least to a certain extent6. Making

learners aware of the meaning behind the aspectual system of Englisha major source for

errors at least for German learners of English, but presumably not only for these learners

may help avoid some of their errors, as they would not have to learn rules by heart and

then simply reproduce them (or forget them) but instead starting from scratch and

understanding what aspect is about and how a grasp of the aspectual system enables them

to fine-tune their utterances and express their own perspectives, thereby potentially also

changing the learners notion of grammar as an opaque end in itself. The boundaries (or

lack of these) are/is quite easily visualizable (cf. Niemeier 2008, Niemeier and Reif 2008),

thus enabling double coding, and the learners are not inhibited by rules with exceptions but

can handle the language more freely and more creatively.


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3.2 Iterative processes

As already mentioned above, accounts of aspect in textbook and other learner grammars

usually present aspect

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in terms of rules and exceptions to these rules. In contrast to this,

CG argues that what are traditionally called exceptions are not exceptions at all, but

rather non-prototypical uses of aspect which are meaningful and therefore explainable. In

this subchapter, three apparent deviations will be explained, namely the use of the

progressive with iterative processes, the use of the progressive with verbs of involuntary

sensory perception and the use of the non-progressive with performatives.

Starting with iterative processes (such as kick, hop,knocketc.), at first sight they seem to

be prototypical members of the class of inherently bounded situations, as the processes that

they describe are clearly delimited in time. Still, such verbs do not normally allow the

progressive aspect. If we compare the following two sentences

(5) a. Daria kicked her little brother.

b.Daria was kicking her little brother.

it is obvious that they describe different scenarios. In (5a), the protagonist kicked her

brother only once, whereas in (5b), she gave him several kicks. We cannot use the

progressive to refer to a single kick because the process is too short to zoom into: in other

words, it does not allow an internal perspective. With the inherently bounded situation

, we have a starting point as well as an endpoint, but as these two nearly coincide

temporally, the process itself does not have any duration. Using the progressive with

inherently bounded situations means defocusing the situations starting point as well as its

endpoint, which in the case of such punctual, short processes like leaves actually

nothing to view. Still, the progressive can of course be found with such verbs, such as in

(5b), only the interpretation then changes to that of an iterative, repetitive process. When


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we use the progressive with such minimal-duration verbs, we conceptually extend the

situations duration in order to be able to zoom into the middle phase between the starting

point and the end point, which then results in an interpretation of repetitive short actions.

We therefore interpret sentences such as (5b) as referring to a succession of short processes

such as kicking or hopping, which are, according to Langacker (2008a: 156), construed as

constituting a single overall event of bounded durationwhich then highlights and zooms

into the internal duration of the situation, defocusing the beginning and the endpoint of the

sisters tantrum. If such a series of short, punctual processes were filmed and replayed in

slow motion, also a single kick could be referred to as She is kicking her brother as the

duration of that process would then be long enough to zoom into (cf. also Niemeier 2008:

317f.).

To sum up, we are not dealing with an exception or a deviation here, but instead with a

semantic mismatch, i.e. with meaning inconsistencies between verbs denoting short

processes and the concept of unboundedness. If there is no middle phase between the

boundaries to zoom into, unbounding is not possible. It becomes possible again if we

reconstruct the overall situation as consisting of several repeated sub-processes. If our

learners are already familiar with the notion of a situations boundaries, it is quite easy

for them to discover why short, bounded, non-prototypical processes have to be treated

differently from prototypical bounded situations. However, this claim is still waiting for

empirical validation.

3.3 Verbs of involuntary sensory perception

The second apparent deviation to be discussed is closely related to the first one. Verbs of

involuntary sensory perception (see, hear, feel, smell, taste) generally describe very brief


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processes and the majority of EFL textbooks and grammars lists them as exceptions

because they do not take the progressive aspect. Again, CG argues that these verbs are no

exceptions but that they do not necessarily invite an internal perspectivization due to their

brevity, just as described above for verbs like kick, hop, nod, and the like. If we verbalize a

perception such as or , then these processes will

be over before we will have had the time to contemplate or describe them, i.e. the

processes lack duration and their onsets and offsets nearly coincide. In this respect, verbs

of punctual involuntary sensory perception behave in a similar way as the verbs for short

processes described in 3.2. In contrast to these, however, verbs of involuntary sensory

perception do not allow an iterative interpretation as this would represent a semantic

incompatibility if something is involuntary, it cannot be repeated at will because by

definition ones will is not involved. If such processes are repeated, then we are dealing

with voluntary sensory perception (watch/observe/look at the fireworks; listen to gunshots

during a battle, etc.) and the verbs for voluntary sensory perceptions behave like any other

inherently bounded verbs.

However, verbs of involuntary sensory perception can nevertheless be used with the

progressive aspect in two respects. On the one hand, the processes being involuntarily

perceived may have some kind of extension, i.e. may not be punctual such as or , in which case they are treated like any other

bounded situation which has a duration we can zoom into for unbounding it. Although one

might argue that such situations do not possess a long duration, according to Langacker,

stability and duration are relative and what matters is whether a situation is construed as

stable for the purpose at hand and whether this stability endures through the stretch of time

considered relevant (2008a: 149). If a sensation is presented as constant for the brief

temporal interval in question, it can be unbounded and used as an imperfective, as in I


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was feeling some pain in my left knee this morning this is largely dependent on whether

the object noun accompanying the verb in question invites a punctual interpretation (e.g.,

flash, gunshot) or not (e.g., light, music, pain).

