Naming Tense Selections

Matthiessen (1995: 735):

The most convenient way of naming these tense selections is to start with the last selection and work towards the first. This indicates the context in which a given tense selection has been made; for example, primary: past, secondary: future, tertiary: past — was going to have walked — is called past-in-future-in-present. The following example (taken from Halliday, 1976; 1981) is present-in-future-in-past-in-future:

 Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is merely a typo that should read 'past'. The univariate structure is:

was going to have walked

α past    β future              γ past

past in future in past

[2] To be clear, this misconstrues and misrepresents the univariate structure of the verbal group. Because there are only five features selected — future, past, future, present, passive — there are only five elements of univariate structure, not six:

will have been going to be being tested

α future β past γ future δ present ε passive

passive: present in future in past in future.