X-Nico

unusual facts about present tense



A Night in the Lonesome October

A Night in the Lonesome October is narrated in the present tense from the point-of-view of Snuff, a dog who is Jack the Ripper's companion.

Uyghur dialects

M. Osmanov on the other hand has based his classification on two different parameters: the conjugation of the present-future tense and the form of the imperfect participle.


see also

Chéri Samba

In 2007, curator Robert Storr invited Samba to participate in the 52nd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, entitled “Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense”, and described by The Huffington Post as 'certainly "the exhibition" of this new Century'.

English irregular verbs

Apart from the modal verbs, which are irregular in that they do not take an -s in the third person (see above), the only verbs with irregular present tense forms are be, do, have and say (and prefixed forms of these, such as undo and gainsay, which conjugate in the same way as the basic forms).

There are a few exceptions: the verb be has irregular forms throughout the present tense; the verbs have, do and say have irregular -es forms; and certain defective verbs (such as the modal auxiliaries) lack most inflection.

Historical present

Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale is entirely written in the historical present tense.

Pensa

Pensa is the present tense third person conjugation for the verb pensar ("to think") of the Portuguese language.

Zero copula

The present tense of the copula in Russian was in common use well into the 19th Century (as attested in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky) but is now used only for archaic effect.