On the other hand, we find uses such as

(6) She is seeing Peter tonight.

In this example, metonymically stands for . is a prototypical

inherently bounded verb, encompassing various sub-processes (e.g., going to a bar, seeing

Peter there, walking towards him, greeting him, having a drink with him, etc.) and

therefore having a certain duration which can be zoomed into. If verbs of involuntary

perception are not being used in their basic, prototypical sense but in more marginal,

mostly metonymically motivated senses which no longer focus on the actual sensory

perception in question but rather on the complete scenario, they gain duration and can

therefore semantically accept an inner perspectivization, which in turn allows the

progressive aspect. The sensory perception then just serves as a metonymic link.

3.4 Performatives

The third apparent deviation relates to the use of non-progressives with performatives.

Performatives explicitly name speech acts (promise, admit, swear, pronounce, sentence,

apologize, etc.) and the speaker is always the subject. They are always bounded and are

always uttered in the present tense as uttering them coincides with the notion of doing

them, therefore we not only need to look at the un/boundedness of such situations but also

at the notion of the present tense, which has been described as the most complex tense in

the English tense system (Langacker 2001).


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When we use the present tense, our speech time should temporally coincide with the

situation time, but with a vast majority of situations, this is not possible. A situation such

as usually takes a lot longer than uttering the sentence *My son reads

a book and therefore the preconditions for the use of the simple present are violated.

Although is an inherently bounded situation, it cannot be framed as bounded

when used in the present tense as it does not comprise both of the necessary boundaries

the starting point is included but the end point has not yet been reached. Radden and

Dirven (2007: 208) state that the conceptual boundaries of most events do not neatly

coincide with the temporal boundaries of uttering the speech act describing the event,

therefore the simple present cannot normally be used to describe bounded situations

happening in the present time.

If we use a performative speech act such as I promise to write the paper next week, we

get around the above-mentioned dilemma, as this sentence does not describe a situation but

IS the promise itself, i.e., by uttering the sentence the speaker performs the act of

promising. This means that there is temporal identity between the utterance of the speech

act on the one hand and performing the act of promising on the other hand. Therefore,

situation time and speech time completely coincide. The verb promise is bounded and as

the whole utterance contains the promise, the starting point of the event as well as the

endpoint fall within our viewing arrangement. In Langackers terms (2001: 26),

performatives not only tolerate but actually require thepresent tense. The reason is that a

performative represents a special viewing arrangement in which the process put onstage

and profiled is the speech event itself.

Performatives furthermore lack an epistemic problem that may arise with the use of the

present tense, namely that of speaker knowledgeif we want to speak about a situation we

first of all have to identify it in order to be able describe it, and such processing may take


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some time so that the action is frequently well underway before we can start talking about

it. This means that on top of the missing endpoint, there is also a temporal incongruency

relative to the starting point of the situation. This problem does not exist with

performatives because the speaker performs the action intentionally, which means that

there is no need for him/her to first identify the action, as it is known to him anyway.

Thus, also with respect to performatives we are not dealing with an exception, as the

explanatory potential of the CG view on aspect is able to also cater for this non-

prototypical aspectual use. This makes it, as already mentioned several times, a good tool

for the EFL classroom, allowing the learners to learn by discovery. If the basic aspects

(boundaries) are known to the learners, they can ex tend these in order to explain more

marginal aspectual uses. It is obvious, however, that especially in a discussion of

performatives in a foreign language classroom. Tense and aspect cannot be treated

separately from each other but their interaction needs to be highlighted, i.e., we have to opt

for an integrated approach.

4. Tense

Tense is our grammaticalized conceptualization of time. The description of this

grammatical phenomenon needs to begin with a reminder that tense, aspect and modality

are essentially non-separable issues and are only separated here for practical reasons. Our

human experience only allows us to experience the present time directly, as the past has

already happened and can only be accessed by recall, although it can have reality status.

The future has not yet happened and therefore can neither be experienced directly nor does

it have reality status. Cognitive linguists are divided into two camps concerning the idea of

how many tenses English has: Langacker8strongly argues for only two tenses, the present


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and the past, which according to him both have reality status and are morphologically

marked on the verb, whereas the future for him belongs to the modal system, because it has

no reality status and is non-inflectional. Also Taylor (2002: 394) states that English has

only two tenses. Radden and Dirven, on the other hand, maintain that English has three

tenses: the present, the past and the future, although they admit that

our projection of events into the future always involves a certain amount of

uncertainty () Future situations are therefore very much subject to peoples

imagination. As a result, English has a number of future tense forms expressing

shades of (un)certainty about a future situation(Radden and Dirven 2007: 224).

Expressions such as peoples imagination and (un)certainty, however, can also be seen

as arguments for shifting verb constructions relating to the future to the realm of what

Langacker (2008a: 306) calls conceived reality, namely modality. It is also interesting to

note that according to Radden and Dirven (2007: 227), those future forms with the highest

degree of certainty are what they call the planned future (Im getting married next

month) and the scheduled future (My train leaves at six), both of which use present tense

morphology. Furthermore, on a conceptual level it can be argued that only the present and

the past tenses are used to signal relevance time for situations that are construed as having

reality status, i.e., situations located in factual reality. This is why the present chapter will

follow Langackers assumption that there are only two tenses in English and that future

time is expressed by modality9.

