The Expression of Time

Human though and action is fundamentally shaped by a small set of cognitive categories, such as time, space, causality, or possession. It is not surprising, therefore, that all natural languages have developed many devices to express these categories. Temporality, for example, is reflected in the lexical meaning of verbs, in grammatical marking of tense and aspect, in time adverbials, in special particles, and in the application of discourse principles. Many of these devices have been the sub…