Understanding Tense, Aspect, Number, and Concord in English Grammar

We must distinguish between the grammatical category of tense and the semantic category of time. Time is a non-linguistic concept with three divisions: past, present, and future. Tense is a grammatical category that is realized by verb inflection; by tense, we understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and the concept of time. There are just two tenses in English, present and past. However, there is no obvious future tense in English corresponding to the time/tense relation for present and past. Instead, there are several possibilities for denoting future time.

The Term Aspect

refers to a grammatical category which concerns the manner in which a verbal action is experienced or regarded, for example, as complete or in progress. The two aspect constructions in English, the perfect and the progressive, denote a basic contrast between the action viewed as complete (perfect) and the action viewed as incomplete (progressive or continuous).

Number

is a property of nouns. The English number system constitutes a two-term contrast between ‘singular’ and ‘plural’. Concord, also termed ‘agreement, is the relationship between two grammatical units such as one displays a particular feature that accords with a displayed feature in the order. That boy (np (sg N)) swims (3rd p. Sg) really fast (singular s-v agreement).

Grammatical concord is the rule by which the verb matches the subject in number. Perspective teaching has insisted on grammatical concord. Yet, native speakers may be uncertain about the rules when there is a conflict between the principle of ‘notional or semantic concord’ (according to the number rather than the presence of a grammatical marker) and the ‘principle of proximity’ (agreement of the verb with a closely preceding NP in preference to agreement with the head of the NP).

The government have broken all their promises (plural S-V concord, even though the noun government is unmarked for plural).

No one expects his supporters to agree with him (plural s-v concord: ‘supporters’ has influenced the choice of plural verb; notice the head of the NP is singular).

Examples

Get your teacher to explain/got me feeling/get a professional to do/having our car stolen/get your parents to help/got us all dancing/to get me to do/having your hair cut/got Karen to show/getting their essays written.