4.1 Speech time, relevance time and situation time

Langacker as well as Taylor subsume tense under the keyword grounding, as the term

ground is used in CG to indicate the speech event, its participants (speaker and hearer),


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their interaction, and the immediate circumstances (notably, the time and place of

speaking) (Langacker 2008a: 259). Tense situates the profiled relationship of an utterance

with respect to the speakers current conception of reality. We live in current reality,

therefore the base of the tense system is the present moment of speech, or speech time.

In Radden and Dirvens terms, speech time offers an anchor to locate the occurrence of

situations in time(2007: 202).

In a CG analysis of tense, three different components interact. The first component is the

present moment of speech, or speech time. It is the moment in time at which a

communicative instance is produced. If we speak about today, the present moment of

speech is part of the time region indicated by this lexical item. Similarly, if we speak about

yesterday or tomorrow, these lexical itemsare still interpreted in relation to the speech

time, i.e. to the present moment of speech, although they do not include the present

moment of speech time but refer to time intervals before or beyond speech time.

The second component is the time span which the proposition of the utterance is set

relevant for by the speaker, i.e., relevance time. The relevant time span for a proposition

such as we were snowed in yesterdayis past time, more preciselyyesterday, as indicated

by the grammatical past tense marker wereand the temporal adverbyesterday.

The third component in the relation between tense and time is the time at which a situation,

i.e. a process or a state, is instantiated, i.e., situation time10. Relevance time can correspond

exactly to situation time, as in

(7) We were snowed in yesterday.

It can also comprise only a temporal section of situation time, as in example (8) below; or

it can be different from situation time, as in the newspaper headline Snowstorm cuts off


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villages. Although the situation took place a day before the headline appeared, i.e., in the

past, and was remedied since, the newspaper headline wants to present it as being relevant

to its readerspresent in order to motivate potential readers to buy the newspaper and read

the article. In the article itself, the past tense is then used, making relevance time

equivalent to situation time.

Tense does not locate the processes or states themselves on the time axis, but it rather

allows the speaker to select a time span that is relevant for what he/she wants to say. This

becomes clear when taking a closer look at the already mentioned example (8):

(8) Emily and Charlotte came home to see her, but she was dead

(BNC: FNY 448)

Relevance time as well as situation time of the first part of the sentence are clearly in the

past, but for the second part of the sentence, relevance time is in the past, whereas situation

time encompasses not only the past but also the present, as the deceased remains dead also

at the present moment, i.e. the situation still applies at speech time. In other words, the past

tense in was dead does not primarily fulfil the function of locating the state of in past time, but instead it expresses that the relevant time span for what the

speaker is saying lies somewhere in past time (= relevance time), whereas the state of the

persons being dead comprises both past and present time (= situation time). In this

example then, relevance time only includes a part of situation time, namely the relevant

time stretch which lies in the past.


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4.2 Simple tenses

Radden and Dirven call the simple tenses deictic times as they relate to speech time, the

only moment that is available to us in our perception of time (2007: 204). They go on to

explain thatas speech time is always in the present but situation time may be in the past -

the use of the present tense always locates a situation at or around or including speech

time, whereas the past tense locates a situation at a time earlier than speech time. The

simple tenses furthermore give information about the reality status of a situation. Whereas

the present tense gives information about the immediate reality of a situation, the past tense

gives information about what Radden and Dirven call known reality (ibid.) and what

Langacker calls conceived reality (2008a: 301), arguing that our knowledge about reality

is partial and also not necessary infallibly accurate, and therefore can only be a part of

factual reality. What we consider as known by us we frequently simply embrace () as

established knowledge. For a particular conceptualizer, C, this constitutes conceived

reality. It is what C accepts as being real (ibid.). In the following two sub-chapters, the

two tenses with reality status will be briefly characterized.

4.2.1 Present tense

Notwithstanding its name, the simple present is actually one of the most complex tenses of

English grammar11. Langacker (1991: 242) relates the present tense with immediate

realityand argues that speech time and reference time exactly co-occur in canonical uses

of the present tense. What makes the present tense so complex is that such a co-occurrence

is not frequently found. Instead, there is a range of non-present uses of the present tense,

where what is being coded linguistically is not the actual occurrence of events, but their

virtual occurrence as part of a non-canonical viewing arrangement (Langacker 2001: 30).


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The true present tense is not frequently used. As already described above, bounded

events happening in the present at the time of speaking are generally too long to exactly

coincide with the utterance itself (apart from very few instances such as the balloon

pops). We are not only dealing with a durational problem here, but also with an epistemic

one. Not only does the utterance need to cover the whole event, but a speaker also

generally needs to first observe a situation in order to identify it and to be able to talk about

it which takes even more time away from the small time frame provided by the utterance.

This is why bounded situations in the present generally take the progressive aspect, which

gets rid of the boundaries that would otherwise not fit into the small time frame. The

zooming-in effect then profiles only that portion of the homogeneous state of affairs that is

valid at speech time, such as in He is reading a book. On the other hand, many uses of

the simple present tense do not refer to speech time, but to either the future, or the past, or

to so-called timeless situations or eternal truths. As Langacker (2001) argues, these

latter ones are extended uses of the true present. For him, the present tense indicates

that a full instantiation of the profiled process occurs and precisely coincides with the time

of speaking (2001: 22).

