There is thus a real sense in which taking the present moment as the deictic centre establishes the most basic tenses cross-linguistically, those in terms of which it is often easier to understand deviations from absolute tense.

However, it should always be borne in mind that this material is presented not solely as being of interest in its own right or to specialists in that particular language; rather, the language-specific material is designed to illustrate the range of variation found cross-linguistically and to suggest the limitations which a general theory of tense must place on such possibilities for variation.