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45-560: A more restrictive and technical definition requires that homonyms be simultaneously homographs and homophones—that is, they have identical spelling and pronunciation but different meanings. Examples include the pair stalk (part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair left ( past tense of leave ) and left (opposite of right ). A distinction is sometimes made between true homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have

90-520: A fruit or a material . A mold ( mould ) can refer to a fungus or an industrial cast . The words there , their , and they're are examples of three words that are of a singular pronunciation, have different spellings and vastly different meanings. These three words are commonly misused (or, alternatively, misspelled). The words metal and mettle are polysemes and homophones, but not homographs. Homonymy can lead to communicative conflicts and thus trigger lexical ( onomasiological ) change. This

135-408: A common spelling and pronunciation, but differ in meaning. The words bow and bough are examples where there are two meanings associated with a single pronunciation and spelling (the weapon and the knot); two meanings with two different pronunciations (the knot and the act of bending at the waist), and two distinct meanings sharing the same sound but different spellings ( bow , the act of bending at

180-404: A homograph is fluke , meaning: These meanings represent at least three etymologically separate lexemes , but share the one form, fluke . Fluke is also a capitonym, in that Fluke Corporation (commonly referred to as simply "Fluke") is a manufacturer of industrial testing equipment. Similarly, a river bank , a savings bank , a bank of switches, and a bank shot in the game of pool share

225-493: A less remote proximal tense which is used for very recent past events and is never interchangeable with the ordinary past form. These languages also differ substantially from European languages in coding tense with prefixes instead of such suffixes as English -ed . Other, smaller language families of Africa follow quite regional patterns. Thus the Sudanic languages of East Africa and adjacent Afro-Asiatic families are part of

270-505: A past tense. In English, the past tense (or preterite ) is one of the inflected forms of a verb. The past tense of regular verbs is made by adding -d or -ed to the base form of the verb, while those of irregular verbs are formed in various ways (such as see→saw , go→went , be→was/were ). With regular and some irregular verbs, the past tense form also serves as a past participle . For full details of past tense formation, see English verbs . Past events are often referred to using

315-417: A reference point that may not coincide with the time an utterance is made. Papuan languages of New Guinea almost always have remoteness distinctions in the past tense (though none are as elaborate as some Native American languages), whilst indigenous Australian languages usually have a single past tense without remoteness distinctions. Creole languages tend to make tense marking optional, and when tense

360-467: A shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal). The relationship between a set of homonyms is called homonymy , and the associated adjective is homonymous , homonymic , or in Latin, equivocal . Additionally, the adjective homonymous can be used wherever two items share the same name, independent of how closely they are related in terms of their meaning or etymology. For example,

405-423: A single past tense. In both West and East Slavic, verbs in the past tense are conjugated for gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural). French has numerous forms of the past tense including but not limited to: Spanish and Portuguese have several forms of the past tense, which include but are not limited to: A difference in the pluperfect occurs between Spanish and Portuguese; in

450-787: Is a split between complete absence of past marking (especially common in Mesoamerica and the Pacific Northwest) and very complex tense marking with numerous specialised remoteness distinctions, as found for instance in Athabaskan languages and a few languages of the Amazon Basin. Some of these tenses can have specialised mythological significance and uses. A number of Native American languages like Northern Paiute stand in contrast to European notions of tense because they always use relative tense , which means time relative to

495-537: Is formed with an auxiliary (haben/sein) and a past participle that is placed at the end of the clause. Dutch mainly uses these two past tenses: Less common is the voltooid verleden tijd , which corresponds to the English past perfect. It is formed by combining an onvoltooid verleden form of zijn ("to be") or hebben ("to have") with the notional verb, for example: Ik was daar voor gisteren al geweest . This means "I had been there before yesterday." This tense

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540-464: Is known as homonymic conflict . This leads to a species of informal fallacy of thought and argument called by the latin name equivocation . Past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs sang , went and washed . Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back

585-466: Is marked invariant pre-verbal markers are used. In Belizean Creole , past tense marking is optional and is rarely used if a semantic temporal marker such as yestudeh "yesterday" is present. Singaporean English Creole ( Singlish ) optionally marks the past tense, most often in irregular verbs (e.g., go → went ) and regular verbs like accept which require an extra syllable for the past tense suffix - ed . Hawaiian Creole English optionally marks

630-422: Is reflected in a morphological or syntactic paradigm. But in generative grammar , which sees meaning as separate from grammar, they are categories that define the distribution of syntactic elements. For structuralists such as Roman Jakobson grammatical categories were lexemes that were based on binary oppositions of "a single feature of meaning that is equally present in all contexts of use". Another way to define

675-403: Is singular, and by adding the suffix -s if it is plural (although some nouns have irregular plural forms ). On other occasions, a category may not be marked overtly on the item to which it pertains, being manifested only through other grammatical features of the sentence, often by way of grammatical agreement . For example: The bird can sing. The bird s can sing. In the above sentences,

