I'm noticing that all of the jokes in this thread are in the present tense, and indeed, the present tense seems rather familiar and "intuitive" for telling jokes... but why? Anyone have a clue? EDIT: http://hubski.com/pub?id=108756 is related to the question.
Well, the thing about English is that it has several present tenses rather than one, unified present tense. "A man walks into a bar . . . " is an example of the Present Simple tense, which can talk about things happening one time or repeatedly. For example: "the sky is blue". We know that the sky is not always blue, but that it is often and repeatedly blue. The way that language influences perceptions of time have always fascinated me. For example, in English there is a lot of discussion about the verb "to be". It denotes that something always exists, like, "the universe is vast" as in, it is now vast, it has been vast for an unaccountably long time and will always be vast. Of course, it would be odd to find a language where entropy is denoted implicitly.
I wonder if it's a Germanic remnant. English literature is predominantly past tense, while German literature is largely present tense. English is basically old German and French mashed together. When the Normans invaded Britain, the Germanic residents became their servants and slaves. Now, the languages didn't merge equally. There was a socioeconomic divide. For example, the Normans didn't care for their own animals, they made their Germanic servants do it. Hence, most English words for animals come from German. Likewise, fine food was the privilege of the ruling Normans, and thereby many English words for foods, especially complex dishes, come from French. Jokes are primarily oral traditions, and they're also often considered "boorish" or "uncivilised." So, it seems plausible that in the early days of English, more jokes were told by the Germanic servants than their affluent masters, and were more often spoken than written down. So while written English adopted the past tense, spoken jokes retained the Germanic present tense. This is just conjecture. But it seems conceivable.