Tense Selections in Different Types of Discourse

摘要

This paper is intended to explore tense phenomena in different types of discourse, i.e. narrative, descriptive, report, informative and argument within the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar. The research question is: What tense selections characterize the five types of discourse? Through illustrations of specific passages, we find that different types are usually characterized by different tense selections. Narrative and descriptive discourses involve a default tense; report, informative and argument enjoy much freedom in the selection of basic tenses, and the shifting of tense is not uncommon in these types. Accordingly, different types of discourse do not advance in the same way. Narrative discourse progresses with bounded events together with explicit temporal circumstances; descriptive discourse develops with unbounded events; report discourse moves forward with the change of sub-topics; and informative and argument discourse advance with logico-semantic relations.