720-458: Is sometimes called an exponent . Grammatical relations define relationships between words and phrases with certain parts of speech, depending on their position in the syntactic tree. Traditional relations include subject , object , and indirect object . A given constituent of an expression can normally take only one value in each category. For example, a noun or noun phrase cannot be both singular and plural, since these are both values of

765-538: Is used to indicate that one action in the past occurred before another past action, and that the action was fully finished before the second action took place. In non-Germanic Indo-European languages , past marking is typically combined with a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, with the former reserved for single completed actions in the past. French for instance, has an imperfect tense form similar to that of German but used only for past habitual or past progressive contexts like "I used to..." or "I

810-903: The Dravidian languages of India; the Uralic languages of Russia; Mongolic ; and Korean . Languages in East Asia and Southeast Asia typically do not distinguish tense; in Mandarin Chinese , for example, the particle 了 le when used immediately after a verb instead indicates perfective aspect . In parts of islands in Southeast Asia, even less distinction is made, for instance in Indonesian and some other Austronesian languages . Past tenses, do, however, exist in most Oceanic languages . Among Native American languages there

855-641: The glossing abbreviation PST . The European continent is heavily dominated by Indo-European languages , all of which have a past tense. In some cases the tense is formed inflectionally as in English see/saw or walks/walked and as in the French imperfect form, and sometimes it is formed periphrastically , as in the French passé composé form. Further, all of the non-Indo-European languages in Europe, such as Basque , Hungarian , and Finnish , also have

900-684: The present perfect construction, as in I have finished (also known as present in past ). However this is not regarded as an instance of the past tense; instead it is viewed as a combination of present tense with perfect aspect , specifying a present state that results from past action. (It can be made into a past tense form by replacing the auxiliary have with had ; see below.) Various multi-word constructions exist for combining past tense with progressive (continuous) aspect, which denotes ongoing action; with perfect aspect; and with progressive and perfect aspects together. These and other common past tense constructions are listed below. For details of

945-458: The preterite is mostly used solely in writing, for example in stories. Use in speech is regarded as snobbish and thus very uncommon. South German dialects, such as the Bavarian dialect, as well as Yiddish and Swiss German, have no preterite (with the exception of sein and wollen ), but only perfect constructs. In certain regions, a few specific verbs are used in the preterite, for instance

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990-460: The tense/aspect markers le and guo . The "past time" to which the past tense refers generally means the past relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is employed (as in some instances of indirect speech ) it may mean the past relative to some other time being under discussion. A language's past tense may also have other uses besides referring to past time; for example, in English and certain other languages,

1035-574: The "number" category. It can, however, be both plural and feminine, since these represent different categories (number and gender). Categories may be described and named with regard to the type of meanings that they are used to express. For example, the category of tense usually expresses the time of occurrence (e.g. past, present or future). However, purely grammatical features do not always correspond simply or consistently to elements of meaning, and different authors may take significantly different approaches in their terminology and analysis. For example,

1080-468: The above sentences, the noun phrase the birds inherits plural number from the noun birds . In other cases such values are associated with the way in which the phrase is constructed; for example, in the coordinated noun phrase Tom and Mary , the phrase has plural number (it would take a plural verb), even though both the nouns from which it is built up are singular. In traditional structural grammar, grammatical categories are semantic distinctions; this

1125-407: The action took place. Some languages have a compound past tense which uses auxiliary verbs as well as an imperfect tense which expresses continuous or repetitive events or actions. Some languages inflect the verb, which changes the ending to indicate the past tense, while non-inflected languages may use other words meaning, for example, "yesterday" or "last week" to indicate that something took place in

1170-399: The focus is on the action, whilst the present perfect is used for past actions when the focus is on the present state of the subject as a result of a previous action. This is somewhat similar to the English usage of the preterite and the present perfect. The past perfect is used in every German speaking country and it is used to place an action in the past before another action in the past. It

1215-526: The latter, a synthetic pluperfect exists which follows the imperfect conjugations, but -ra replaces the -va seen in the verb endings. While in Semitic languages tripartite non-past/past imperfective/past perfective systems similar to those of most Indo-European languages are found, in the rest of Africa past tenses have very different forms from those found in European languages. Berber languages have only

1260-412: The meanings associated with the categories of tense, aspect and mood are often bound up in verb conjugation patterns that do not have separate grammatical elements corresponding to each of the three categories; see Tense–aspect–mood . Categories may be marked on words by means of inflection . In English , for example, the number of a noun is usually marked by leaving the noun uninflected if it

1305-457: The modal verbs and the verbs haben (have) and sein (be). In speech and informal writing, the Perfekt is used (e.g., Ich habe dies und das gesagt . (I said this and that)). However, in the oral mode of North Germany, there is still a very important difference between the preterite and the perfect , and both tenses are consequently very common. The preterite is used for past actions when

1350-404: The number is marked overtly on the noun, and is also reflected by verb agreement. However: The sheep can run. In this case the number of the noun (or of the verb) is not manifested at all in the surface form of the sentence, and thus ambiguity is introduced (at least, when the sentence is viewed in isolation). Exponents of grammatical categories often appear in the same position or "slot" in

