ASPECT

Aspect [ORG 11.4]
Aspect is a grammatical label that covers progressive and perfect.

Progressive and perfect tenses look at time in a special way.


Progressive (or continuous) stresses activity, action in progress, and therefore may imply that the action is incomplete or not going to continue for long.
Perfect is concerned with action(s) or a state in a period before now (or, with past perfect, before 'then') and continuing to the present time (or until 'then').
TIME AND TENSE

Time and tense [ORG 11.4]

Although verb tenses often refer to time - real time in the world - time and tense are not the same. Tense is a grammatical category, with various kinds of grammatical meaning. So present and past tenses do not always refer to present and past time.

Exercise 26: Present simple tense: what time? [ORG 11.5.2]

The simple present tense can refer to present, past and future time:

I prefer a quiet life. They live in Scotland. [Present state -S]
I usually travel by train. He never takes a holiday. [Habit - H]
I regret to say ... [Instantaneous - I]
I hear you have got engaged. [Past- 'I heard recently' - P]
When do you begin your new job? Come and see us next time you are in town. [Future - F]

Decide which kind of time the present tenses in the following refer to, and mark them S(tate), H(abit), I(nstantaneous), P(ast) or F(uture).

Example: I like work. (S).

Dear Sir,
I (1) am told that you (2) organize summer 'environment' camps for people to help
with conservation work, and I (3) write to ask for further details.

I normally (4) work in my vacation and I particularly (5) like the idea of working in the countryside.

Could you please let me know:
- where these camps usually (6) take place,
- when this year's camps (7) start,
- whether the current programme (8) continues to the end of the year, and also - I (9) apologize for asking, but I am a student - whether volunteers (10) receive any pocket money?
I (11) enclose a stamped addressed envelope for your reply, and (12) look forward to hearing from you. I (13) hope very much that you still (14) have vacancies for this year, and I will of course let you know as soon as possible whatever I (15) decide.

Yours faithfully,