The German Tense System

An Overview
USF – WLE
GER 2200
Huber
 Event Time vs. Utterance Time
• The verbal inflection category tense refers to a potential difference between the time of the uttered event and the
time the utterance is made; there are three different basic options:
Event Time
• The event time and the utterance time overlap (what the speaker Timeline
says happens as they say it): In this case, the verb form will be Utterance Time
marked with a present tense.
• The event time precedes the utterance (what the speaker says Event Time
Timeline
happened prior to them saying it): In this case, the verb form will be Utterance Time
marked with a past tense.
• The event time follows the utterance time (what the speaker says Event Time
will happen after them saying it): In this case, the verb form will be Timeline
marked with a future tense. Utterance Time
• Within the major tense categories present, past, and future, the following additional tense differentiations are made:
• The past tense is subdivided into three different tenses:
• The Simple Past (German: “das Präteritum”)
• The Present Perfect (German: “das Perfekt”)
• The Past Perfect (“pluperfect;” German: “das Plusquamperfekt”)
• The future tense is subdivided into two different tenses:
• The (regular) Future, also called “Future I” (German: “das Futur (I)”)
• The Future Perfect, also called “Future II” (German: “das Futur II”)
• Including one present tense, this comes to altogether six tenses in English and German.
 Six Tenses
• The following table provides an overview of the six tenses in English and German, as well as a few
examples:

TENSE ENGLISH GERMAN

Regular With “Progresssive Aspect” Marking

Past Perfect I had lived I had been living ich hatte gelebt

The Past Tenses Simple Past I lived I was living ich lebte

Present Perfect I have lived I have been living ich habe gelebt

The Present Tense I live I am living ich lebe

Future Perfect I will have lived I will have been living ich werde gelebt haben
The Future Tenses ▪ I will live ▪ I will be living
Future (I) ▪ I am going to live ▪ I am going to be living ich werde leben
▪ I shall live ▪ I shall be living
 Tense vs. Aspect
• The tense table shows that English has dual forms for each tense, a “regular” one and one marked with the so-called
“progressive” or “continuous” aspect.
• The progressive aspect is formed with the auxiliary be and the main verb in the present participle form (verb stem +
-ing suffix).
• Contrary to the category tense, which relates an uttered event to its time of utterance, the grammatical category
aspect describes how the uttered event unfolds over time, and aspect marking can convey information about
continuing, ending, or repetitive event structures.
• The English progressive aspect is generally defined as describing an event that is ongoing at the time of another
event; this effect can be observed with present, past, or future events, which is the reason why aspect and tense must
kept apart:

Event 1 Event 2 (ongoing at the time of event 1)

Present: The phone always rings when I am working.
Past: When I entered the room, everybody was watching TV.
Future: You will find the little puppy asleep, and he’ll be running in his sleep.

• German does not have any such grammatical aspect, and you must never translate an English progressive aspect
literally, i.e., using a form of sein as an auxiliary and a form of the main verb:
I am working. Bad: * Ich bin arbeiten(d).
Corect: Ich arbeite.
 Simple Tenses vs. Complex Tenses
• Simple tenses consist of one single finite main verb form, which means that the main
Present I live ich lebe
verb occurs without an auxiliary and agrees with the subject); in English and
German, there are two simple tenses, which are the present and the simple past: Simple Past I lived ich lebte

• Complex tenses are sometimes also called “compound” or “periphrastic” tenses; they include at least one auxiliary; the
regular future (I) tense, as well as the perfect tenses (present, past, future) are the complex tenses in English and German.
• In a complex tense form, the auxiliary (or one
English
of them) becomes the finite verb, while the
Tense Auxiliary Main Verb Form Example Sentences
main verb assumes a non-finite form;
Future will (, shall) Infinitive I will work tomorrow.
auxiliaries used to form tenses are called
Perfect Tenses have Past Participle I have/had worked yesterday.
“temporal auxiliaries.”
• The following tables list and illustrate the German
temporal auxiliaries in English and German, as Tense Auxiliary Main Verb Form Example Sentences
well as the non-finite verb forms that the main Future werden Infinitive Ich werde morgen arbeiten.
verbs must display when combined with these haben Ich habe/hatte gestern gearbeitet.
auxiliaries. Perfect Tenses Past Participle Ich bin/war gestern nach Berlin geflogen.
sein
I flew/had flown to Berlin yesterday.
 About the Suffix -ed
• The tense table also shows the important verb suffix -ed, which may be attached to regular verbs for various past
tense purposes:
• The suffix -ed may mark the finite simple past form of a regular verb, agreeing with subject; English has a highly
reduced verb conjugation, and the agreement may not be obvious, since no personal endings exist for the past
tense that could uniquely identify the person/number congruence between subject and verb (cf.
I/you/he/she/we/they lived); nonetheless, being the only verb form, the main verb ending on -ed necessarily is
the finite verb.
• The suffix -ed may also mark a verb to be used in a perfect tense; this form is called the “past participle”
(sometimes also called the “passive participle”); since the perfect tenses are complex and contain at least one
finite temporal auxiliary, the past participle form ending on -ed is excluded from being the finite verb.
• The dual functionality of -ed verb forms may be difficult for English speakers to notice, but the comparison to the
German equivalents shows a clear contrast:
• The basic simple past suffix of regular verbs in German is -te , to which personal endings may have to be added
in agreement with the subject; this clearly identifies such forms as finite verbs (cf. ich lebte I lived – du lebtest
you SG lived – wir lebten we lived).
• The past participle forms of German regular verbs, however, require a circumfix (a simultaneous co-occurrence
of a prefix and a suffix surrounding the verbal stem), which is ge-STEM-t (gelebt); this non-finite verb form can
never receive any further endings, thus demonstrating its non-finiteness.
 Different Verbs Types
• When learning the different German tenses, you will notice that verbs are grouped according to their tense
formation patterns; more specifically, the following verb type distinctions are applied:
• Weak (or “regular”) verbs follow a productive (predictable) pattern; they are called “weak” because they must
rely on the extra suffix -te to form the simple past.
• Strong verbs, on the other hand, do not need to rely on any outside “assistance” (and are therefore considered
“strong”): They have the ability to change their stem vowels to express tense information; these vowel changes are
either called umlauts (predictable vowel change, typically occurring in the present tense) or ablauts
(unpredictable vowel changes that must be learned; typically occurring in the past tenses).
• Mixed verbs (sometimes called “irregular weak verbs”) seem to have features of both weak and strong verbs in
the simple past, since they add the suffix -te, but also change their stem vowel.
• In addition, German modal auxiliaries, which are a special kind of auxiliary, can be inflected for all tenses, and will
therefore be part of the tense discussions, too.