学界对英语的时范畴是二分时还是三分时争论已久，本文从世界语言显赫时的类型和扩张视角来探究英语的时类型。研究发现：1）世界语言的显赫时范畴共有二分时、三分时、多分时三种类型；2）英语的显赫时不是过去／非过去的二分时，而是过去／现在／将来的三分时，在典型过去非过去类型的语言中，含非过去语素的小句兼表现在时和将来时，英语的现在时形式没有此功能；3）显赫时的扩张性具有跨语言普遍性，验证了语言库藏类型学有关显赫范畴及其扩张的理论构想。

It has long been a controversial issue that English is a language of binary tense or tripartite tense. This paper aims to investigate the type of tense in English from the perspective of the types and expansion of mighty tense category across languages. The results are as follows:1)The mighty tense category in the world languages falls into three types: tense, tripartite tense, and multitense;2)The mighty tense in English does not fall into the past / nonpast type but rather the past / present / future tripartite tense, and in languages with a typical past / nonpast type, a clause with a nonpast morpheme may alternatively express present tense and future tense, whereas the present tense form in English does not has this function;3)The expansion property of mighty tense is a cross linguistic universal, which backs up the theoretical framework of mighty categories and their expansion assumed by Linguistic Inventory Typology.