This also accounts for imperfective/unbounded situations such as He resembles his

grandfather. Such a resemblance is valid without boundaries and is therefore

imperfective. It is true at any time, thus also for the moment of speaking, and in using the

simple present, that portion of the resemblance is highlighted that is in focus at speech

time: since an imperfective process is internally homogeneous and not characterized in

terms of bounding, any subpart singled out for profiling will itself constitute a valid

instance of the process type in question (Langacker 2001: 23).


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A further use of the simple present is to be observed in the narration of demonstrations,

such as in cooking programmes on television: I put a tablespoon of butter in the pan. It

melts quickly. Now I put the fillet in. I cook it at low temperature for five minutes"

(Langackers example, 2001: 28). Although saying these sentences needs a lot less time

than the preparations and the five minutes of cooking, Langacker claims that the simple

present is not used here for the description of actual situations but is instead to be seen as

reading off entries from a list or scenario, i.e., refer to the virtual occurrence of the

situation which then again coincides with the time of speaking.

A similar explanation can be given for the so-called scheduled future use of the present

tense (My train leaves at six). Here again, we are referring to the representation of this

situation on a virtual schedule in our minds and not to the actual situation. Such scheduled

future uses generally incorporate a precise time expression (at six) and do not work for

situations that cannot be scheduled (*I fall ill next week). Although a virtual schedule

belongs to the future, it is stable and reliable also at the present moment of speaking and

can thus be regarded as a representation of an anticipated actual event and as a virtual

occurrence of that situation which coincides temporally with the moment of speaking

(following Langacker 2001: 31f.). The same virtual reading applies to stage directions as

well as to the use of the historical present, where past situations are retold using the simple

present. In this latter case, a past situation is virtually replayed, and the use of the present

tense underlines its salience, its still being vividly recalled by the experiencer. In this

context, Langacker speaks of event representations. Even when these correspond in

some fashion to actual events, the represented events are the ones directly coded

linguistically and profiled by the present tense verb (Langacker 2001: 33).


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A last related non-prototypical use of the simple present concerns so-called eternal truths

and timeless situations, such as The kangaroo is a marsupial. This utterance does not

refer to any specific kangaroo, but again to a virtual instance of a kangaroo. This virtual

situationsbelongs to an open-ended set of actual instantiations, distributed throughout the

time span during which the generalization holds (Langacker 2001: 33). The use of the

present tense indicates that the speaker is referring to a sub-part of this eternal truth at the

moment of speaking. The same is true for habituals (I drive to work every morning), where

the utterance does not refer to any actual instance of driving I may even be uttering this

sentence on a weekend when I am not driving to workbut to a virtual instance of driving.

Again, we are not dealing with exceptions in the case of the simple present but with

explainable meaning extensions. Using such explanations in foreign language instruction

may make learners aware of the meaning relations between the different uses of this tense

and may help them understand and, as a consequence, use this tense more correctly.

However, there are no empirical data whatsoever available which might indicate that such

an approach would actually work. It needs to be tested in a longitudinal study, first

introducing the prototypical use of the simple present and then by and by introducing the

non-prototypical uses, always referring back to the basic meaning of the simple present.

4.2.2 Past tense

While the present tense, as shown above, locates a situation exactly at the time of speaking,

the past tense morpheme imposes an immediate scope prior to the speech event

(Langacker 2001: 22) and in contrast to the present tense is not limited concerning the

length of the profiled process. It conveys distance from the speech event (Taylor 2002:

394) and refers to facts. A sequence of past tense verbs is often used in narratives, and the


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individual events are interpreted as successive, i.e., the first situation evoked by a past

tense locates the narration in the past and the following situations are interpreted to follow

this first situation in sequential order. As all of these situations are seen as completed, they

are interpreted as successive. If they co-occurred, the progressive aspect needs to be used

for the background situation.

Langacker (1991: 242) relates the past tense with non-immediate reality, however, as

will be pointed out below, this is only the prototypical, temporal use of the past tense. The

past tense is conventionally also used to signal less commitment to the reality of a

situation, i.e., to signal epistemic distance. Furthermore, it is frequently used to indicate

intimacy, salience, or politeness. In all of these cases it does not refer to non-immediate

realitybut to non-temporal events. As the different uses of the past tense morphology are

outlined in detail in sub-chapter 4.4.3, this short paragraph shall suffice here.

4.3 Complex tenses

All other tense forms apart from the present tense and the past tense are complex tenses

(Radden and Dirven 2007: 204ff.) which serve to locate anterior or posterior situations

relative to a reference time. Anterior times are expressed as perfect tenses stating that

something happened at an earlier time than reference time; posterior times belonging to

futurity - are expressed by prospective forms, generally consisting of grammaticalized

lexical items such asgoing to or be about to, stating that something may happen at a later

time than at reference time.

Anterior times are the present perfect and the past perfect12. They have in common that a

situation is seen as located before relevance time. In the case of the present perfect, only


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one time sphere is alluded to, namely the present time, as the relation profiled goes from

event time to speech time:

(9) Ive broken my leg, so it is difficult for me to go shopping right now.

Speech time is right now, i.e., in the present, whereas the breaking of the leg happe ned in

the past. Using the present perfect indicates that the past event of breaking the leg is seen

from the perspective of speech time as presently being an obstacle concerning everyday

life routines. The present relevance of the anterior situation is highlighted, which is why it

can be seen as part of the overall situation and can therefore be said to have not only a

temporal but also an aspectual meaning (cf. Radden and Dirven 2007: 206f.) insofar as the

left boundary of the inherently bounded situation is extended into the

past so as to also include the anterior situation. This is not possible for past perfects:

(10) I had broken my leg, so it was difficult for me to go shopping during the weeks

following the accident.

