aspect and tense

[MikeNewYork]

Hello

Thanks

Cas's article is very good. Now for the confusion. Many people call the perfect forms tenses. Those people claim six tenses.

past
present
future
past perfect
present perfect
future perfect

Others, but fewer (I believe), talk about nine tenses because they include the progressive forms.

This depends very much on one's definition of "tense". I normally include the perfect forms as tenses for practical reasons. Most of the discussions involve a choice between simple past and present perfect or simple past and past perfect. This is often easier to describe as a choice between tenses than a choice between a tense and a tense with an aspect.