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I am confused about verbs. Have seen the following categorisation:

Past Simple
Past Perfect
Past Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Subjunctive

I understand that Past is a Tense. But what about the second categorisation ? Is it Mood, or something else. Are there any great books about description of such things about grammar ? Would this be linguistics ? Nothing too complicated though.

Have encountered Oxford Guide to English Grammar and Cambridge Grammar of English. How do they compare ?

Raksh
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  • Also asked on [ell.se] https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/341958/categorisation-of-verbs/341960#341960 (and previoulsy closed on ELU) – James K Sep 25 '23 at 19:39
  • You're using traditional grammar terms, but not from any one coherent tradition. So, where did you see this list; it isn't from a linguistic source. There is no "past subjunctive" in English, there's just a past. – user6726 Sep 25 '23 at 19:48
  • Continuous and non-continuous is aspect. Subjunctive is mood. Perfect is tricky, it's the category of perfect. – Yellow Sky Sep 26 '23 at 05:23

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Subjunctive is a mood, the others (perfect, continuous, "simple"=non-continuous) that complement "past" are aspect. Never mind that some grammar books speak of "continuous tense", that is an imprecise use of "tense".

You could start reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect#English

A great book about such stuff is Wolfgang Klein: Time in Language, Routledge 1994. If you have access to a good library, otherwise it is hard to find.

Alazon
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    The English perfect is less about aspect than it is a marker of relative tense, shifting the time of reference. If it marked perfectiveness, then it wouldn't make sense to combine it with progressive aspect, which is commonly done. – curiousdannii Sep 25 '23 at 21:34
  • A relative tense may be called an aspect, depending on the theory... – Alazon Sep 25 '23 at 23:17
  • Hopefully as linguists we can dissuade people from doing that so that aspect can just have one sensible meaning. – curiousdannii Sep 25 '23 at 23:34
  • @curiousdannii It’s not at all uncommon among linguists to consider the English perfect an aspect. CGEL acknowledges this with no objections, though they prefer to consider it tense – something which many here consider anathema. Note that perfect and perfective are two different aspects – the perfect marks perfectness (= past action with present relevance/focus), not perfectiveness (= no internal structure). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 26 '23 at 11:14
  • @Alazon There is no subjunctive mood in Presentday English; in fact English does not have a mood system; it was lost in earlier stages of the language. Today, mood is mainly marked by modal auxiliaries with irrealis "were" being an untidy relic of the old system. Btw, 'simple' (or just 'past) and 'perfect' are tenses, not aspects. – BillJ Sep 30 '23 at 12:50
  • "simple past" is a combination of tense (i.e. past) and aspect, just as its opposite "past progressive". -- The subjunctive is common in written American English, and British "should" etc. in the same function is an auxiliary, but likewise a mood marker. Just as progressive aspect is signalled by an auxiliary. – Alazon Oct 02 '23 at 23:15