A Comparison of English and Chinese Tenses and the Usage of Guo When Denoting Time

The pattern V- guohas the function of absolute tense to denote the past in the simple sentence but only functions as a relative- tense indicator in the compound sentence if not used as predicate. The functions of guo,either used or omitted depending on the context,is served by the past tense, the present perfect tense and the past perfect tense in English where theV + edstructure cannot be omitted. While different inflectional changes of verbs are used to denote the absolute or the relative tenses in English,the Chinese word guo can be used to denote both.