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how many tenses are there in the english language?
and what are they?
what counts as a tense?
are imperative, passive and modal forms considered tenses?
having been thinking about this it seems you can only make two tenses with a verb, past and present, unless you add an auxiliary verb to a participle.
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Tense -- a change in the form of a verb to show, among other things, time reference. Therefore English has two tenses, past and present.
Aspect -- speaker's/hearer's viewpoint with regard to the action of a verb. English has simple, progressive (aka continuous), perfect, and perfect progressive (aka perfect continous) aspects. The aspects combine with tenses to make e.g. present perfect continous.
NB. These are linguistic features, not part of the real world. Thus, what we call past tense for convenience's sake does not have to relate to past time, e.g. It's time we were going. , refers to present time rather than past time despite the past tense form were
Voice -- active v. passive
Mood -- indicative v. imperative v. interrogative
As the question of how many tenses ran and ran in the magazine "English Today" I don't expect everyone will agree with the above.
PS I remember once seeing a cartoon of a couple in a travel agent's saying "Somewhere with no irregular verbs please."
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> Tense -- a change in the form of a verb to show, among other things, time reference. Therefore English has two tenses,
past and present.
Excuse me for pointing out the blatantly obvious but isn't there a future tense? I seem to remember one being taught to me at school. Also, most schoolchildren will be familiar with writing lines as punishment. 'I will not talk in class' etc. etc. ad nauseum. Past? Present? I think not!! Definitely future!
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Will is certainly one way of talking about the future, but is it a future tense?
Will is a modal verb rather than a change in the form of the verb itself, as in write - wrote , which is how I would define a tense.
Why choose will as the future tense rather than for example is going to ?
I'm going to visit my aunt at the weekend refers to the future.
"Who can that be at this time of night?" "Oh, that will be Candi. He said he was coming round." , and She will drive too fast, even though I've told her often enough to slow down do not refer to the future.
Bingley
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Sure, English has a future tense. It's not synthetically constructed, as are the present and the simple past, but that doesn't make it any less of a tense. I think we are confusing superficial construction here with deep meaning. I agree with the grammar folks who say English in fact has a total of six tenses: the past perfect, simple past, present, present continuous, future and future perfect. And as for Bingley's example "It's time we were going" I submit that "were" in that phrase is not in the past tense, it is in the subjunctive mood. As it were 
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Pooh-Bah
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Websters seem to go for 3 simple, 3 perfect and 6 progressive variations. When I did Latin we spent ages on "pluperfect" for example "I wish I were king" - I'm not sure where that fits in. As for subjunctives - that's all lost in haze! SIMPLE TENSES Present Past Future PERFECT TENSES Present perfect Past perfect Future perfect PROGRESSIVE TENSES Present progressive Past progressive Future progressive Present perfect progressive Past perfect progressive Future perfect progressive http://webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/darling/grammar/tenses/tense_frames.htm
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"will" is certainly always listed as the standard future tense, along with "be going to". but aren't they just present tense used for the future? is "might" also future? it certainly refers to the future.
i'm also wondering where a construction like "i am to go" comes in. the auxiliary is simple present and the verb is infinitive. what's that called?
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Thanks, Jo.... I wrote my post way too fast early this morning and am not going to go back and correct it in the hope that no one but you and William saw it  ... I forgot to include present perfect. That would make a total of seven common tenses. But still yes, I agree with you and your source, we have all those tenses (continuous = progressive). Doesn't matter how they are constructed - each refers to a different time frame and therefore must be considered a tense. Now, I thought pluperfect was the same as past perfect ... and your example "I wish I were king" was subjunctive mood. Homework time..... Has anyone ever studied the Hopi language? No tenses at all. William, again it doesn't really matter how the future tense is constructed, it exists as a tense. "Might" is a modal and not properly a tense (getting a headache now). I'd like to hear from one of our German-speaking interlocutors on this. That language has is all sorted out.
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Pooh-Bah
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Mmmm does pluperfect only mean Past perfect?? I'm sure you are right but my Latin teacher made it sound so-ooo much more complicated than that!
Yes I think "wishing .." was subjuctive something or other. Thanks for clearing that up.
Unfortunately we were the first year of a new Latin syllabus which aimed to bring the subject "to life". Unfortunately they forgot that part of the whole reason to learn Latin was to understand a very ordered grammatical system. They discarded "nominative" and "vocative" (amo, amas, amat .. ) and talked about "form a" and "form b". In effect they threw the baby out with the bathwater and we were totally confused. I did learn a lot about the rude bits of Catullus though, so there were compensations.
