А. К. КОРСАКОВ

УПОТРЕБЛЕНИЕ ВРЕМЕН В АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

ИЗДАНИЕ ВТОРОЕ, ДОПОЛНЕННОЕ

Рекомендовано Министерством высшего и среднего специального образования УССР в качестве учебного пособия для студентов факультетов романо-германской филологии университетов

Киев

Головное издательство издательского объединения «Вища школа» 1978

4И(Англ.) к69

В пособии представлена система видо-временных форм индикатива современного английского языка. Языковой материал (глагол) классифицируется по се­мантическим и синтаксическим моделям, которые по­даются в книге по принципу убывающей частотности употребления.

Учебное пособие содержит также упражнения, иллюстрирующие временные отношения между глаголь­ными процессами, определение их видового характера, установление моделей видового противопоставления, употребление глагольных форм в заданных ситуациях.

Во второе издание (1-е изд.— 1969 г.) включены разделы, в которых дается теоретическое обоснование содержания различных форм будущего- и предбудущего-в-прошедшем, а также рассматриваются связи между лексическим содержанием глаголов и его упот­реблением в глагольных формах, традиционно назы­ваемых «продолженными» и «простыми».

Рассчитано на студентов факультетов романо-германской филологии университетов.

Редакция литературы по иностранным языкам Зав. редакцией М. М. Азаренко

К 70104—033

М211(04) — 78 115-78

С) Издательское объединение «Вища школа», 1978

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This textbook is intended primarily for students of the English de­partments of universities and foreign language teacher training colleges. It deals with the meaning and use of tenses in Modern English and is based on the results of the author's research work in this branch of linguistics.

The book is an о b j e с t і v e description of one of the most im­portant and complicated parts of the English language, revealing to the student the way in which the language actually works. Objec­tivity of description is safeguarded by the principles chosen in the ana­lysis and representation of the uses of tenses. These principles are briefly explained below.

(1) A sufficient quantity of examples has been accumulated and filed. Text amounting to about 50,000 pages (mainly fiction; partly, philological, technical and philosophical literature as well as news­papers) has been used for this purpose. The number of examples was considered to be sufficient when, with the amount of pages of text dou­bled, no new patterns (semantic¹, syntactic, distributional) were found in the new text. Different tenses, however, required different quanti­tative approach because of the differences in their relative frequency, as illustrated by the following data: one instance of the Present Perfect Continuous Tense occurs on every 24 pages, one instance of the Past Perfect Continuous on every 26 pages, one instance of the Future Con­tinuous on every 86 pages, one instance of the Future Perfect on every 475 pages, one instance of the Past Indefinite on every 1/23 of a page. The to­tal number of the instances of these tenses on 50,000 pages will be, respec­tively: 2000, 1900,600, 100, and 1,150,000. It is obvious that consecutive selection of such tenses as the Past Indefinite on 50,000 pages was not only impossible but also not necessary, and accordingly it was done only for the Present Perfect Continuous (2,093 instances, total), Past Perfect Continuous (1,901), Future Continuous (578), Future Perfect (105), and Future Perfect Continuous (3). The other tenses were selected at ran­dom: all instances of all tenses on the first 1,000 pages and two—three examples of each pattern from each new source. Continuous counts were also made of all verbs which are traditionally said not to be used in Continuous Tenses, as well as of adverbials of time used with the Present Continuous, Past Continuous, Present Perfect, and the Past Perfect tenses.

When the 50,000 pages of sources were thus analysed, the author had about 70,000 cards of examples covering all typical uses of tenses arranged into batches in accordance with the patterns (semantic, syntac­tic, and distributional) established, as well as thousands of cards containing statistic data on the frequency of certain language phenomena investigated (the frequency of different verbs in different tenses, of combinations of different tenses with adverbials of time, of different syntactic patterns, and so on).

