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GÜNTER RADDEN, Meaningful Grammar

would be to ask why the English Present and Past Tenses are formed
differently than the Future Tense.
Let us consider this issue from the point of view of the times
denoted by the tenses. Times normally relate to situations, and situ-
ations are associated with notions of reality. The present, the past and
the future are associated with different kinds of reality, as shown in
Figure 1. The arrows indicate the flow of time from the past to the fu-
ture and their evolving realities. The model of evolving reality has
been adopted from Langacker (1991) and is discussed in Radden/Dir-
ven (2007: 172).

past time present future time
time
factual reality potential reality

known reality imme- projected reality
diate
reality

irreality

Figure 1: Model of evolving reality.

Past situations are remembered and hence belong to known reality.

Present situations are currently experienced and hence belong to im-

mediate reality. both past and present situations are thus seen as part

of factual reality. They therefore lend themselves to being grammati-

cally coded by one form: either the Past Tense or the Present Tense.

The Past Tense locates a situation in the past time sphere and the Pre-

sent Tense locates a situation in the present time sphere. The Present
and Past Tenses are absolute tenses in the sense that the times they
refer to are (absolutely) defined by the moment of speaking: The past
is the time sphere before speech time and the present is the time sphere
at speech time.
Future situations only have projected reality. As indicated by
the arrow in the cylinder of Figure 1, we think of reality as evolving

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