SAN MATEO MUNICIPAL COLLEGE

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COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH
TOPIC OR LESSON: Structure of English
WEEK: 13
SUB-TOPIC/S: Tense-Aspect Modality System in Discourse

OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC

Welcome to your learning material on Structure of English. This week you are
tasked to learn and accomplish activities on this course. This module builds on what we
have learned about tense and aspect at the sentence level and about modal auxiliaries
and phrasal modals at the sentence level. We examine the special uses, previously
discussed, at the discourse level.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On the completion of this module, you are expected to manifest an in-depth

understanding of the tense-aspect-modality system in discourse. We further understand
this concept by outlining discussions of the Bull’s Framework and comparing it with other
existing works.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. Understand the tense-aspect modality system in discourse using postcards; and

2. Apply the Bull Framework through journal writing.

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 ENGAGE

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I Have a Dream (Excerpt)
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

[Paragraph 1]
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

[Paragraph 2]
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light
of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

[Paragraph 3]
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later,
the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still
languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And
so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Share your answer to the following questions.

1. What moved Martin Luther King to deliver this speech?

2. What do you think was his dream?

3. Was his dream realized? In what way/s?

4. Do you also have a dream? What is it?

5. How can you realize this dream?

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 EXPLORE

Where in the timeline does each paragraph of Martin Luther King’s speech lie? Encircle
your answer from the timeline.

PARAGRAPH 1

PARAGRAPH 2

PARAGRAPH 3

What does this say about writing?

Why is there a shift in tense, aspect, and modality when we perform our discourse?
Let’s Review!
Recall our tense-aspect and voice chart.

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 EXPLAIN

The Tense, Aspect, and Modality (TAM) System in Discourse

So what have you noticed?

A number of combinations of Tense, Aspect, and Modality are present when we engage
in discourse.
One must note that certain tenses, aspect, and modality combinations tend to occur
together in discourse whereas other do not.

I. Which sentence is ungrammatical and why?

_____1. I have a splitting headache that I’ve had for two hours. I’m going to take some
aspirin.
_____2. I have a splitting headache that I had for two hours; I will take some aspirin.

*The unmotivated tense switching from present to past to future results in the relative
incoherence as opposed to the grammatical sentence that maintained an orientation
to the present (present, present perfect, be going to with a present tense) throughout
the sequence.

II. Which sentence is ungrammatical and why?

_____1. The little girl cried her heart out. She had lost her teddy bear and was convinced
she wasn’t ever going to find him.
_____2. The little girl cries her heart out. She lost her teddy bear and is convinced she
won’t ever find him.

*The grammatically accurate statement is consistent in the use of events in past time. The
first clause is simple past, the second clause is the past perfect, and the third is be going
to future but with a past tense be. Whereas, nonnative speakers tend to create
sentences from present, past, to future tense. This may be because they learned the
English tense system by parts and topics and not through organic discourse. Native
speakers intermingle a variety of tense, aspect, and modality when communicating.

To illustrate the uses of the TAM system in discourse, linguists have adopted several
frameworks, one of which is William Bull’s (1960) Framework which was first used to
describe tense in Spanish.

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The Bull Framework
In 1960, William Bull first proposed a framework to describe tense in Spanish. He however,
intended the system to be general and applicable to any language.
The framework posits four axes of orientation or points of view, with respect to time:
1. Future
2. Present
3. Past
4. Hypothetical/Conditional

Here we view the TAM system as a resource for taking different temporal perspectives on
actions, events, and states of affairs.

I. Which response is correct?

Would you like something to eat?

_____A. No thanks, I’ve already eaten.

_____B.. No thanks, I already ate.

Both responses report past events but differs in the perspective on current relevance. The
first response signals current relevance that started in the past, whereas the second puts
the response strictly in the past.

Each axis in Bull’s framework has a neutral or basic time slot in the middle and two
possible marked slots – one on the left signaling a time before the basic time of the axis
and the other on the right signaling a time after the basic time of the axis.

The table below shows an interpretation of Bull’s axes applied to English. In these
examples, the author stayed within one axis of orientation, made appropriate before
and after time references, and did not jump between tenses.

Another feature in the framework is that the prior time or perfect aspect signals the
“before time” in each axis. The progressive aspect on the other hand, is an individual
aspectual form that can express notions of duration, noncompletion, or iteration in
combination with all tense-aspect combinations. By including the be going to form, Bull
lists 14 distinct tense aspect combinations instead of 12.

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To compare how the framework differs with other previous discussions of the English tense
aspect we note the following ideas presented in the book of Larsen-Freeman and Celce-
Murcia, and the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q5CTjxAEgE which you may
also watch.

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 ELABORATE

Draw on the postcard, the scenic picture and place you wish to visit in the
future. Write a brief description of why you want to visit the place and what
you wish to do when you visit the place.

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 EVALUATE

I. List 5 things you did in the past in column A. Write what you wish you would
change if you had a second chance under column B.
PAST EVENTS WHAT YOU WISH TO CHANGE
1.) 1.)

2.) 2.)

3.) 3.)

4.) 4.)

5.) 5.)

II. Choose one sentence from your Part I Column B sentences and plot its tense-
aspect system using Bull’s Framework.

SENTENCE:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

FRAMEWORK:

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 REFERENCES

Larsen-Freeman, D. & Celce-Murcia, M. (1999). The grammar book, an ESL/EFL

teacher’s course, 2nd ed. USA: Heinle&Heinle Publishers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q5CTjxAEgE
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

ADDITIONAL
MATERIALS

PREPARED BY:

MERCEDITA A. GONZALES, LPT

Professor

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