Grammatical category of Phase

Verb.

8.3.

1. Grammatical categories of phase, voice and mood.

2. Other grammatical categories (posteriority, person and number).

The category of phase is constituted by the opposition of perfect and nоn-perfeсt forms. The perfect form goes back to the Old Eng­lish construction 'habban + direct object + attributive Participle IV. The verb habban first weakened and then lost its lexical meaning. As for Par­ticiple II, it gained in importance. Its verbal nature was strengthened and it became syntactically connected' immediately with the verb habban. The word order was changed, too. The perfect form came into existence: / have/had written my letter.

The perfect form admits of four interpretations:

- perfect is a tense form;

- perfect is an aspect form;

- perfect is a part of the tense-aspect system;

- perfect is a specific form of the category of phase.

H.Sweet, O.Jespersen, M.Ganshina and N. Vasilevskaya look upon perfect forms as tense forms. If perfect were a tense form, the present perfect, for instance, would represent a unity of two tenses: present and perfect. But one grammatical form cannot express two grammatical meanings of the same grammatical category. Hence, perfect is not a tense form.

In the opinion of G.N. Vorontsova, R. Quirk and his co-authors, D. Biber and his co-authors, perfect is an aspect form. The grammatical meanings of completion and lack of completion of events or states do form the grammatical category of aspect in Russian. Cf.: делать — сделать; писать — написать, etc.

In English, they can hardly be regarded as constituting the grammati­cal category of aspect. If perfect forms were aspect forms, we would have two aspects in perfect continuous forms, and it has been postulated that one grammatical form cannot express several grammatical meanings of the same grammatical category. So, perfect should be excluded from the grammatical category of aspect.

V. N. Zhigadlo, I. P. Ivanova and L. L. Iofik qualify perfect as part of the tense-aspect system. However, perfect is neither a tense nor an aspect, although it is closely connected with the two.

A new approach to the problem is suggested by A. I. Smirnitsky. He thinks that the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms builds up a specific grammatical category, a category of time relation. The term is not a happy one since it fails to differentiate the new category from the category of tense, which also realizes time relations.

The American linguist M. Joos suggests that the category in question should be called a grammatical category of phase. The term phase is bor­rowed from physics. The non-perfect phase shows that the action and its effect are in one phase. E.g.: When she was young she lived in a small flat (V. Evans).

The perfect phase emphasizes that the action and its effect are in dif­ferent phases, e.g.: She had already left when I got home (ibid).

Formally, the opposition of perfect and non-perfect phases is a priva­tive opposition: the perfect phase is based on the pattern 'have+ Partici­ple IT, the non-perfect phase lacks this pattern. But if we take meaning into consideration, we shall see that both members are logically equal, which is characteristic of equipollent oppositions: the non-perfect phase expresses simultaneity, the perfect phase expresses priority. That's why I. B. Khlebnikova qualifies the opposition built up by perfect and non-perfect phases as equipollento-privative.

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