The category of tense

Everything in the real world exists in space and time. Objective time is characterized by the following features: its infinite extension, linearity, divisibility into an infinite number of segments. In English chronological timing is expressed by temporal phrases. But it’s not enough. In addition to adverbial phrases or some other lexical or semantic means, time relations are also expressed by the tense-forms realizing the category of tense. The category of tense is a feature of verbs, giving them a time reference. In other words, “ tense marking indicates, to varying degrees of precision, the time when the event occurred or a situation existed” [Kroeger 2006: 147]. Tense reflects the objective category of time and expresses the relations between the time of the action and the time of the utterance. Thus, the term tense is used only for time reference which is marked grammatically – that is, by purely grammatical elements such as affixes, auxiliaries, or particles [Kroeger 2006: 147].

The main divisions of objective time are past, present and future.In the language system the relation between the present, past and future is rather complicated. Moreover linguists warn that “tense in English is loosely related to time” [Alexander 1988: 159], thus the relation between tense and time are by no means straightforward in the English language [Huddleston & Pullum 2006: 30]. The present is reflected in speech not only as a mere point, the moment of speaking or thinking, but as a more or less long period of time including this moment. Compare the meanings of the word “ now ” in the following sentences.

E.g. (1) A minute ago he was crying, and now he is laughing.

(2) A century ago people did not even dream of the radio, and now we cannot imagine our life without it.

(3) The Earth goes round the sun.

Thus the present comprises the moment of speaking (example 1) + a variable time span (examples 2, 3). Obviously, the “present” is a variable period of time including the present moment or the moment of speaking. The authors of Longman Grammar point out that the present tense occurs more frequently than the past tense, expressing a wide range of meanings. They call the present verb-form “all-inclusive time reference” [Longman Grammar 2000: 457]. The “past” is the time prior to the present moment, and the “future” is the time following the present moment. Neither of them includes the present moment.

Another factor complicating the correlation of objective time flow and the linguistic category of tense is the existence of relative and absolute tenses. In English the state of affairs is not usually directly related to the moment of speaking, but rather via a secondary reference time or index which is placed in one of the three temporal segments.

E.g. He had written ten novels before he died in 1950.

In this utterance there is no direct relation between the moment of speaking and the time of writing novels.

We say that some tense is absolute if it shows the time of the action in relation to the present moment (the moment of speaking).

E.g. He works at a factory.

He worked at a factory.

He will work at a factory.

But very often tense reflects the time of an action with no regard to the moment of speech but to some other moment in the past or in the future, indicated by the tense of another verb. In this case we speak about relative tenses. Linguists differ in their interpretation of absolute and relative tenses. Thus, B.S. Khaimovich & B.I. Rogovskaya hold that “a “past tense” verb is used in an English subordinate clause not because there is a “past tense” verb in the principal clause, i.e. as a result of the so-called sequence of tenses, but simply in accordance with its meaning of “past tense” [Khaimovich & Rogovskaya 1967: 146]. They give numerous examples proving their point of view that in English the tenses are mostly used absolutely whereas in Russian they are used relatively [ibidem] (E.g. Он сказал, что будет работать).

Touching upon all the lexical expressions of time M.Y. Blokh speaks about “present-oriented”, or “absolutive” expressions of time, and “non-present-oriented”, “non-absolutive” expressions of time. Absolutive expressions of time give a temporal characteristic to an event from the point of view of its orientation in reference to the present moment (now, last week, in our century, in the past, very soon, yesterday).

The non-absolutive time denotation does not characterize an event in terms of its orientation towards the present. This kind of denotation may be either “relative” or “factual” [Блох 1983: 138]. The relative expression of time correlates two or more events showing some of them either as preceding the others, or following the others, or happening at one and the same time with them (after that, before that, at one and the same time with, some time later, at different times, etc.).

The factual expression of time either directly states the astronomical time of an event, or else conveys this meaning in terms of historical landmarks (in the year 1066, during the time of the First World War, at the epoch of Napoleon, at the early period of civilization, etc.).

M.Y. Blokh points out that “in the context of real speech the above types of time naming are used in combination with one another, so that the denoted event receives many-sided and very exact characterization regarding its temporal status. <…> The fundamental divisions both of the absolutive time and of non-absolutive relative time find in the verb a specific presentation, idiomatically different from one language to another” [Блох 1983: 138].

Eventually this brings us to the crucial question of the study of the English verb, i.e. to the number of tenses singled out by different grammarians, or in other terms to different tense systems brought about by linguists. Thinking over a tense system of the English verb grammarians have to tackle serious problems. They are (1) the number of tenses in English, (2) the correlation of tense forms, aspect forms and perfect forms, (3) the existence of the so-called future-in-the-past.