This sentence can only understood in a purely temporal sense speech time is in the

present, relevance time is in the past and situation time is before relevance time. The use of

the past perfect relates the situation time to the relevance time.

Although perfect tenses are dealt with by Radden and Dirven (2007) in their chapter on

tense, this view is not unanimously shared. Langacker, for example, treats the perfect not

as a grounding element but as a grounded structure because in contrast to tense and

modals, the perfect (have + -ed) is optional and not obligatory in a verb and can only

appear in non-finite clauses from which tense and modals are excluded (2008a: 300).

Complex tenses may be visualized by referring to Mental Space Theory (see below) as this

helps to show the interaction between the different time spheres quite clearly. Learners can


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be trained to focus on the three elements of speech time, relevance time and situation time

and with their help, decode temporal structures without being confused.

4.4 Tense and Mental Space Theory

In the following sub-chapters, Langackers as well as Radden and Dirvens understanding

of tense will be combined with insights from Fauconniers (1994, 1997) and Fauconnier

and Turners (2002) Mental Space Theory in order to generate a synthesized CG view on

tense.

The basic idea of Fauconniers model is that when discourse participants interact, they

mentally construct small conceptual packets, called mental spaces (cf. Fauconnier 1998:

252). These mental spaces contain elements, i.e., conceptual information on the things or

persons we talk about, as well as information on the reality status of the situation and its

relevance time.

4.4.1 Temporal use of tense morphemes

The mental space that serves as the basis or starting point of an interaction is called the

base space. Importantly, mental space theory makes a clear distinction between base space

and all other mental spaces. Base space is the situation at speech time, the here and now,

in which the speaker is the deictic centre. It serves as an anchor for expressing both the

reality status and the temporal relevance of any situation that is being communicated and it

contains conceptual information on the things or persons talked about, the space and time

of the interaction (speech time) as well as information about the interaction context. All of

this is normally taken for granted and will therefore not necessarily be verbalized


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explicitly. The status of things or persons in the discourse is expressed by the determiner

system and is known as reference; the status of situations and their relevance time is

expressed by the tense, aspect and modality systems.

A new mental space can be set up or an already established space can be referred back to at

any moment in the discourse. Most mental spaces are opened implicitly, but this can also

be done in a more explicit way. Such explicit space builders can, for example, be time

adverbials, such as the adverb yesterday in example (7) above (We were snowed in

yesterday), or a temporal expression such as in 1992, or the first clause in the sequence

of two or more clauses in a narrative context such as in example (8) above (Emily and

Charlotte came home to see her, but she was dead). All these space builders denote the

temporal setting serving as a situations backgroundand an interaction partner implicitly

understands that base space has been left and a new space has been opened up.

Other explicit space builders, referring to the reality status of a situation, are expressions

such as Possibly or Nick believes that. Grammatical markers for tense and aspect, to

which modality can be added, are not explicit space builders themselves, but provide the

interaction partner with clues concerning the space that is relevant at that point (cf.

Fauconnier 1994: 33). Fauconnier gives the nice example of In 1929, the lady with white

hair was blonde (1994: 29), where 1929 builds up a new mental time space in the

conversation, namely in the past. If this sentence is followed by a past tense, we stay in the

mental time space of 1929, whereas if the sentence is followed by a present tense, we shift

back to base space (now). Should this sentence be followed by a conditional (you would

have enjoyed meeting her then), we shift to a counterfactual space which provides us with

information about the reality status of a situation, which in that case would be located in

non-reality.


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Grammatical tenses and aspects and their combinations serve to indicate relative

relations between spaces and crucially, to keep track of the discourse position of the

participantswhich space is in focus , which one serves as base and what shifts are

taking place.(Fauconnier 1994: xl, emphasis in original).

The reality status of a situation can be indicated either by means of tense forms which

will be described in more detail in the next sub-chapter - or by modal verbs.

To sum up, situations set relevant for base space are referred to by the use of the present

tense and are always located in reality. Mental spaces can be opened from base space for

situations whose relevance time is anterior to speech time and which are therefore

expressed by the past tense, or else whose relevance time is posterior to speech time and

which are therefore expressed by the will-form.

4.4.2 Non-temporal uses of tense morphemes

Besides the temporal use of tense morphemes, we find a number of non-temporal uses of

tense morphemes, related to the expression of actuality/reality versus non-

actuality/irreality, to the notion of intimacy, to the designation of salience, and to the

attenuation of speech acts, which will all be described in the following sub-chapters. The

temporal use of tense morphemes does not primarily mean locating situations in time, but

rather indicating which time span is relevant for what we are saying, i.e., the temporal use

of tense and other morphemes is already much more subtle than what has usually been

understood by temporal meaning. Furthermore, the same morphological forms can also

be used to encode non-temporal meanings. In the same way that we can open, starting from

base space, further reality spaces with past, present or future relevance time, we can also

open up other mental spaces, as, for instance, potentiality space. One kind of potentiality


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space is modality space, others are hypotheticality space or counterfactuality space. Still

further possible spaces are, amongst others, interactive spaces such as narrative space or

politeness space.

4.4.1 Hypotheticality/counterfactuality space

In an assertive speech act, the reality status of a situation is taken for granted and therefore

not explicitly marked. However, if we are dealing with a speech act based in non-reality, a

hypothetical space is opened up which needs to be marked explicitly. In such a case, we

are dealing with either noncounterfactual hypotheticality or counterfactual hypotheticality,

both of which are marked by using past tense morphology.

