Factors influencing the choice of the tenses in speech

A careful study of the use of tenses reveals the fact that their choice in speech depends not only on the content of the information conveyed and the meaning of tenses but also on a number of other factors.

These factors are of two kinds: those conditioned mainly by the peculiarities of the English verb system, the speaker's possibility to choose being secondary in importance, and those permitting the speaker to choose, in a given speech situation, from two or more tenses comply­ing with the peculiarities of the system.

Factors Conditioned Mainly by the Peculiarities of the English Verb System

These factors are three: one explains the use of a tense by historical considerations, another is known as the rules of the sequence of tenses, the third reflects the necessity for certain sequences of verbal forms to convey certain temporal meanings. The first and the third factors are further referred to as the historical factor and the harmony between tense-sequence meaning and speech information. The sequence of tenses rules are dealt with in Part III.

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The Historical Factor

The historical factor explains the use of the Present Static, Present Dynamic, and the Beforepresent Static in adverbial clauses of time and condition objectively referring to the future, e. g.:

1. "Tonight she'll play; I shall watch her while she is playing" (J. Gals­worthy); 2. "If you're getting a new frock this year, have it made at a really good place" (E. Delafield); 3. "We'll talk about that when we've had tea" (D. Cusack).

It is to be noticed that the meanings of the future and the before-future in these examples are conveyed not by the heavy-typed tenses themselves but in conjunction with other language signals pointing to the temporal character of the clause.

The use of the future and the beforefuture tenses in these patterns is extremely rare and should be avoided by the student. Examples:

"Jump! By Godl or I'll make you leak (from the holes made by the bullets) till folk '11 think your father was a water hydrant and your mother a spinkling-cart" (J. London); "If she'll live till spring, it will be all right" (M. Le Sueur).

Harmony Between Tense-sequence Meaning and Speech Information

This factor explains the use of present, beforepresent, and past tenses in the subordinate object clause to refer to future, beforefuture, and beforepast verbal processes, respectively, as in:

1. "Will you write and tell me how you're behaving?" (A. Cronin); 2. "Ring me up at ten o'clock tomorrow and I'll let you know what I've been able to fix" (D. Cusack); 3. He had written to her how he was getting along (Th. Dreiser).

In these examples the processes in the subordinate clauses are under­stood as follows:

are behaving as simultaneous with will tell

have been able as anterior to shall let

was getting along as simultaneous with had written

With the corresponding future, beforefuture, and beforepast tenses in the subordinate clauses, the time relations would have been under­stood differently, namely:

will be behaving as posterior to will tell

shall have been able as anterior to some

time posterior to shall let

had been getting along as anterior to had written

This can be reformulated, for Pattern 1 (Sentence 1), as follows: A present tense in a subordinate clause, with a future tense in the principal, is used to refer to a future verbal process simultaneous with that of the subordinate clause; a future tense in it represents the verbal process as posterior to that of the principal clause. In other words, the tense sequence "a future tense + a present tense" in this pattern is in agreement with the temporal meaning of simultaneity, while the se­quence "a future tense + a future tense" is incompatible with it.

It is obvious that the meaning of a future verbal process simulta­neous with that of the principal clause in this pattern is rendered not by the present tense (are behaving) alone but by the whole morpho-syntactic pattern

(a future tense_prin. _clause + a present tense_sub. _{object clause})

including the present tense.

More examples of the patterns containing present and before-present (examples a) as well as past (examples b) tenses in the subor­dinate object clause, with the verb of the principal clause in a future or beforepast tense respectively:

1. 1. "Thanks, old man. I'll see what the girl says and let you know" (Th. Dreiser); 2. "It's done him a lot of good already, and she'll see to it that he goes ahead, you know" (J. Galsworthy); 3. "Every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us" (I. Shaw); 4. "We give you a local anesthetic for the first and second induction (of the air into your lungs), and after that you Won't even know it's happening" (D. Cusack); 5. "Wherever I am, you let me know, and I'll write and find out how you've been conducting yourself" (Th. Dreiser); 6. "They'll know I've been fooling them, and they're sure to get sore" (Th. Dreiser); 7. "They will think that we've had a quarrel" (Th. White); 8. Voters in St. Pancras who sowed a Tory victory at the May council elections will find they have reaped a whirl­wind on Wednesday when the victors present their new rent scheme (D. Worker);

2. 1. But they were sobbing with affection for him. The Elmer Gantry who for years had pretended that he relished defying the whole college had for those same years desired popularity (S. Lewis); 2. She had come up alone. She had said she was going to be an independent woman (R. Macaulay).

Rarer, the subordinate clause is attributive, for example: 1. "I will keep an eye on things and I will mail you a monthly report on what you have earned and what I have spent" (I. Shaw); 2. "The very moment I have drunk my coffee I shall leave" (W. S. Maugham); 3. It was wonderful to be rid of the dread that had gnawed at her every time she thought of the blood stains on her kerchief (D. Cusack).