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>>Unfortunately we were the first year of a new Latin syllabus which aimed to bring the subject "to life".<< Sounds like my "New Math" scars.... As for Catullus and - Ovid - I had to discover those guys on my own. Congratulations, (I think) on your transition from an enthusuast to an addict, Jo. 
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Why should were in It's time we were going be subjunctive when it looks exactly like the past tense? In Latin it's simple, there are different tenses and moods and they have, by and large, different forms. But that's Latin. English is a different language, with its own rules.
Bingley
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What actually is the difference between might and will that one should be a modal and the other a tense?
What is the relevance of German tenses? Why should English verbs follow a description of German? It's like saying German and Latin have a dative and so English must have one as well.
Bingley
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> Has anyone ever studied the Hopi language? No tenses at all.
Japanese too, I believe. I learned it for a while. Apart from the verb-subject-object orientation of the sentences it made the language much easier to learn.
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Indonesian doesn't really have tenses in the sense that the verb never changes, which is not to say it can't talk about when things happen: various adverbs of time are used meaning later, ever, etc.
Bingley
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>how many tenses are there in the english language?
having carefully read all the responses to this point, I think I can safely summarize and say that there are (at least) three; they are:
tense
tenser (more tense)
tensest (most tense)
[grin]
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>>Why should were in It's time we were going be subjunctive when it looks exactly like the past tense? In Latin it's simple, there are different tenses and moods and they have, by and large, different forms. But that's Latin. English is a different language, with its own rules. << English is a renegade, hybrid language, a relatively late product of Norman French and tribal Anglo-Saxon languages. Hence we have both "beef" and "cow"; both "pork" and "pig." Latin grammar rules were imposed on it in the 19th century. Just because the "were" in the subjunctive is spelled the same way as the "were" in the plural simple past doesn't mean the two serve the same grammatical function. Again, we are confusing superficial construction with deep meaning. This is not really the place to go into sentence diagramming, but that would be a good lead for you to follow, Bingley ... German also had its dose of Latin grammar imposed on it, and is a language that follows the rules well. Perhaps our researchers-without-peer, jmh and tsuwm, can find you a good grammar site that explains this.
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I love it, tsuwm. Great find. You have wielded Ockham's Razor well. But can you find us a "western" site on structural linguistics and the deep meaning of tenses, modals, etc?
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annastrophic,
are you saying because will is used only for the future it must be a future tense? why can't might fit that category too?
i was also thinking that if "it's time we were going" is subjunctive, "it's time i were going" would be the first person form. to me "it's time i was going" sounds better.
starting to sound like an endless argument here...
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another question (sorry)
is there a present perfect continuous in the passive.
if i say "the building has been used for ten years" it seems to continue, but "it has been built" would be finished. can say "it has been being built for ten years"? or do i just say "they have been building it.."?
by the way, japanese does have more than one tense. it has a clear past tense, and several present ones; both have continuous forms. there are various ways to indicate future. the verb stem actually changes in the "let's" form in a way that might be considered a pure future tense. there is no perfect, however.
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Well, Tsuwm-- If the future shall show that I have been proven to be right (ok, y'all pick that one apart if you wish!), I seem to detect an admission that thee might have learned a lesson! I like your three tenses! Maybe "tension" could be a fourth? Or perhaps that's not worth at-tension. Now--you said you are >>never one to pass on a challenge...< I beg to differ, my Dear! Many of your posts have shown that you are EVER one to 'pass on' a challenge, and many of us have responded to them!  Like Anna, I enjoyed humanscape... Thanks!
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william,
not this week, dear, I have a headache.
(passing the buck)
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>suffering from Verbal Diorrhoea there is, of course, an actual word for this: logorrhea
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Ah but is it verb-al logorrhea??
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I would say "tense" or "subjunctive" refers to verb forms , each of which may have more than one function. What we call the past form wrote or was/were may or may not have the function of referring to past time. Tense and time are not the same, one is a linguistic category, the other is a fact of the world (possibly, but I'm not going to open that can of worms here).
There are some remnants of a subjunctive in English -- recognisable in the present because there is no s on the third person singular or do with the negative ( I suggest Alex consult a lawyer as soon as possible. The doctor suggested the patient not be disturbed.) and only recognisable in the past tense where it is used for contra-factual conditions with the verb to be ( If I were you ).
