The system of the english tenses

Processes occur in time and space and possess specific qualitative properties. In English, reference to certain time and process-quality relationships is made by special temporal and aspectual forms of the verb.

As was shown on pages 13—14, processes are either simultaneous, anterior or posterior to one another, or else, relative to the objective "now" of the moving matter (for speech, "the moment of speaking"), belong to present-, past-, or future-time. Accordingly, man conceives of the objective time as 12 time relationships —: 3 time-relationships of the first kind (Fig. 4) and 9 time-relationships of the second kind (Fig. 5). Naturally, man's concepts of objective time include among others such notions as duration of processes and distance between the time of process and the moment of speaking (as evidenced by languages which possess different verb forms to refer to recent, remote, and mytho­logical past¹), but in English neither of them is expressed categorically by special verb forms.

Out of the 12 time-relationships represented graphically in Fig. 4 and 5 only 7 are used as notional bases for the English Tenses, there being no special verb forms to refer to simultaneous processes and pos­teriority to present- and future-time processes.

Absolute Tenses. The relations represented in Fig. 4 (present-, past-, and future-time processes) are the base for the Absolute Tenses, both Static and Dynamic. As has been shown (pp. 14—16), the Absolute Tenses are linguistic signs for the speaker's mental present-, past-, and future-time processes. A failure to distinguish between mental and objective time has repeatedly resulted in the denial of any temporal content in the Present Static Tense, because it can be actually used to refer not only to objectively present-, but also to objectively past-, and future-time processes.² It should be pointed out that for this same reason the Present Dynamic as well as the Beforepresent Static and Dynamic ought to have been also said, though nobody has ever done so, to have no temporal content whatever, because they are also often used as references to objectively past, future, and beforepast processes, as in:

This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. This picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had of her when she was younger. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair. And the living room would be full of relatives. There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows yet. For a moment nobody is talking. Everybody is looking at something a child cannot see. For a minute they have forgotten the children. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightens the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand that strokes his forehead will never stop, will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It'swhat they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon about what's going to happen to him (J. Bald­win).

Notice that the Future Static and the Future Dynamic are also used here to refer to processes future relative to p a s t time.

Actually, however, speech is a material form of thought¹. This necessarily means that any language unit, any language form is a mate­rial sign for what is in one's mind, that the Present Tenses are signs not for the outside objective times, but for the speaker's mental times, which may be references to either objective present (the present of the speaker's immediate perception or any other process that includes the moment of speaking), past (images preserved in the speaker's mind), or future-time (constructions in the speaker's mind of what is going to be after the moment of speaking) processes.

Anterior Tenses. The three time-relationships of anteriority of a process to a past-, present-, and future-time process are the bases for the four English Anterior Tenses: the Beforepast, Beforepresent, Before-future (with the moment of reference being the moment of speaking), and the Beforefuture-in-the-Past (with a past-time moment of reference). In Fig. 7, Process 3 is anterior to Process 2 of the future relative to past-time Process 1.

The anterior tenses are signs for anteriority of a process to the speak­er's mental past-, present-, and future time process. For the Before-past and the Beforefuture the meaning of anteriority is obvious (See examples on p. 16) and has been pointed out by many grammarians.¹ Not so for the Beforepresent Tenses. The meaning of anteriority to present has been denied this form by many grammarians because any time anterior to now is past time, the fact that does not permit, seemingly, to distinguish between the Past Tense (the Past Indefinite) and the Beforepresent Tense (the Present Perfect)².

Any system, however, in which two tenses have the meaning of anteriority while the third tense has a different meaning (results + in­clusiveness, etc.) is (incompatible with the law of unity of form and con­tent:³ since all so-called Perfect tenses have the same form (have -f- -. ed) they all must have the same content; and if the Past Perfect and the Future Perfect denote anteriority, the Present Perfect must also de­note anteriority.

Anteriority as the meaning of all so-called "perfect" tenses has been recognized by many grammarians⁴, although the difference between the Beforepresent Static (or Dynamic) and the Past Static (or Dynamic) has never been adequately explained: anteriority has been variously connected with results in the present (H. Palmer, N. F. Irtenyeva), more immediate past (A. H. Marckwardt), with a grammatical category "which is different from both the tense and the aspect"⁵ or, finally, denied relationships with present-time processes (B. Ilyish).