When we speak about a situation where we cannot assert its reality status, we open up a

hypothetical space. A hypothetical space can be created by means of the space builder ifin

combination with a set of tense forms that indicate epistemic as well as temporal relevance.

The possibility that a hypothetical situation will become real is still given, for example in

the immediate future (11a) or in the more remote future (11b). In terms of their reality

status, the first two situations in example (11) are located either in the fuzzy area between

the reality of base space and hypothetical space (11a) or close to the reality of base space,

but already outside it (11b). If we are dealing with an even higher degree of

hypotheticality, such as in (11c), where it is highly unlikely but not yet impossible - that

the person in question will show up, the epistemic distance is greater. And if the epistemic

distance to the reality of base space becomes still greater, we are dealing with

counterfactuality (11d), defined by Fauconnier and Turner as forced incompatibility

between spaces (2002: 230). A counterfactual hypothetical statement indicates that it is

impossible for the situation to happen. The statements in (11c) and (11d) do not differ


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concerning the events described or with respect to their times of occurrence, they only

differ in the extent of their epistemic distance to base space. At the same time as the reality

status of the situation changes, different relevance times are involved, illustrated by the use

of the adverbs right now, straight away, then:

(11) (a) If he is German, as you claim, lets talk to him right now.

(b) If he shows up, lets ask him straight away.

(c) If he showed up, we would ask him then.

(d) If he had shown up, we could have asked him then.

English past tense morphology clearly signals distance in two different, but related ways: it

can either refer to temporal distance in base space or it can refer to epistemic distance in

hypothetical spaces. These two uses are closely related, the latter one may also be seen as a

metaphorical extension of the former one (EPISTEMIC DISTANCE IS TEMPORAL DISTANCE).

Both uses can best be understood in their relation to the double function of base space, i.e.,

its reality status function and its relevance time function. (11d) illustrates how the

interaction between temporal and epistemic relevance is expressed grammatically: since

the situation is located in temporal as well as epistemic distance from the base, what is

traditionally called a double backshift takes place grammatically, as can be seen by the

use of the past perfect in had shown up.

In the above example (11), the tense morphemes in both clauses coincide but this need not

be the case. In example (12) below, again accessing counterfactual hypothetical space, the

person talked about does not know, and in (12b) the male protagonist has not told the truth.

Although situation time in (12a) is present time, the past tense is used to express epistemic

distance vis--vis the base. This example shows that past tense morphology cannot only be

used to indicate relevance time that is located anterior to (and thus at a distance from) the

base, but also to express epistemic distance from the base. The same applies to (12b),


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where situation time is in the past and where the situation itself is construed as a

counterfactual one, therefore the past perfect is used, indicating temporal as well as

epistemic distance from the base.

(12) a. If only he knew!(BNC: AEB 3109)

b. If he had told her the truth, she would not have believed him.

(BNC: HR8 858)

Every speaker has many grammatical options at hand to communicate his/her thoughts,

while from the hearers perspective, tense and aspect marking allows us to reconstruct the

reality and time spaces set up from base space (Fauconnier 1997: 78) and the relations

between them. Tense in English and most other tensed languages is a matter of reality

status as well as temporal relevance concerning the external" reality and temporal

location of speech time, information on which is kept available in mental spaces. Base

space is the anchor for two functions, i.e., speech time and reality status, and as such it can

serve two different roles, namely a temporal and/or an epistemic one.

4.4.2 Narrative space

As already briefly mentioned, another type of space that can be opened up from base space

is narrative space. Narrations deal with past events but frequently - especially in very lively

oral narrations the present time can be used (cf. sub-chapter 4.2.1), such as in the

narrative discourse in example (13):

(13) Erm, Im just sitting in front of the car last night and erm

(BNC: KC2 3048)

Here, the narrative space allows a conflict between situation time, which is past time, and

relevance time, which is presented as if it were present time. However, no hearer will have


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a problem to understand that the situation is in the past although the present tense is being

used, because he will follow the speaker from base space, i.e., from the hereand now,

into narrative space which is per se located in the past. The fact that the present is being

used signals that the speaker is mentally reliving the events of last night and is

foregrounding them13, which is why they still have an impact at speech time. This impact

is not only felt by the speaker but also by the hearer as he is drawn into the situation as if

he had been present as an onlooker. Instead of creating distance a function of the past

tensethe use of the present tense creates closeness. If such closeness is aimed at, the use

of the past tense is not possible.

4.4.3 Politeness space

In example (14), the reverse can be observed: situation time is the present time, as the

question is asked at that precise moment,but, according to Tyler and Evans (2001: 95) we

conventionally understand that the use of past tense does not place the desire to ask the

question in the past, but rather that it attenuates and so makes such requests less face-

threatening and hence more polite, i.e., for reasons of politeness the speaker presents the

utterances relevancetime as non-present time, which has the effect that the request seems

to be less urgent so that the hearer may feel less imposed upon and thus less face-

threatened. Using the past tense in requests, suggestions, invitations, commands and

reprimands is conventionally interpreted as polite, mitigating the amount of imposition on

the addressee. By moving from base space to politeness space, the speaker signals a

cognitive, non-temporal distance between him-/herself and the hearer and by using past

tense morphology, the speaker signals this distance also grammatically.