William, go with your instincts. It's time I were going sounds wrong because it is wrong. It's wrong because it's not a subjunctive. Maybe in Latin it would have to be a subjunctive (I can't remember) but that's irrelevant.
will is a modal verb like must, may, might, can, could, shall, should . It is usually but not always used to talk about the future, and is not the only way of talking about the future, so why call it a future tense?
Latin is an excellent language, but it is not English, and its linguistic rules and categories do not apply to English. English does not inflect nouns in the same way as Latin does, so it has no dative or ablative. Similarly English verbs work in different ways from Latin ones.
Bingley
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Bingley,
that certainly makes sense to me. i guess the rules we use don't always describe things accurately. at least as long as our language can't really account for time.
sorry for posing such a pedantic question everybody!
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>>Also, most schoolchildren will be familiar with writing lines as punishment. 'I will not talk in class' etc.<< I'm afraid I went to the kind of school where they made us write 'I shall not talk in class.' Nor was it 'definitely future' - more of a 'possibly in the future, but more likely in your dreams'!
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>>Unfortunately they forgot that part of the whole reason to learn Latin was to understand a very ordered grammatical system. They discarded "nominative" and "vocative" (amo, amas, amat .. )<<
I'm with you jmh, I learned most of my grammar from studying foreign languages - and a great help it was to me when I ended up teaching English in Japan, which is I suspect part of the reason William started this thread in the first place!
But 'amo, amas, amat...' is not nominative and vocative. Nominative and vocative are for noun declensions, not conjugating verbs. English nouns (thankfully!) don't decline, but pronouns do. See the old-fashioned pronoun thread if you feel strong enough.
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>>I would say "tense" or "subjunctive" refers to verb forms <<
Bingley, I wouldn't agree, although I'm open to persuasion!
I'd say a tense refers to a time relative to the here and now (past, present, future) and also to a 'length of time' of action (simple, continuous - this is what you called aspect way back in your first post). Tense is a way of translating time into verbal categories.
The form of a verb is more than its tense - it is a combination of tense, voice, mood and person (at least! There may be more I have forgotten.) 'You go', 'Do you go?' and 'Go!' are all second person present tense, but they are indicative, interrogative and imperative respectively, and they are all different forms.
'Person' of a verb clearly translates the 'doer' or subject into a verbal category.
'Voice' translates whether the subject is acting or being acted upon.
'Mood' I find a bit more complex. No-one so far has mentioned conditional - is this the same as subjunctive in English? I don't think so. Perhaps indicative is 'likely actually to happen', conditional is 'might happen' and subjunctive is 'unlikely to happen'. Maybe mood is degrees of likeliness? (Interrogative would then be 'of unknown likelihood' or 'trying to find out likelihood'. Not sure where this leaves imperatives, though?)
When I start tryng to work out mood, I end up with sentences like those below. I know they are different, I know what they mean / imply in terms of whether something is going to happen, might happen / is totally hypothetical, but I don't know what mood all these verbs are in.
If I don't eat, I am hungry.
If I don't eat, I will be hungry.
If I didn't eat, I would be hungry.
If I were not to eat, I would be hungry.
...I am now way out of my depth!
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Sure, Bridget, I would agree verb forms show more than just tenses. But "you go" is not a verb form, it's a sentence. "You" is not part of the verb.
[quote] 'Mood' I find a bit more complex. No-one so far has mentioned conditional - is this the same as subjunctive in English? {/quote]
I think in English conditional is a type of sentence , which sometimes has a subjunctive verb. Conditional sentences usually have if or a similar word in there sometimes. They can be generalisations (if I drink too much coffee, I can't sleep), factual (If I drink too much coffee now I won't be able to sleep tonight), or counterfactual (If I drank too much coffee I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight (but in fact I'm not going to drink too much coffee)). Each of these types can be adapted to refer to past, present, or future. Counterfactuals referring to the present or future use a past subjunctive form (If I were you, ).
Sorry this is a bit rushed as I have to go out.
Bingley
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Bridget
You are very kind. How politely you point out my stupidity! I spotted my error whilst visiting a friend. I combined two bits of grammar.
