Hi, Gretchen in San Jose. What you're always concerned with when
dealing with what you're calling "tense" is the main verb
constituent--the verb and all its auxiliaries, including modals. In
schoolbook grammars, the modals "will" and "shall" usually change the
labelling of the main verb to "future." But as you discovered, often
other modals occur as well. The simplest way to handle the issue, I
think, is to label any main verb that includes a modal as
"conditional." So
The children should have been eating
is past perfect progressive conditional. Conditional what? you should
ask. Well, the only real tense in a main verb changes the form of the
first main-verb word. "Should" is the past tense FORM of "shall." So
conditional is the mood (or modality) of the main verb. The "have
...past participle" is perfect(ive) aspect. And the "be. . . -ing" is
the progressive aspect. Tense, modality, and aspect make up the
concepts of the main verb.
At any rate, I won't push any deeper into main verbs now. If you
choose to keep the label "tense" on main verb forms, just call the
construction you have the "perfect progressive conditional tense."
I'm not fond of that sort of labelling myself, but it will do in a
pinch. Ouch! Those pinches hurt a sensitive grammarian.
Gretchen, you might want to start examining grammatical explanations
in books other than schoolbook grammars. I suspect lots of people on
this listserv can suggest sources of grammatical information, both
useful information and accessible.
Well, while I was writing this, Herb and Larry answered your
question. So this might be overload. It was probably overload to
begin with. Take it for what it's worth. Max
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>Sender: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
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>Poster: Gretchen Lee <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Verb Tense
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>
>Hi,
>
>A minor point came up that I couldn't answer in my English class, so I told
>the kids I'd go right to the experts.
>
>We've been studying verb tenses in my sixth grade class with an eye to their
>effect on writing. I asked them to write a half-page narrative using as much
>progressive tense as they could (I wanted them to notice what it did to
>"voice"). We were looking at the sentences today, and I didn't know what to
>call the verb phrase in the following:
>
>The children should have been eating.
>
>It's present perfect progressive, but does adding the modal change it to
>something else? For that matter, does adding a modal change the name of any
>tense?
>
>Thanks,
>Gretchen in San Jose
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