The difficulty of distinguishing between the Beforepresent (Static and Dynamic) and the Past (Static and Dynamic) disappears if one takes into consideration that Absolute Tenses are signs for the speaker's mental times. If, starting with some situation in the present (Process 1 in Fig. 8), the speaker goes mentally back into the past (Fig. 9), re­producing it in his mind (the speaker's mental past is simultaneous to a process of the objective past), he uses a Past Tense (the Past Static or the Past Dynamic); if, however, starting with some situation in the present and thus being mentally in the present (Fig. 8), the speaker refers to an objectively past process without mentally associating it with any particular circumstances in the past, without having in his mind an image of the past process, that is without going mentally back into the past, he remains mentally in the present, the objectively past process being anterior to his mental present (Fig. 10), and uses a Before­present (the Beforepresent Static or the Beforepresent Dynamic) Tense. This has been adequately shown and illustrated on pages 14—18 and 134—137. Here is one more example that presents the meaning of the Beforepresent in a nutshell, as it were:

He was silent for an instant and looked at the captain with eyes in which there was a sudden perplexity. "You know, I can't help think­ing that I've seen you before somewhere or other," he said. ... "I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. But I can't situate my recollection in any place or at any time" (S. Maugham).

Compare also: "Well, I did as you advised, I went to see her. I thought I might calm down then. But I didn't calm down [the n]. I haven't calmed down [up to now: no association with any particular circum­stances in the past]" (I. Murdoch).

Posterior Tenses. Only one of the three time-relationships of poste­riority shown in Fig. 5 (posteriority to a past-, present-, and future-time process) has found its expression in a special verb form — the Future-in-the-Past (both Static and Dynamic) Tense. The other two time-rela­tionships of posteriority are expressed in English by the Future Tense (Static and Dynamic).

Aspectual Verbal Forms. It has been pointed out (pp. 9—11) that as­pect is a system of different verb forms referring to different qualitative properties of processes known as "manners of process", such as repetition, duration, speed of development. Later it was shown that the (be + -ing) II (be + -ing)₀ verb forms are used to represent verbal pro­cesses as relatively static and relatively dynamic — the notions being based upon the speed of development of processes (p. 35) and that, there­fore, the two sets of forms constitute the category of aspect.

The Tense-Aspect System. The tense-aspect system of the English verb forms is represented summarily in Table I (p. 50).

Thus, in contemporary English there are 8 tenses: 3 absolute and 5 relative — 4 anterior and 1 posterior, each of which except two (the Beforefuture Tenses that are practically not used in dynamic forms) appears in either of the two aspects: the Static or the Dynamic.

In the English verb system, neither the tense nor the aspect is sub­ordinate to the other, any verbal form being at the same time a spe­cific tense and a specific aspect.

It may be therefore also said that there are 2 aspects in contempo­rary English, each of which, except the Beforefuture forms, appears in any of the 8 tenses.

Table I

THE ENGLISH-TENSE-ASPECT-SYSTEM

Temporal relationships		Aspectual relationships
		Static representation of processes	Dynamic representa­tion of processes
Absolute Tenses
Relation of time of process in speak­er's mind to mo­ment of speaking	Mental present Mental past Mental future	Present Static Past Static Future Static	Present Dynamic Past Dynamic Future Dynamic
Relative Tenses
Anterior Tenses
Relation of objec­tive time of [pro­cess to speaker's mental time	Anteriority to mental present Anteriority to mental past Anteriority to future Anteriority to mental future relative to past	Beforepresent Static Beforepast Static Beforefuture Static Beforefuture Static-in-the Past	Beforepresent Dynamic Beforepast Dynamic (Beforefuture Dynamic) (Beforefuture Dynamic-in-the- Past)
Posterior Tenses
	Posteriority to men­tal future relative to past time	Future Static-in-the-Past	Future Dynamic-in-the-Past

Note: The Beforefuture Dynamic and the Beforefuture Dynamic-in-the-Past are practically not used.

Accordingly, a verbal form may be referred to as either the Present Tense (of the) Static (Aspect) and so on, or the Static Aspect (of the) Present Tense and so on. However, the terms given in the Table I are recommended for general use.