First, the number of tenses varies from one grammar book to another one. Otto Jespersen, for example, discussed this question and expressed serious doubts as to the existence of the future tense in English. The reason why O. Jespersen denied the existence of a future tense in English was that the English future is expressed by the phrase “ shall/will + infinitive”, and the verbs “shall” and “will” preserve, according to O. Jespersen, some of their original meaning: shall conveys obligation and will has an element of volition. Thus, in O. Jespersen’s view, English has no way of expressing futurity free from modal shades of meaning, that is it has no form standing at the same grammatical level as the forms of the past and present tenses. This view is supported by the successors of Descriptive linguistics.

A well-grounded objection against the inclusion of the construction “shall/will + infinitive” in the tense system of the verb on the same basis as the forms of the present and past was advanced by L.S. Barkhudarov. His objection consists in the demonstration of the double marking of this would-be tense-form by one and the same category: the combinations like would have answered, should have done, etc. can express at once both the future time and the past time (the forms are called “future-in-the-past”), which hardly makes any sense in terms of a grammatical category. Indeed, the principle of the identification of any grammatical category demands that the forms of the category in normal use should be mutually exclusive. It’s common knowledge in grammar theory that a category is constituted by the opposition of its forms, not by their co-position. This is L.S. Barkhudarov’s main argument against including the forms with shall/will, should/would into the tense-system of modern English.

In the contemporary volume ‘Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English’ the authors of this fundamental grammar hold that the category of tense of a finite verb is constituted by present and past tenses. This is proved structurally. The two tenses typically refer to present and past time respectively. Nevertheless some verbs are marked only for modality, that’s why modal verbs are not “tensed” though tense marking can be precluded. But the authors of the grammar book in question believe that finite clauses can be marked for either modality or tense, but not both.

D. Crystal has no doubts either that there are two tenses in English. He writes that the recognition of three tenses in English proves the influence of the Latin tradition. He explains his point of view saying that English has only one inflectional form to express time: “the past tense marker (typically -ed), as in walked, jumped, and saw. There is therefore a two-way tense contrast in English: I walk vs I walked – present tense vs past tense. English has no future tense ending, but uses a wide range of other techniques to express future time (such as will/shall, be going to, be about to, and future adverbs). The linguistic facts are uncontroversial” [Crystal 1995: 196]. Two tenses within the tense system of the English verb are singled by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum in ‘ A Student's Introduction to English Grammar’ published by Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006 [Huddleston & Pullum 2006: 30], Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy in ‘ Cambridge Grammar of English’ [Cambridge Grammar 2007: 405].

The essential opposition of past and present in English can be envisaged in the way M.Y. Blokh approaches this issue. Nevertheless he believes that there are three tenses in Modern English, though they are related to each other in a specific way. He suggests that the category of tense in Modern English can be represented by two correlated stages. At the first stage the process receives an absolute time characteristics by means of opposing the past tense to the present tense. The marked member of this opposition is the past form. The formal sign of the opposition is, with regular verbs, the dental suffix (e)d, and with irregular verbs phonemic interchanges (wrote, spoke, took, etc.).

At the second stage, the process receives a non-absolutive relative time characteristic by means of opposing the forms of the future tense to the forms of no-future marking. Thus M.Y. Blokh thinks it reasonable in the system of the English verb to recognize not one, but two temporal categories. The first category, including the forms of the past and the present tense, fixes the process either in the past or not in the past (the past tense is the strong member of the opposition), while the second category whose strong member is the future tense, fixes the process in the future or not in the future. M. Y. Blokh calls the former category – the category of primary time, and the latter – the category of prospective time, or just “prospect”.

Three tenses are also singled out by Paul R. Kroeger. He takes a flexible approach trying to marry two distinct points of view. In ‘Analyzing grammar’ (Cambridge, 2006) he underscores that it is somewhat unusual for a language to encode morphologically all the three semantic distinctions into present, past, and future. He adds, that “the most common morphological tense systems involve a two-way distinction: either past vs. non-past, or future vs. non-future”. But on the whole he believes that the English tense paradigm includes all the three forms look ÷ looked ÷ will look, two of which are morphologically marked. They are morphological tenses [Kroeger 2006: 147-149].

Other linguists also think that the future tense forms should be included into the tense system of the English verb, among them B.A. Ilyish, I.P. Ivanova, A.I. Smirnitsky, O.V. Alexandrova and T.A. Komova. They have to concede though that in Modern English the verbs shall and will are often used as modal verbs, which makes it difficult to tell them apart from analytical forms of the future tense [Смирницкий 2000: 124].

B.A. Ilyish, for instance, admits the existence of the three main divisions of time that are represented in the English verbal system by the three tenses. Each of them may appear in the common and in the continuous aspect. Thus, we get three tense-aspect forms. Besides these six, there are two more, namely, the future-in-the-past and the future continuous-in-the-past. These two do not fit easily into a system of tenses represented by a straight line running out of the past into the future. They are a sort of deviation from this straight line: their starting point is not the present, from which the past and the future are reckoned, but the past itself.

A.I. Smirnitsky solved the problem of the future-in-the-past forms by placing them within the Conditional mood. He gives the following arguments to prove his position:

(1) Future-in-the-past is absolutely identical in form with the Conditional mood;

(2) In the meaning of the future-in-the-past and the Conditional mood there is some likeness. All this gives sufficient ground, in A.I. Smirnitsky’s opinion, to place the forms under study within the category of mood [Смирницкий 1959: 335-338, 354-357].

O.V. Alexandrova and T.A. Komova in their manual on Theoretical English Grammar (Moscow State University) underline that there are three tenses in English with the future tense marked by ‘ll. The verbs shall and will do not refer to the domain of the future as they still retain their modal meaning [Alexandrova, Komova 1998: 110].

Another way of handling the same vexing issue was worked out by I.P. Ivanova. She sorts out the problem suggesting the idea of temporal centres. This notion seems to be essential when analyzing the English tense-system and it enables linguists to describe the sequence of tenses not as a formal shift of tenses but as a linguistic means of time reference. It helps to explain the fact that the action expressed by the future-in-the-past tense-form was future from the point of view of the time when the action denoted by the verb-form took place. Prof. I.P. Ivanova thinks the term “future-in-the-past” inappropriate and suggests another term for these forms. She works out the term “dependent future”. Eventually, she comes up with an idea of dependent and independent verbal forms, i.e. those not related to the moment of speaking and those related to the moment of speaking. Independent forms include all the present tenses (Present Simple, Present Continuous, Present Perfect, Present Perfect Continuous) and the rest of the simple forms (Past and Future Simple). On the whole, the tense system of the English verb comprises four groups, which exist in the past, present or future. This accounts for the following divisions: indefinite, continuous, perfect and perfect-continuous [Жигадло, Иванова, Иофик 1956: 92]. A similar approach is applied to the tense system in English Grammar written by L.G. Alexander. He maintains that “tenses have two forms, simple and progressive (sometimes called ‘continuous’) <…> But the progressive forms also tell us that an activity is (or was, or will be, etc.) in progress, or thought of as being in progress” [Alexander 1988: 159-160]. Simple and progressive forms include present, past, future, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect. The only difference from I.P. Ivanova’s point of view is that he mentions future-in-the past and future continuous-in-the past as conditionals (I would work, I would be working).

N.F. Irtenyeva advanced a different view concerning the English tense system. According to this view the system is divided into two halves: that of tenses centring in the present, and that of tenses centring in the past. The former would comprise the present, present perfect, future, present continuous and present perfect continuous, whereas the latter would comprise the past, past perfect, future-in-the-past, past continuous and past perfect continuous. The latter half is characterized by specific features: the root vowel (s a ng as opposed to s i ng), and the suffix –d or –t (looke d, ha d sung, woul d sing, ha d been singing). This view has the advantage of reducing the usual threefold division of tenses (past, present and future) to a twofold division (past and present) with each of the two future tenses (future and future-in-the-past) included into the present or the past system, respectively.

Another theory of English tenses was put forward by A. Korsakov. He establishes the system of absolute and anterior tenses, and of static and dynamic tenses. By dynamic tenses he means what we call tenses of the continuous aspect, and by anterior tenses what we call tenses of the perfect correlation.

Ø Recommended literature:

1. Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: высшая школа, 2004. – С. 140-143, 152-155, 166-168, 188-190, 193-196.
2. Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2008. – С. 138-168.
3. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1975. – С. 97-105, 120-140.
4. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. - С. 65-68.
5. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка. - Л.: Просвещение, 1971. – С. 86-89.
6. Иофик Л.Л., Чахоян Л.П., Поспелова А.Г. Хрестоматия по теоретической грамматике английского языка. – Л.: Изд-во «Просвещение», 1981. – С. 66-67, 68-74.
7. Кобрина Н.А. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: Учебное пособие / Н.А. Кобрина, Н.Н. Болдырев, А.А. Худяков. – М.: Высшая школа, 2007. – С. 75-91.
8. Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка. – М.: Издательство литературы на иностранных языках, 1959. – 328-332, 343-346.
9. Хаймович Б.С., Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1967. – С. 116-125, 142-150.

Ø Supplementary literature:

1. Гуревич В.В. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2003. – С. 30-38.

2. Мурясов Р.З. Типология глагола в разноструктурных языках. – Уфа: РИЦ БашГУ, 2011. – 161-204.

3. Хлебникова И.Б. Основы английской морфологии. – М.: «ЧеРо», 2001. – С. 62-70.

4. Korsakov A. K. The Use of Tenses in English. The Structure of Modern English. Part I. – Lvov: Lvov University Press, 1969. – P. 12-49.

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