(14) I wanted to ask you something.(BNC: HTN 2787)


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This perspective on the functions of tense morphology ties in well with Tyler and Evans

approach ofpragmatic strengthening. They argue that

...due to the way in which we actually experience the notions of intimacy, salience,actuality, and politeness, namely in terms of proximal-distal spatial relations, and the

fact that time-reference is experienced in terms of analogous spatial relations, in

certain situations tense morphemes which canonically signal time-reference can

implicate a non-temporal relation. Through usage-based conventionalization, i.e.,

pragmatic strengthening, a conventional time-meaning can become associated with a

particular tense morpheme (Tyler and Evans 2001: 65)

According to Tyler and Evans, non-temporal meaning extensions associated with tense are

explainable by the polysemy of tense morphology. By entrenchment, i.e., by pragmatic

strengthening, tense morphemes have become associated with non-temporal meanings. The

concept of intimacy, for example, in its basic meaning refers to physical intimacy, but in an

extended meaning we can also either feel close or feel distant to somebody who is not

necessarily spatially close or spatially distant to us. Therefore, we may talk in the past

tense of people we do not feel close to. When we start telling a love story from our past,

we may say things like We met in Brisbane. He was an architect even though this

former lover may well still be alive and still be an architect, but by using the past tense

morphology, we distance ourselves from this specific episode of our life.

The concept of salience is explainable in quite a similar way, as what is physically closer

to us is more salient and vice versa, which is why we can speak metaphorically of issues

closer at hand or about distant rumours.Combining these insights with the use of tense

morphology, we can foreground important facts and make them more salient by using the

present tense and we can background less important facts by using the past tense. This is in

line with certain uses of the present tense for lively narratives, the historical present and

other non-canonical uses (cf. sub-chapter 4.2.1). As Tyler and Evans argue, the use of the


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present tense to make a particular event more real would seemto be related to the use of

the present tense to denote greater salience and hence importance in terms of information

structure(2001: 93).

To sum up, tense morphology cannot only be used to symbolize temporal relevance, but it

can furthermore be used to express epistemic relevance, salience and attenuation in certain

contexts. Both the temporal and the non-temporal uses of tense forms can be ascribed to a

common conceptual basis, the proximal/distal14 (or immediacy/non-immediacy) schema

(cf. Langacker 1991: 249). This means that while the present tense is always used to

express proximity/immediacy be it temporal, epistemic, narrative or formal

proximity/immediacy, the past tense always indicates distance/non-immediacy. In other

words: in a very iconic way, more form is more meaning, i.e., the addition of the past tense

morpheme signals more distance, either with respect to relevance time, reality status,

backgrounding or social commitment. Seen in such a simplified way, an understanding of

the notions of tense and tense morphology may be facilitated for ESL learners.

5. Conclusion

The teaching of tense and aspect, two of the most error-prone areas for ESL learners,

could presumably profit very much from a CG approach with its focus on the

meaningfulness of grammar. Such an approach enables teachers to begin with prototypical

instances on the basis of which their learners can understand the admittedly abstract

meaning of specific grammatical phenomena. In later lessons, these teachers can then

gradually introduce non-prototypical instances of the phenomenon in question. It is

important that learners are made aware of the fact that these more marginal instances are

always related to the basic meaning, i.e., that for example the proximity vs. distance


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meanings of the tenses are to be found in the use of the ed morpheme in temporal

relations, but also in other areas, as discussed above. Combining Langackers approach to

tense with Mental Space Theory allows learners to trace the thought processes behind an

utterance, ideally as a model for their own future utterances in the foreign language.

Learners should start in the here-and-now, i.e., in base space, and work their way up to

other mental spaces, while detecting the meanings of and the relations between the various

tense and aspect uses. Concerning the teaching of aspect, the notion of boundaries may

come in helpful, especially when introduced via the teaching of mass and count nouns

(see also Niemeier 2008).

Researchers from Langacker to Tyler and Evans in various publications have repeatedly

argued that the CG approach is useful for teaching, but there is a dire lack of empirical

data and therefore, we have no proof so far that such an approach may indeed work. The

main obstacle for doing empirical research in this area is presumably the need for

longitudinal studies. Intuitively, it seems relatively useless to teach and evaluate a discrete

CG-based lesson on, say, the use of the non-progressive after verbs of involuntary

sensory perception in an otherwise traditional foreign language classroom and still

expect valid results.

Tense and aspect are present from the very beginning of ESL learning, not necessarily in

an explicit way but at least in the teachers language.As soon as learners start producing

their own utterances, they will use verbs and therefore also tense and aspect. If these

learners are then given explanations concerning these grammatical areas, this information

should already conform to CG beliefs, because otherwise later CG-related explanations do

not make a lot of sense to the learners as they might be very different to what they learnt

before and would then be difficult to integrate into their interlanguage hypotheses. In


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other words, CG-oriented foreign language instruction should ideally begin with the very

first lesson in the foreign language because only then can it unfold its full potential.

As a second difficulty involved, for an empirical study to be fruitful and valid, we do not

only need a test group, but also a control group, which means that a second class would

have to be taught in a different, more traditional way so that the results of these two

groups could then be reliably compared at certain points during the study, which may well

cover several years. Such ideal research scenarios are hard to find, therefore it seems

much more realistic to use smaller test items than tense or aspect in their totality and

to restrict the time for the studies. The results found will not be as positive as they might

be under ideal test conditions, but if they are indeed positive even under less-than-optimal

circumstances, this may already pave the way towards a rethinking of grammar learning

and teaching in the direction of CG-based instruction.

