The verb phrase is important in academic discourse as the place where a number of textual signals of various kinds occur. These include using tense-aspect choices to mark the status of a quotation or citation vis-à-vis the writer’s/speaker’s current position, or the use of modal verbs for hedging propositions (altering their level of assertiveness) as a way of forestalling a challenge to or rejection of a claim. Academic language has characteristic uses of tense and aspect which relate to important academic textual functions. These include:

Tense-aspect choices refer the reader/listener backwards and forwards in the text.

In this chapter we have looked at the process of compound formation.

Structuring

Particular tense-aspect choices tend to be associated with particular parts of academic texts. Abstracts, summaries, concluding sections of academic books, papers and presentations, etc. usually have typical tense-aspect patterns associated with them (e.g. present simple in abstracts)

Reporting / narrating

Tense-aspect choices have become institutionalised for reporting and narration experiments and studies, and for stating findings and conclusions, etc. (e.g. past simple narrating experimental procedures).

Citation

Tense-aspect choices have become institutionalised for citing and quoting one’s own work and the work of others in different ways.

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