The document discusses grammatical tense, specifically:
- Tense locates a situation in time by indicating when it takes place (e.g. past, present, future).
- Languages make finer distinctions like immediate vs. distant past. These distinctions are not always precise.
- Tense indicates when the time of assertion, completion or evaluation occurs relative to the utterance (absolute tense) or some other event (relative tense).
- The number of tenses in a language may be disputed, as tense is often used to represent combinations of tense, aspect and mood.