Here are my lines as punishment:
nominative singular Dominus "Lord"
genitive singular Domini "Lord’s" or "of the Lord"
dative singular Domino "to or for the Lord"
accusative singular Dominum "Lord" (English objective case)
ablative singular Domino "by or with (etc.) the Lord"
vocative singular Domine "Lord" (direct address)
nominative plural Domini "Lords"
genitive plural Dominorum "Lords’ or "of the Lords"
dative plural Dominis "to or for the Lords"
accusative plural Dominos "Lords" (English objective case)
ablative plural Dominis "by or with (etc.) the Lords"
As you say - thank goodness we don't have to do all that in English!
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>>Sure, Bridget, I would agree verb forms show more than just tenses. But "you go" is not a verb form, it's a sentence. "You" is not part of the verb.<< Yes, Bingley, totally valid. I think what was going on in my brain was about persons of the verb and 'go' versus 'goes', where the change in form is entirely to do with person and not with tense at all. Bad example to demonstrate the point we seem to agree on that form covers more ground than tense. As for conditionals, when I wrote this I was remembering learning the 'conditional tense' in French. Having thought about it, I remember that what I was actually taught was to use the imperfect tense in a conditional sentence. So I suspect you are right about it being a type of sentence. (in English - in Japanese it is a different form of the verb.) BTW this is a great thread - thanks to everyone who has posted in it.
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i generally teach my students present tense (with action verbs) is for habits and routines eg. i always win at poker; past tense is for something that happened and is finished eg. i won at poker last night; and present perfect is for something that happened before now but the time doesn't matter so much eg. i have won a few times at poker.
now imagine a game has just finished and you won.
you can say "i win", "i won" or "i've won".
where does that leave the old tenses? and the old teacher?!
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>you can say "i win", "i won" or "i've won". <
The way I see it, it depends on your mental state of time:
I win - you're still living in the moment
I've won - still close to the moment, but coming out of it.
I won - it's all over and done with and you're moving on to the next thing.
The present perfect is about achievement or completion, no?
Then again, talking of mental states, it's the middle of the night and I don't guarantee mine!
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bridget, i know what you're saying, and i think you can reduce these uses to their nuances.
my problem is that all three can be used for the same situation with ALMOST no change in meaning. and even a native speaker would accept all three without even a slight glance at the grammar books.
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>>my problem is that all three can be used for the same situation with ALMOST no change in meaning.<<
William, off-topic, but I have to share it with you because I know what you're up against!
My all-time poser for explaining to the Japanese was what makes the following sentences mean what they do:
That man has few ideas.
That man has a few ideas.
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The problem still comes down to the fact that tenses, aspects, persons, etc. are linguistic categories, whereas situations happen in the real world. It's like countable and uncountable nouns: the difference is based on the real world but then language goes its own merry way and gets those of us who have to explain it more and more confused.
One book I did find helpful when I first started wrestling with all this in a teaching context was Michael Lewis's "The English Verb".
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bridget, i hear ya!
actually i love explaining (or trying to explain) the capricities (jackie, is that another one for my dictionary?) of english to my students. it just makes the teacher's job so much more interesting. imagine explaining something you understood yourself! you'd be bored to drink!
bingley, i'll have a look out for the book. is it still in print?
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In reply to:
My all-time poser for explaining to the Japanese was what makes the following sentences mean what they do:
That man has few ideas.
That man has a few ideas.
It's getting late, Bridget, so I'm not sure how coherent this is, but here goes.
Few means not many. A few means not none. Why?
I suspect the answer is to do with the general meaning of definite (the), indefinite (a/an), and zero ( __ ) articles. Consider the following:
The people who came to the party enjoyed themselves.
We have a definite group in mind, all of whom are included. Similarly with The few people who came to the party enjoyed themselves.
A group of people who came to the party enjoyed themselves.
Here the group of people is indefinite, is part of a larger group. Hence A few (of the) people who came to the party enjoyed themselves.
People who came to the party enjoyed themselves. No article, so not a definite group of people. Similarly Few people who came to the party enjoyed themselves.
You can probably think of better examples to illustrate the point, but I think that's on the right lines. Whether it would actually be useful for your students or would only confuse them even more, is another matter.
William, I'm told that a second edition of the Michael Lewis book came out a year or so ago, so it should still be in print.
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cheers bingley,
and nicely explained too.
william
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>how many tenses are there in the english language? pretense is also frequently encountered
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>how many tenses are there in the english language?
pretense is also frequently encountered
Oh, this is getting intense!
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I'm currently absorbed by "Conversations about the end of time" [with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau. Fromm, NY, 2000]. In answer to the question "Are we witnessing the end of time?", Carriere [amongst other things, Bunuel's scriptwriter] responds:
"The first thing that occurs to me, and which is indisputable, is that we are seeing the end of a number of grammatical tenses. Where has the future anterior gone? What's happened to the past historic? The imperfect subjunctive is only very rarely used nowadays … What are grammatical tenses if not the painstaking attempt of our precise, meticulous minds to envisage all the possible shapes that time can take, all the ways in which we relate to time within the domain of our thoughts and actions? … We shall never be able to carve up time into a sufficient number of tenses to control it and be able to say, at each instant within its fleeting forward movement: That's the time it is."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Very true, paulb, very true! A great many people have
extreme difficulty accecpting the fact that there are things in their lives that they cannot control.
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stranger
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I have a question; probably should be posted on a grammar board, but hope I will get an answer.
What truly makes an adjective? As example, the word "oust" is defined as a verb; however, the word can be used as an adjective (participle): "The ousted politician ..."
My question: Is a true adjective a word that cannot be used as a verb? A "red" apple; a "blue" sky. Are true adjectives words that cannot be used as verbs?
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Carpal Tunnel
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"ousted" is merely an inflected form of the verb oust; that doesn't make it any less "real" -- maybe the word you want is "pure" to suggest an adjective which has no inflected forms.
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>"ousted" is merely an inflected form of the verb oust<
I recall things in Latin called gerunds and gerundives, which were verbal adjectives and verbal nouns. Unfortunately I can't remember which were which, but 'ousted' is a verbal adjective.
The examples which got me confused were the 'ing' words:
I am walking in the park. verb.
I like walking in the park. noun
The walking man is in the park. adjective.
...
And tsuwm, whilst I understand what you are getting at with 'pure' adjectives, I think we have discussed in many threads how poor little virgin adjectives (and other parts of speech!) become sullied and corrupted with the passage of time.
The valet blacked his master's shoes.
The novelist carefully whited out the mistakes in her manuscript.
...are these adjectival verbs????? ...Help!...
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May I follow up my earlier post quoting Carriere in 'Conversations about the end of time'? A little later on he quotes an Indian friend, Moshe Agashi, about 'time':
"When you look at a watch dial for the time, that time is situated within the circle of time. You immediately recall what you have done in the course of the day, where you were this morning, what time it was when you bumped into your friend, you remember when dusk is going to fall, and you see the time that's left before bedtime, when you'll go to bed sure in the knowledge of another day well spent, and with the certainty also that on the following day time will resume its daily course around your watch. If all you've got is a little rectangle, you have to live life as a series of moments, and you lose all true measure of time."
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Carpal Tunnel
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. If all you've got is a little rectangle, you have to live life as a series of moments
Was he referring to television?
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Carpal Tunnel
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>...television?
more likely a digital chronometer
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old hand
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>time will resume its daily course around your watch..<
Very recently I discussed about the timeless subject of time with a physicist colleague, and he thought that this cyclic (or periodic) aspect was part of the very definition of time. But I objected that there are the various phenomena of monotonous decay (aging, radioactivity..) which also unambiguously mark the arrow of time.
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With the introduction of digital watches, I sometimes wonder if 'clockwise' is about to become a 'lost word'.
My wristwatch (with dial) was a Christmas present from my wife in 1962 and still works perfectly -- no batteries, no winding, no obsolescence!
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Carpal Tunnel
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My wristwatch (with dial) was a Christmas present from my wife in 1962 and still works perfectly -- no batteries, no winding, no obsolescence!
Hope I'm not being too archaic; am by your leave, complimenting your wife.
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>I sometimes wonder if 'clockwise' is about to become a 'lost word'< Let's join forces to keep 'clockwise' in existence, but replace 'anticlockwise' with the much more wonderful (and possibly more venerable - WAY too lazy to go and look it up!) 'widdershins'!
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'anticlockwise'!? I've never heard that! We say counterclockwise! And 'widdershins'?? Gosh, Bridget, that sounds like you live in Australia or something! 
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My friend Brewer tells that
… witches and warlocks were supposed to approach the Devil withershins [or widdershins, from OE wither=against]. The opposite of withershins is 'deasil' meaning righthandwise or sunwise [from Gaelic].
