What type of statistical test should I use?

[kevinmartillo]

Hi all,
I cannot seem to figure out what test, if any, I can use for a data set I have, which is linguistic in nature. I'll explain:

I have grammatical mood tokens for two different generations, separated into 5 different tenses. In other words, the 1st generation has a total of 960 tokens as follows:
Present Tense: Subjunctive (S) 487, indicative (I) 252; Imperfect: S 83, I 56; Pluperfect: S 23, I 1, Present Perfect: S 19, I 11; Preterite: S 0 I 1

I ran a Chi-square for a contingency table with SUBJUNCTIVE & INDICATIVE as groups 1 & 2; then the five tenses as categories. The test gave significant results with p < 0.00001, but I'm not sure if this is the right test, or if I even entered the data correctly. I want to see if there is significance within each generation, not across generations, between grammatical mood and tense.

Ideas?

 

[hlsmith]

Not completely following your description. Can you do multiple tables instead? Can you post your contingency table so we can better see what you are working with.