Time and Tense in Language

Abstract

"Tense" is a linguistic phenomenon, whereas "time" is an extra-linguistic concept. Tense is the grammatical category which correlates with distinctions of time. Every language is capable of expressing events happening in different times. Differentiating between time and tense in language is far from trivial. It has proved to play an important part in language learning and translation. By scrutinizing the time-tense dichotomy, this article aims to show that there is no one-to-one correspondence between time and tense, both intra- and inter-lingually and also to show how this is so essential in language learning and translation.