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Pooh-Bah
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Is a true adjective a word that cannot be used as a verb? A "red" apple; a "blue" sky. Are true adjectives words that cannot be used as verbs?In my younger days, the weekly wash was "blued;" i.e., blue powder was put into the water to make the laundry look whiter when it emerged. I think some modern washing powders use a similar technique. Also, when all of your money had been spent, particularly on riotous living, one was said to have "blued" it. Not sure of the etymology of that one, though. Perhaps a corruption of "blown", as in "blown away" And the verbal noun is the gerund, the verbal adjective the gerundive, I believe. ( I gleaned that from either Fowler or Partridge, almost certainly, says he, religiously acknowledging his sources
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>witches and warlocks were supposed to approach the Devil withershins [or widdershins, from OE wither=against]. <
It is also quite unacceptable to go round a Tibetan Buddhist temple or religious site withershins. (I'll take either spelling!)
paulb, thank you for introducing me to deasil! WIthout the explanation I would have thought this something not particularly attractive - strong association with weasel - but how wrong I would have been. What a great word.
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I got taken to a site at anna's suggestion in another string, which for anyone who didn't LIU, also contained the following joke more relevant to this topic: JOYS OF CONJUGATION A businessman arriving in Boston for a convention found that his first evening was free, and he decided to go find a good seafood restaurant that served Scrod, a Massachussetts specialty. Getting into a taxi, he asked the cab driver, "Do you know where I can get Scrod around here?" "Sure," said the cabdriver. "I know a few places... but I can tell you it's not often I hear someone use the third-person pluperfect indicative anymore!"
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Carpal Tunnel
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>What truly makes an adjective? As example, the word "oust" is defined as a verb; however, the word can be used as an adjective (participle): "The ousted politician ..."
An adjective is a word that modifies a noun. But what you have here is a clause that has been shortened. When you read "the ousted politician" you see a Bush. NO. That's not right. Sorry. Wrong forum. When you read "the ousted politician" what you are actually seeing is a shorthand of "the politician who had been ousted". Subordinate clause, if I remember correcty.
TEd
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old hand
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Yielding to the temptation to try and untwist that long-suffering thread, let me modestly mention that "participle" stems from "participere", i.e. taking part in both the world of verbs and the world of adjectives. Furthermore, an adjective can be used in an attributive sense: "The red apple fell from the tree." or in a predicative sense: "The apple is red". Now if you say: "the politician was (is) ousted", it is arbitrary to consider "ousted" a form of a verb or an adjective in predicative use: it is a participle. The attributive use of participles is more restricted: You can say: "the bike was thrown into the canal", but as for "The thrown bike.." I am not so sure..
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Pooh-Bah
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>Yielding to the temptation to try and untwist that long-suffering thread ...
Wow! Wsieber - I've just been practising my school-girl Spanish and I come back to this piece written in your second (or is it your third?) language!
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as for "The thrown bike.." I am not so sure..
But it presumabaly can be used to differentiate - as in 'Two bicycles were found when the canal was drained, one of which had clearly been thrown into the water quite deliberately. The thrown bicycle was out in the middle of the waterway.' Or is this a different form?
And how about 'thrown pottery' as distinct from coiled, slab, and other methods?
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old hand
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>And how about 'thrown pottery' as distinct from coiled, slab, and other methods?< Thank you, maverick, for this pertinent example of a participle in attributive use, on the verge of turning into an adjective. Pottery is one of my hobbies .
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old hand
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>..in your second (or is it your third?) language< Thanks for this nice compliment . Actually, I acquired English after French, but probably practised both about to the same extent. I would not mention this if it weren't for a hot controversy raging, at present, in Switzerland, about which language should be taught first, in primary school..
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Thank you, maverick, for this pertinent example of a participle in attributive use, on the verge of turning into an adjective. Pottery is one of my hobbies
My pleasure, wsieber - one good turn deserves another.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Other features which can be used to differentiate adjectives from participles:
most adjectives have comparative and superlative forms,
most adjectives can be modified by adverbs of degree like very or absolutely , e.g. very rich or absolutely fabulous .
There are degrees of adjectivalness: the most adjectival adjectives have all four features: predicative use, attributive use, comparative and superlative forms, modifiable by adverbs of degree. Other adjectives may only have three of the features. Once we get down to only two or one of these features, the arguments start.
Bingley
Bingley
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Bingley,
You know so very much! I am so impressed!
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