English Language Verb Tenses For Verbs

In grammar, “tense” refers to a category which expresses time reference. Grammatical tense is usually indicated by the specific form of a verb, particularly in the conjugation pattern.

Tenses usually express time relative to the moment of speaking. In some contexts, however, their meaning may be relativized to a point in the past or future which is established in the discourse (the moment being spoken about). This is called relative (as opposed to absolute) tense. English non-finite verbs (baking, to bake, baked) usually have relative time reference. English finite verbs, or verbs tied to specific a specific number or person(s) (e.g., appear vs. instead “illustrating”), have forms with absolute time references in nearly all instances.

The English language only has two morphological tenses, the non-past and the past (in other words, English verbs will only change depending on if they’re in the non-past tense and the past tense, though the non-past sometimes references the future). For practical purposes, there are 12 English tenses once you take into account different aspects and future modals.

1. Present Simple
   1. I do, I do do
2. Present Continuous
   1. I am doing
3. Present Perfect
   1. I have done
4. Present Perfect Continuous
   1. I have been doing
5. Past Simple
   1. I did, I did do
6. Past Continuous
   1. I was doing
7. Past Perfect
   1. I had done
8. Past Perfect Continuous
   1. I had been doing
9. Future Simple
   1. I will do
10. Future Continuous
    1. I will be doing
11. Future Perfect
    1. I will have done
12. Future Perfect Continuous
    1. I will have been doing

Sources:

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/tense/relative-tense/97C949233D175528A3F7EDCFB5446302
2. https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses.htm
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense