ABSTRACT
The grammatical category of teNse involves the indication of time through special forms of the verb (see 10.1.1b). This chapter deals with the uses of the tenses of the iNdicative mood (i.e. not the subjunctive) in German:
• The present tense (section 12.1)
• The past and the perfect tenses (section 12.2)
• The future tenses (section 12.3)
• The pluperfect tense (section 12.4)
•The English progressive tenses (section 12.5)
German has six tenses, as illustrated for the verb kaufen ‘buy’ in Table 12.1. These are:
• two simple tenses: preseNt and past
• four compouNd tenses: perfect, pluperfect, future and future perfect
TABLE 12.1 German and English tenses
Present Past Perfect Pluperfect Future Future Perfect
ich kaufe ich kaufte ich habe gekauft ich hatte gekauft ich werde kaufen ich werde gekauft haben
I buy I bought I have bought I had bought I shall/will buy I shall/will have bought
The coNjugatioN (i.e. the forms) of the tenses in German is explained in Chapter 10 and shown there in full in the following tables:
• Table 10.10: the simple tenses of regular verbs
• Table 10.11: the simple tenses of the irregular verbs haben, sein and werden
• Table 10.12: the simple tenses of the modal auxiliary verbs and wissen
• Table 10.13: the compound tenses
The forms and uses of the tenses in German and English are quite similar (except that German has no progressive tenses, see section 12.5), and this chapter concentrates on the uses of German tenses which differ from those of the corresponding English tenses.
