| From the angle of experiential view of cognitive linguistics, this paper is to explain the essence of English tense and aspect. Among the four factors: tense, aspect, time and English verbs, traditional grammarians usually focus their attention on the relationship between tense, aspect and time, while ignoring the essential relationship between tense, aspect and the verbs, which I find to be essential. As a result, the definitions of English tense and aspect based on the traditional grammar theories cannot be used to explain in a unified way the various grammatical phenomena about tense and aspect in English language. Movement and relative rest of the things are not only the two basic forms of their existence, but also our basic experience and cognition about ourselves and the world around us. After having made a great deal of research, I have found that this kind of basic experience and cognition is reflected in the form of tense and aspect in English language. The essence of English tense denotes relative rest of the things, while that of English aspect denotes movement, change and development of the things. Whether a thing is in motion or in the state of relative rest usually depends on the interaction between objective existence of the things and peoples'subjective judgments, and therefore, we should take the speaker's intention into account when we are exploring the essence of English tense and aspect. |
