IS THERE A RELATIVE PAST TENSE IN ENGLISH

Traditional analyses of the past tense such as Reichenbach's (1947) an d Comrie's (1985) assign a single semantic structure to the past tense and do not distinguish between absolute and relative past tenses in E nglish. In the present article it is argued that we cannot do without the notion of a relative past tense. Ten empirically based arguments a re adduced in support of this. The author also discusses six possible tests to distinguish between absolute and relative past tenses in conc rete examples and points out that the analysis has some important theo retical implications. He argues that the distinction between absolute and relative tenses requires a model of the English tense system that is based on the concept of temporal domain, and that the traditional a nalysis of the meaning of the past tense morpheme (viz. 'Event time an terior to speech time') stands in need of qualification.