1395-450: The number of the noun is marked by the absence or presence of the ending -s . The sheep is running. The sheep are running. In the above, the number of the noun is not marked on the noun itself ( sheep does not inflect according to the regular pattern), but it is reflected in agreement between the noun and verb: singular number triggers is , and plural number are . The bird is singing. The bird s are singing. In this case

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1440-435: The past tense is sometimes used in referring to hypothetical situations, such as in condition clauses like If you loved me ... , where the past tense loved is used even though there may be no connection with past time. Some languages grammatically distinguish the recent past from remote past with separate tenses. There may be more than two distinctions. In some languages, certain past tenses can carry an implication that

1485-469: The past tense with the invariant pre-verbal marker wen or bin (especially older speakers) or haed (especially on the island Kauai). ( Ai wen si om "I saw him"; Ai bin klin ap mai ples for da halade "I cleaned up my place for the holiday"; De haed plei BYU laes wik "They played BYU last week"). The past habitual marker is yustu ( Yo mada yustu tink so "Your mother used to think so"). Haitian Creole can indicate past tense with

1530-545: The past. In some languages, the grammatical expression of past tense is combined with the expression of other categories such as grammatical aspect (see tense–aspect ). Thus a language may have several types of past tense form, their use depending on what aspectual or other additional information is to be encoded. French , for example, has a compound past ( passé composé ) for expressing completed events, and imperfect for continuous or repetitive events. Some languages that grammaticalise for past tense do so by inflecting

1575-400: The perfective/imperfective distinction and lack a past imperfect. Many non-Bantu Niger–Congo languages of West Africa do not mark past tense at all but instead have a form of perfect derived from a word meaning "to finish". Others, such as Ewe , distinguish only between future and non-future . In complete contrast, Bantu languages such as Zulu have not only a past tense, but also

1620-428: The pre-verbal marker te ( Li te vini "He (past) come", "He came"). Grammatical category In linguistics , a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language . Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes ), which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include: Although

1665-539: The result of the action in question no longer holds. For example, in the Bantu language Chichewa , use of the remote past tense ánáamwalíra "he died" would be surprising since it would imply that the person was no longer dead. This kind of past tense is known as discontinuous past . Similarly certain imperfective past tenses (such as the English "used to") can carry an implication that the action referred to no longer takes place. A general past tense can be indicated with

1710-788: The same area with inflectional past-marking that extends into Europe, whereas more westerly Nilo-Saharan languages often do not have past tense. Past tenses are found in a variety of Asian languages. These include the Indo-European languages Russian in North Asia and Persian , Urdu , Nepali and Hindi in Southwest and South Asia; the Turkic languages Turkish , Turkmen , Kazakh , and Uyghur of Southwest and Central Asia; Arabic and Hebrew in Southwest Asia; Japanese ;

1755-453: The usage of the various constructions used to refer to the past, see Uses of English verb forms . The past tense is also used in referring to some hypothetical situations, not necessarily connected with past time, as in if I tried or I wish I knew . (For the possible use of were in place of was in such instances, see English subjunctive .) German uses three forms for the past tense. In southern Germany , Austria and Switzerland ,

1800-404: The use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical categories (considered syntactic categories ) largely correspond to the parts of speech of traditional grammar, and refer to nouns, adjectives, etc. A phonological manifestation of a category value (for example, a word ending that marks "number" on a noun)

1845-460: The verb, while others do so periphrastically using auxiliary verbs , also known as "verbal operators" (and some do both, as in the example of French given above). Not all languages grammaticalise verbs for past tense – Mandarin Chinese , for example, mainly uses lexical means (words like "yesterday" or "last week") to indicate that something took place in the past, although use can also be made of

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1890-452: The waist, and bough , the branch of a tree). In addition, it has several related but distinct meanings – a bent line is sometimes called a ' bowed ' line, reflecting its similarity to the weapon. Even according to the most restrictive definitions, various pairs of sounds and meanings of bow , Bow and bough are homonyms , homographs , homophones , heteronyms , heterographs , capitonyms and are polysemous . A lime can refer to

1935-507: The word "once" (meaning "one time") is homonymous with the term for "eleven" in Spanish ( once ). The word homonym comes from the Greek ὁμώνυμος ( homonymos ), meaning "having the same name," compounded from ὁμός ( homos ) "common, same, similar" and ὄνομα ( onoma ) "name." Several similar linguistic concepts are related to homonymy. These include: A homonym which is both a homophone and

1980-519: The word (such as prefix , suffix or enclitic ). An example of this is the Latin cases , which are all suffixal: ros a , ros ae , ros ae , ros am , ros a , ros ā ("rose", in the nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , vocative and ablative ). Categories can also pertain to sentence constituents that are larger than a single word ( phrases , or sometimes clauses ). A phrase often inherits category values from its head word; for example, in

2025-556: Was doing...". Similar patterns extend across most languages of the Indo-European family right through to the Indic languages . Unlike other Indo-European languages, in Slavic languages tense is independent of aspect , with imperfective and perfective aspects being indicated instead by means of prefixes, stem changes, or suppletion . In many West Slavic and East Slavic languages, the early Slavic past tenses have largely merged into

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