As Time Goes by: Farsi and English Time References

چکیده

This study compares and contrasts tense and inherent aspect in English and Persian from semantic and syntactic points of view. The aspectual verb systems in both English and Persian, are semantically interpreted alike. However, in Persian a group of stative verbs are grammaticalized by the imperfective obligatory morpheme mi -, while in English all stative verbs are perfective. Furthermore, while in Persian all accomplishment verbs can be shifted into activity verbs by deleting their direct object markers (i.e. by means of noun - incorporation), in English accomplishment verbs cannot be shifted into activity verbs. Finally, while English has six tense forms: present, present perfect, past, past perfect, future, and future perfect, Persian has five tense forms; it lacks future perfect tense with present perfect tense used instead.