Viewed in the strictest linguistic sense, English has only two tenses, marked in the verb alone: nonpast tense (present tense) and past tense. They are shown with the verb endings -Ø and -ed.
The following chart shows how T/M/A (tense/modal/aspect) is expressed in English:
Tense Modal Aspect Verb
Perfect Progressive
-Ø (nonpast)
-ed (past) Ø (none)
will (future) Ø (none)
have -en (perfect) Ø (none)
be -ing (progressive) do
Since will is a modal auxiliary, it cannot co-occur with other modals like can, may, and must. Only aspects can be used in infinitives. Some linguists consider will a future marker and give English two more tenses, future tense and future-in-past tense, which are shown by will and would respectively. Also, in nonlinguistic language study, aspects and mode are viewed as tenses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense
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