Perbedaan Tense dan Aspect
Dalam bahasa Inggris hanya ada dua Tense: (1) Present Tense dan (2) Past Tense.
Sementara yang diistilahkan aspect terdiri dari:
- present progressive aspect,
- past progressive aspect,
- present perfect aspect,
- past perfect aspect,
- present future aspect,
- past future aspect,
- (simple) past aspect,
- (simple) present aspect,
- present progressive future aspect,
- past progressive future aspect.
- present perfect progressive
- past perfect progressive.
Progressive juga biasa diistilahkan continuous.
Inilah kesalahan umum buku-buku grammar di Indonesia yang menganggap aspect sama dengan tense. Namun perlu disadari ini dilakukan dengan tujuan memudahkan para pelajar bahasa Inggris dalam memahami pola-pola kalimat perbedaan waktu (tense) dalam bahasa Inggris.
Istilah perbedaan antara tense dan aspect terkhusus digunakan dalam bidang applied linguistics.
Lebih jauh, berikut penjabaran beserta contoh aspect dari masing-masing tense:
Aspects of the present tense:
- Present simple: He studies English
- Present progressive: He is studying English.
- Present perfect: He has studied English
- Present perfect progressive: He has been studying English for 3 hours.
Aspects of the past tense
- Past simple: He studied English yesterday.
- Past progressive: He was studying English yesterday when I came to visit him.
- Past perfect: He had studied English before I came.
- Past perfect progressive: He had been studying English for 3 hours before I came.
