The theory of tense in English linguistic is that it is a system that we use to refer to different times. It can be in the past, present, or future. This is not true only for English, but for many different languages. It might be that they do not follow the exact theories of tenses but they certainly keep in mind the time frames.

Thus, tense in a sentence keep the track of time. They help us to understand, when a certain activity is created and what is its exact state.

But there are few points that must be noted before we go into the details.

Yes, tenses define the time of occurrence but sometimes in a sentence, The time reference can be made without a tense too.

The tenses also do not mean that the verb is taking place in the given tense. It might happen that it is just the reference.

Hence, we can say that tense is a combination of time and aspect. And it represents them together.

Types of Tense:

To simply define, there is a total of three types: past, present, and future tense.

But if we go into the discussion elaborately then we will know that there many subcategories of tense:

The categories are listed below with one example each.

1. Simple Present: I run in the morning daily.

2. Present Progressive: I am running now.

3: Present Perfect: I have just run in the morning.

4. Present Perfect Progressive: I have been running since dawn.

5. Simple Past: I ran 5km yesterday.

6. Past Progressive: I was running for 5km straight.

7. Past Perfect: I had run my track before the breakfast

8. Past Perfect Progressive: I had been running the track when the accident occurred.

9. Future: I am going to run tomorrow.

10. Future Progressive: I will be running tomorrow’s track.

11. Future Perfect: I will have run the track by tomorrow.