The category of tense

Time is an unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening

in the past, present or future. Time stands for a concept with which all mankind is

familiar. Time is independent of language. Tense stands for a verb form used to

express a time relation. Time is the same to all mankind while tenses vary in

different languages. Time can be expressed in language in two basic ways: 1)

lexically; 2) grammatically.

The category of tense is considered to be an immanent grammatical category

which means that the finite verb form always expresses time distinctions. The

category of tense finds different interpretations with different scholars.

According to one view, there are only two tenses in English: past and

present. Most British scholars do not recognize the existence of future. It is

considered to be a combination of the modal verb and an infinitive used to refer to

future actions. The modal verbs “shall” and “will” preserve their lexical meaning

of “wish, volition”. In that case combinations of the modal verbs with notional

verbs should be regarded as free syntactical constructions, not as analytical

structures. However, there are some examples in which the notion of volition

cannot be implied:

eg. He will die in a week.

I shall be twenty next Friday.

Provided that the situation is realistic, in these contexts lexical meanings of

“ shall ” and “ will ” are not present. These elements render only grammatical

meanings, therefore they serve as auxiliaries and such combinations must be

regarded as analytical structures. So we have to recognize the existence of pure

futurity in English.

In traditional linguistics grammatical time is often represented as a threeform

category consisting of the “linear” past, present and future forms. The

meaning of the category of tense is the relation of the action expressed by a finite

verb to the moment of speaking. Present denotes coincidence, past denotes a prior

action, future denotes a posterior action which follows the moment of speaking.

The future-in-the-past does not find its place in the scheme based on the linear

principle since it does not show any relation to the moment of speaking, hence this

system is considered to be deficient, not covering all lingual data. Those who deny

the existence of simple future in English consider future-in-the-past one of the

mood forms. Those who recognize the existence of simple future argue that it is

used in the same situation when simple future is used, in subordinate clauses when

the principal clause contains a past form. So, this form is different only in one

respect – it is dependent on the syntactic structure.

According to the concept worked out by Prof. Blokh, there exist two tense

categories in English. The first one – the category of primary time – expresses a

direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted. It is based upon

the opposition of past vs. present, the past tense being its strong member. The

second one – the category of “prospective time” – is based on the opposition of

“after-action” and “non-after-action”, the marked member being the future tense.

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