In grammar, tense is a category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place. Tense is the grammaticalisation of time reference, often using three basic categories of "before now", i.e. the past; "now", i.e. the present; and "after now", i.e. the future. The "unmarked" reference for tense is the temporal distance from the time of utterance, the "here-and-now", this being absolute tense. Relative tense indicates temporal distance from a point of time established in the discourse that is not the present, i.e. reference to a point in the past or future, such as the future-in-future, or the future of the future (at some time in the future after the reference point, which is in the future) and future-in-past or future of the past (at some time after a point in the past, with the reference point being a point in the past).

Not all languages grammaticalise tense, and those that do differ in their grammaticalisation thereof. Languages without tense are called tenseless languages and include Burmese, Dyirbal and Chinese. Not all grammaticalise the three-way system of past–present–future. For example, some two-tense languages such as English and Japanese express past and non-past, this latter covering both present and future in one verb form, whereas others such as Greenlandic and Quechua have future and non-future. Four-tense languages make finer distinctions either in the past (e.g. remote vs. recent past), or the future (e.g. near vs. remote future). The six-tense language Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia has the remote past, the recent past, the today past, the present, the today/near future and the remote future. The differences between such finer distinctions are the distance on the timeline between the temporal reference points from the present.

Etymology

Tense comes from Old French tens "time" (now spelled temps through deliberate archaisation), from Latin tempus "time" The adjective "tense" is unrelated, being a Latin loan from tensus, the perfect passive participle of tendere "stretch"

Tense marking

Tense is normally indicated by a verb form, either on the main verb or on an auxiliary verb. The tense markers are normally affixes, but also stem modification such as ablaut or reduplication can express tense reference, and in some languages tense can be shown by clitics. Often combinations of these can interact, such as in Irish, where there is a proclitic past tense marker do (various surface forms) used in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the verb. Languages that do not have grammatical tense, such as Chinese, express time reference through adverbials, time phrases, and so on.

Other uses of the term tense: tense, aspect, and mood

In many language descriptions, particularly those of traditional European linguistics, the term tense is used to refer to categories that do not have time reference as their prototypical use, but rather are grammaticalisations of mood/modality (e.g. uncertainty, possibility, evidentiality) or aspect (e.g. frequency, completion, duration). Tense differs from aspect in showing the time reference, while aspect shows how the action/state is "envisaged" or "seen" as happening/occurring. The most common aspectual distinction in languages of the world is that between perfective (complete, permanent, simple, etc.) and imperfective (incomplete, temporary, continuous, etc.).

The term tense is therefore at times used in language descriptions to represent any combination of tense proper, aspect, and mood, as many languages include more than one such reference in portmanteau TAM (tense–aspect–mood) affixes or verb forms. Conversely, languages that grammaticalise aspect can have tense as a secondary use of an aspect. In many languages, such as the Latin, Celtic and Slavic languages, a verb may be inflected for both tense and aspect together, as in the passé composé/passé simple (historique) and imparfait of French. Verbs can also be marked for both mood and tense together, such as the present subjunctive (So be it) and the past subjunctive (Were it so), or all three, such as the past perfect subjunctive (Had it been so).

The Present Simple Tense

The simple present tense is used in English for the following purposes:

- Repeated actions - Simple statements of fact - World truths - With verbs of the senses and mental processes - In jokes and story telling - To refer to the future

How to form the present simple

Negative Structure of Present Indefinite Tense

S + DO / DOES + NOT + FIRST FORM OF A VERB + O.

We already know what is Present Indefinite and how to use Present Indefinite Tense.

The above is Negative structure Of Present Indefinite Tense, you can see that the structure starts with Subject , plus Do or Does. Then “not” which makes any sentence negative and then first form of the verb and object.Remember that Does is used only in case of Third Person Singular.

e.g. He does not play cricket. (He third person singular) I do not play cricket. (I first person singular)

One more thing to remember is not to add “s” or “es” in case of third person singular with first form of verb in Negative sentences.

e.g.

Correct: He does not play cricket. Incorrect: He does not plays cricket.