2. The second stage of analysis consisted in checking all the exist­ing points of view and rules concerning the meaning and use of diffe­rent tenses, the supreme judge being the objective language itself. If a point of view or a rule concerning a tense complied with its actual use in a 11 typical patterns, the point of view or the rule was consid­ered as v a 1 і d, or e s s e n t і a 1 for the grammatical content of the tense; if, however, a point of view or a rule was compatible only with some typical patterns and incompatible with other typical patterns, it was rejected as non-valid, or non-essential for the grammatical content of the tense. An analysis establishing non­essential character of the most important of the existing traditional points of view is given in the book in special sections appendixed to the parts dealing with the temporal and aspectual content of the tenses (pages 19—20, 41—45).

3. The third stage of the analysis was an establishment of the invar­iant temporal and aspectual meanings of the tenses, that is the meanings present in all the typical uses of the tenses. The procedure consisted in studying the semantic patterns, putting forward a hypothesis and checking it on the examples filed. If the hypothetical meaning was not present in a 1 1 typical uses of the tense or else if it could be expressed by other tenses, it was rejected as non-essential. Another hypothesis was then advanced and checked in the way just stated, and so on, till the invariant temporal and aspectual meanings were found. The supreme judge at this stage of investigation was, thus, also the language itself. The procedures of establishing of the invariant meanings is briefly described on pages 14—18 and 21— 41 (the temporal and the aspectual content, respectively).

The names for the tenses have been chosen to agree with the six temporal and two aspectual meanings they denote (page 12).

(4) The second part of the book (The Use of the Tenses, pages 51—200) is, mainly, a systematic arrangement of the actual uses of tenses in different semantic, syntactic, and distributional patterns with indications, in most cases, of their relative frequences. In this part the reader will find an answer to the question "How a certain tense is actually used?" He will learn for instance that "Did you ever meet him?" is about 1.5 times more frequent than "Have you ever met him?" (page 141 — with an explanation to it on pages 58—59); that such verbs as to want, wonder, feel, expect, mean and others (page 179) belong to those most frequently used in the Beforepresent Dynamic ("I've been wanting to talk to you" — Th. White); that the most typical special question with this tense is "What have you been doing?" (Th. White) but not a question beginning with "how long" or "since when" as it is often stated in some grammar textbooks; that in about 65% of its uses the Present Indefinite refers to concrete, non-re­peated processes relevant only at the moment of speaking (page 62), although traditional grammars continue to claim that it denotes habitual actions and states; that "He said he will come" is a perfectly good English sentence (page 222—with a detailed expla­nation on pages 201—205); and so on, and so forth.

It was found in the process of analysis that certain uses of tenses seem to be incompatible with their temporal or aspectual meaning, for example: "I know you for ten years already now" (Th. Dreiser); The dog raised his head higher and higher (J. Galsworthy) (Cf.: The dog raised his head higher; The dog was raising his head higher). In the process of further analysis six factors were established which interact with the grammatical content of the tenses, influencing the choice of tense in the act of speaking (pages 55—60, 201—205).

As the short review above shows, the book is not only intended to show the student how the English tenses are actually used. It will help him understand why they are used so and will serve as an intro­duction to him of some methods and ways of linguistic analysis.

All the examples throughout the book, including the exercises (Part IV, pages 206—223), have been taken from original sources by English and American authors. Sentences for rendering into English are Russian translations by the author of the corresponding original sentences. To make a rendering as close as possible to the original and to reduce lex­ical difficulties, corresponding words and phrases are frequently given in brackets. Of special importance are exercises demanding a graphical representation of temporal relationships of verbal processes to the moment or process of reference as well as of their aspectual character­istics (pages 206—209). Other kinds of exercises are mostly built on the principle of contrast to tenses with opposite temporal or aspectual meaning. If more than one answer is possible, additional indications in brackets help the student to choose the tense used in the original sentence.

The numerous frequency data given with most semantic, syntactic and distributional patterns will help the teacher to select properly the tenses and patterns to be worked upon in the first place.

It is a pleasure for the author to thank Professor В. I 1 у і s h and Associate Professor N. Rayevskaya for the valuable remarks they made while reading the manuscript.