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My understanding is that the sentence

I will have played tennis.

is future perfect.

But, what happens if I substitute the word "will" with a modal such as "could" or "ought to"? Does that change the tense? If so, what tense is it?

For example, what tense is the sentence

I could have played tennis.

GladstoneKeep
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2 Answers2

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A tense is a verb form.

The reason for calling will have played in the 'future perfect tense' is because the time referred to in a. is the future. But the problem is, the same form will have played in b. refers to not a future time but a past time.

a. I will have played tennis for thirty years by the end of this year.

b. He will have played tennis for thirty years by the end of last year.

Then, should you be calling the same form will have played in b. the "past" perfect tense??

No, you shouldn't. Since a tense by definition is a verb form, you can't have different tenses for the same verb form.

What this shows us is that there is no way of knowing what tense will have played really is under such a definition of 'tense' as:

A set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes also the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance.

(as defined in this Oxford Dictionary)

The reason for this problem, I think, is because we're trying to think of will have played as a single verb when it comprises three verbs. As shown in the Oxford definition, a tense is not a set of forms taken by one or more verbs in combination, but a set of forms taken by a single verb.

Interestingly, the Oxford definition is somewhat self-contradicting in that it tries to encompass "the continuance or completeness" as well as the time, when you'd definitely need more than one verb to indicate either "the continuance or completeness".

This goes to show that the traditional definition of the term 'tense' is problematic at best, if you're to stay logical in applying the term to real sentences.

Likewise, determining the tense of could have played is problematic:

c. I/He could have played tennis for thirty years by the end of this year.

d. I/He could have played tennis for thirty years by the end of last year.

Community
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listeneva
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  • English has only two true tenses: past and non-past (often called ‘present’, though that’s somewhat of a misnomer). Everything else is just all manner of constructions used to express aspect, modality and other things. Some would say that could (and all other modal verbs) have no tense at all, though I’d call that baloney; could have played is the past-tense form of can have played. (Also, you can absolutely have different tenses for the same surface form: I let is both present and past, for example.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 17 '19 at 16:03
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would have and could have are used to form the perfect conditional tense. See Type 3 Conditionals:

The perfect conditional of any verb is composed of three elements:
would + have + past participle

could have is similar, it's just a modal form that expresses less certainty.

Barmar
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  • Thank you, I was going crazy trying to figure out how to Google this. – GladstoneKeep Mar 14 '19 at 20:41
  • I googled "what tense is could have" – Barmar Mar 14 '19 at 20:47
  • Basically, I put your question into Google, it found the answer. – Barmar Mar 14 '19 at 20:48
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    Sorry, but -1 for using an EF website. :( (An incorrect one too) – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '19 at 21:13
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    @Araucaria All the other sites I could find just gave examples and talked about modals, they never named the tense. If there's a better one, I'll be happy to link to it. – Barmar Mar 14 '19 at 21:21
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    Alas, there is no such thing as "the perfect conditional tense" in English. English only has two tenses -- present and past. As to the tense of would have, modal auxiliaries are not inflected for tense (would is not past tense), so you have a choice of saying it's no tense at all or that it's present tense because that's the default tense. BTW, teachers or textbooks that ask silly questions like this are defective, too, and should be distrusted on other grammatical matters as well. – John Lawler Mar 14 '19 at 22:35
  • @JohnLawler What is the grammatical quality that "perfect" and "continuous" refer to, if not tenses? Are those modes? When we say something is "present perfect", what are we talking about? – Barmar Mar 14 '19 at 23:39
  • I'm not a linguist or lexicographer, so in my layman's mind I consider this all to be elaborations on tense. That seems to be the sense that the question is using these phrases as well. – Barmar Mar 14 '19 at 23:41
  • @Barmar The continuous and perfect are aspectual constructions: aspect. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '19 at 14:31
  • @Barmar Yes, so in relation to your comment, a really good answer would inform the OP of the problem regarding their perfectly intuitively sensible question. The question is sensible, but misguided. But just for the record, the EF website is not a good source, for many, many reasons. (Believe me, I know.) – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '19 at 14:34
  • @Barmar: "perfect" refers to the Perfect construction, and "continuous" refers to the Continuous (aka Progressive) construction. Tenses involve inflecting verbs with affixes, and only Present and Past do that in English. There are a lot of such constructions, like the Passive, or Tag questions, or Cleft sentences. They can't all be tenses. – John Lawler Mar 15 '19 at 15:42
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    @JohnLawler Or you have the choice of saying it’s past tense, because despite your repeated claims to the opposite, there is no consensus that modals do not inflect for tense – I can state just as categorically that they do inflect for tense. Claiming that tense is not involved in “I could hear it five minutes ago, but I can’t hear it now” is preposterous. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 16 '19 at 17:43
  • After reading these comments I retracted the accepted answer since my question was sort of built around a misunderstanding. I also scoped my question to just one example. After reading a bit more on tense/aspect/mood, it seems like the sentence "I could have played tennis" would have a tense of 'past', an aspect of 'perfect', and a mood of 'conditional.' Does anyone disagree? – GladstoneKeep Mar 16 '19 at 17:43
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    The mood is more likely something like "irrealis", because it's speaking of an unreal situation, not something that is possible. Incidentally, there's no official list of "moods" or "aspects" in English; linguists name things as they please, so you need to get examples instead of names. You have to be very careful with names -- you never know where they've been. – John Lawler Mar 16 '19 at 20:25