The Uses of the Present Tense Forms in English

More important than all the other possibilities for confusion when an attempt is made to isolate the meanings of English verb forms, because more devastating when it is misunderstood, is the matter of time. Most of the difficulties are associated with it. The views of Otto Jespersen seem to represent quite fairly the views of most other grammarians who have explicitly taken time into account. Having established the point that since an English tense form may refer to various times, time and tense must be considered apart from one another, he has this to say: