Direction of Speech Intentionality

This factor explains the use of present and beforepresent tenses with adverbial modifiers of time which seem, at the first glance, to be in­compatible with them.

For instance, the example "I know you for ten years now already' (Th. Dreiser) contains three adverbials, each of which, as it is commonly stated, requires a beforepresent tense. Nevertheless, the Present Static is used in it, which can be explained as follows. In the beginning of the act of speaking the intention of the speaker was to convey a message verbalized by "I know you". Here the meaning of the Present Static and the content of the message agree. While uttering these words, how­ever, the speaker changes his intention, making the time relation of the process denoted by the verb «to know» more specific. This he reveals in the process of further verbalization of the change of his intention by adding "for ten years," "now", and "already", which signifies, a shift of the time relation from

—x— to —x—. The form of the verb origi­nally uttered becomes thus incompatible with the signals added. The speaker, however, does not necessarily have to declare the utterance "I know you" as irrelevant to his changed intention by saying, for ins­tance, "Oh, no. I didn't mean that. What I meant was: 'I have known you for ten years now already'". He can achieve an identical effect by adjusting his intonation pattern accordingly, for example, as "I know you. For ten years now already."

This is what actually happens when sentences like the two following are uttered:

"How do you like your job — so far?" (W. Smitter); "You have known Ted Kerby for many years. He has visited at your house as far back... as 1937" (D. Carter).

More examples of identical uses of the present (a) and beforepresent (b) tenses:

1. 1. "You know I do my hair myself ever since I had that urchin cut" (J. Lindsay); 2. "I've your name in my list these two years, Flinn" (E. Cluer); 3. She owes money for six weeks now" (Th. Wolfe); 4. "She's drinking a little too much lately" (O'Henry); 5. "The whole house is stinking with naphthaline ever since Mamsel Agatha came" (A. Munthe); 6. "He's waiting at home all this time for his tea" (J. Lindsay);

2. 1. Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages has already appeared in the 'Strand Magazine' — I think late in 1899 (H. Wells); 2. "I've only had word of the thing an hour ago" (A. Cro-nin); 3. Indeed, I have seen Blanch, six or seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen (Ch. Bronte); 4. "He's been having grub with you in the Malabar Bar last night — so I was told" (J. Conrad).

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Stylistic Considerations

The speaker of English has at his disposal a rich inventory of tenses serving to represent verbal processes in different temporal and aspectual relationships. Since it is frequently possible, in a certain situation, to represent a verbal process in two or more ways (Cf., e. g.: He picked up the rifle, which was lying against two round stones — I. Shaw; He took up the book, which still lay where he had placed it beside him — J. Galsworthy; He threw over a sheet of paper which had been lying open upon the table — C. Doyle), the speaker may choose the form at his will to suit his stylistic preference. A few examples will illustrate this:

1. We sat in the cafe in which I had sat with her. A strong mistral was blowing and the harbour usually so smooth, was flecked with white foam. The fishing boats were gently rocking. The sun shone brightly (W. S. Maugham); 2. The streets were already thronged. Dogs raced between their legs, pigs were rooting for garbage in the gutter. Children followed them, jeering and shouting. Beggers wailed with importunate palms (A. Cronin); 3. It was hard to believe now, that there had been a time when he didn't know Roger, a time when he had wandered the city streets without saying a word to anyone, a time when no man was his friend, no woman had looked at him, no street was home (I. Shaw).