However, as already mentioned at various points throughout this article, even tests on

smaller items are missing although there is no lack of research questions. It would be

interesting, for example, to find out whether CG-based instruction is equally well suited

for every learning style, whether visualizations of grammatical phenomena are perceived

as helpful, which kind of visualization works best15, how to introduce topics and which

terminology to use in the classroom at various levels, or whether the learners error rate

after CG-based instruction is lower and if it is, in which areas (analysis of utterances,

closed exercises, half-open exercises and open exercises such as free text production).

Research results on these and related questions are urgently needed if the CG approach

wants to be accepted in regular textbooks and teacher trainings. It may well be worth the

time and effort.


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Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Fred Thompson (University Koblenz-Landau, Germany) for having

checked my English. All remaining flaws are, as usual, my own responsibility.

1. It may be mainly due to this difference that aspect errors are the most frequent errors German learners

of English commit, cf. also Niemeier and Reif 2008. German verbs do not need to be marked for aspect,

as aspect is either indicated in various optional lexical ways or omitted altogether. Therefore, manyGerman learners of English tacitly assume that aspect is not an obligatory category in English. Most

EFL textbooks used in Germany do not explain this to them either.

2. At this point the bounded situation would turn into the inherently unboundedsituation , a potentially transient state because it is not expected to last forever,

but only until the weather gets warmer.

3. This process is called a defocusing of boundaries by Schmiedtov and Flecken (2008), i.e., both the

initial and the final boundaries of the situation are not gone, but excluded from the speakers focus.

4. In textbook grammars and other learner grammars, learners are generally confronted with a list ofstate verbs and are usually told that these verbs cannot take the progressive aspect (for more details

see Niemeier 2008). Such a list is supposed to be learnt by heart, which is not exactly a useful learningstrategy.

5. For EFL purposes, working with the concept of the cross-wise aspectual contrast has proven to be a lot

more fruitful as learners can relate to it far better than they can to Langackers interpretation. The

concept of boundaries along with the idea that the progressive changes the default setting of theboundaries of a verbs meaning is apparently easier to understand than the concept of (im)perfectivity

(personal experience).

6. A PhD thesis is currently underway (Monika Reif, University Koblenz-Landau) which tests the

effectiveness of a CG approach to tense and aspect vis--vis a traditional textbook approach to tense

and aspect with first-semester English majors of a German university. Preliminary results have been

presented at various conferences, but have not yet been published. Generally speaking, the approach

seems to be working better than the traditional one, although not necessarily for all kinds of learners.The learners seem to especially appreciate the explanatory power of the approach and the visualizationsused in the CG materials. One has to keep in mind, however, that these learners studied English at

school for at least 9 years before starting their studies and have thus grown up with the traditional

approach, which sometimes makes it very hard to switch over to a quite different approach. In an ideal

case, CG explanations would be introduced right from the very beginning of English learning,

accompanied by a longitudinal study. Doing research at school level, however, is enormously difficult

at least in Germany, as it is a very time-consuming and often impossible process to get hold of the

various permissions needed (school administration, school director, parents of all children involved,

etc.).

7. I.e., if they present aspect at all, because it is generally integrated into the chapters on tense, frequently

without even making use of the term aspect.

8.

In his 1991a publication (p. 332) Langacker still speaks about the future tense whereas from his

1991b publication onwards he seems to have changed his views.


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9. This is why the present contribution will not talk about the various types of future. Radden and Dirven

(2007: 225ff.) differentiate the following kinds of future: predicted future (Well have some sunshine),

matter-of-course future (Ill be seeing you), intentional future (Im going to get married), contingent

future (Its going to rain), planned future (Im getting married next month), scheduled future (My train

leaves at six) and background future (If I see him, Ill send him home).

10. Radden and Dirven (2007: 202 ff.) use event time here, but I have decided to follow Niemeier andReif (2008) who use situation timebecause in this context a situation can refer either to a process or

to a state and in our view, it is conceptually somewhat difficult to subsume states under events, a term

which tends to have a more processual character. A similar problem occurs with Langackers

terminology where process is used as a cover term for both processes and states.

11. See also sub-chapter 3.4 on performatives.

12. If the future was treated as a tense, we would also have to mention the future perfect here (I will have

passed my driving license by the time I turn 18). If the future is not considered to be a tense, then we are

dealing with a combination of modality and the auxiliary have + -ed.

13.

Cf. Tyler and Evans (2001: 72) who also maintain that past tense signals background and supportingstatus and present tense signals foreground status.

14. Tyler and Evans account for the fact that time is associated with the spatial concepts of proximity and

distance by referring to the experiential correlation between the two concepts. When we speak, we arein the here-and-now, which functions as our deictic center: We cannot help but experience the present

moment in terms of our immediate physical surroundings and our sensory perceptions of them ()

Traversing a certain distance inevitably correlates with the elapse of a certain amount of time. Thus,

elements of the spatial domain, such as movement from one location to another and distance, have

become strongly associated with the elapse of time (2001: 81f.). In other words, the concepts of space

and time are so intertwined in human cognition that they are frequently co-activated, which is amongst other phenomena visible in the non-temporal use of temporal morphology, when we speak

about the past tense as signaling distance (a spatial concept) in various ways.

15.

A preliminary result of Reifs PhD research (see also endnote 6) is that learners preferred cartoon -like

pictures to Langacker-style diagrams, which they found more difficult to interpret.

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