- •С.В. Иванова
- •Ббк 81.2 Англ
- •Foreword
- •Preface
- •Preface to the second edition
- •Major trends in Theoretical Grammar of the English language
- •Classical English grammar
- •Transformational grammar
- •Functional Communicative Approach
- •Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics
- •Supplementary literature:
- •2. Major grammatical notions
- •Language as a system
- •Chart 1. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
- •Chart 2. Paradigmatic patterns of a clause by m.A.K. Halliday
- •Interrogative→ “wh”
- •Indicative→ declarative→
- •Imperative → jussive38 →
- •Inclusive
- •Grammatical meaning, grammatical form and grammatical category
- •E.G. Work –worked
- •The notion of opposition in Theoretical Grammar
- •Synthetic and analytic forms
- •Morphology and Syntax as two main parts of grammar
- •Chart 3. The scope of morphology
- •Inflection word-formation
- •3. The notion of a morpheme
- •The idea and the definition of the morpheme
- •Types of morphemes
- •Problems connected with the notion of a morpheme
- •Characteristic features of inflectional morphology and types of word-form derivation
- •4. The parts of speech system
- •In foreign linguistics
- •Introduction to the problem
- •Classification of parts of speech suggested by Henry Sweet
- •3. O. Jespersen’s classification of parts of speech
- •4. Principles of the classification of words suggested by Charles Fries
- •Woggles ugged diggles
- •Uggs woggled digs
- •5. Classifications of parts of speech developed within structuralist linguistics
- •6. R. Quirk’s approach to the problem in his
- •Verb Preposition
- •Interjection
- •Modern grammars of contemporary English
- •5. The parts of speech system
- •In russian linguistics
- •The main criteria for the classification of parts of speech in Russian Linguistics
- •The concept of notional and formal words
- •6. The article
- •1. The status of the article in English
- •2. The number of articles in English
- •3. The categorial meaning and the functions of the article
- •7. Noun and its grammatical categories
- •Introduction. The categories of gender and number
- •The category of case
- •The syntactic function of the noun
- •8. The verb. General characteristics
- •The verb. General overview
- •2. The categories of person and number
- •3. The category of tense
- •9. The category of aspect
- •In modern english
- •The definition of aspect as a verbal category
- •Different approaches to the interpretation of aspect
- •The connection of the aspect interpretation with other lexicological issues: terminative and durative verbs
- •The correlation of the English aspect forms and Russian aspect forms
- •10. The category of retrospective coordination
- •The problem of the Perfect forms in the system of the English language
- •2. Different approaches to the interpretation of perfect forms
- •Interpretation of perfect forms as an independent grammatical category
- •11. The category of mood in modern english
- •1. The category of mood and its semantic content
- •Debatable issues connected with the interpretation of the category of mood
- •12. The category of voice
- •In modern english
- •The nature of the grammatical category of voice
- •2. Debatable problems within the category of voice
- •He told me a story.
- •3. The notion of transitivity
- •13. Syntax
- •Syntax as a branch of grammar
- •Units of syntactic description
- •The theory of phrase
- •Types of syntactic relations (linkage)
- •14. The sentence
- •The sentence: the problem of its definition
- •2. The sentence. Its major categories
- •3. Typology of the sentence
- •15. Sentence as an object of syntactic studies
- •Major features of the sentence as a syntactic unit
- •Syntactic structure of the sentence as an object of linguistic studies
- •Immediate constituents of the sentence: ic analysis
- •Adjoinment - the use of specifying words, most often particles: He did it – Only he did it.
- •The utterance. Informative structure of the utterance
- •Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics
- •Speech act theory. Direct and indirect speech acts. Types of speech acts
- •Discourse analysis as the study of language in use
- •Implicatures of discourse
- •Implicatures and indirectness
- •It is only due to making an assumption about the relevance of b’s response that we can understand it as an answer to a’s question.
- •A List of Selected Bibliography
- •List of reference and practice books
- •Terminological dictionaries
- •Seminars in theoretical grammar
- •Contents
Interpretation of perfect forms as an independent grammatical category
A.I. Smirnitsky pointed out that analytical Perfect forms emerged in the verbal system in Middle English. They first appeared in Old English but were not developed to the full. The grammatical meaning of the Perfect was to designate the precedence of some action to another action in the past, present, or future. This predetermines the new opposition of non-perfect to perfect forms. Non-perfect forms change their meaning and refer the action to the moment of speaking. This opposition lays the foundation of a new grammatical category – the category of time correlation (категория временной соотнесенности) [Смирницкий 2000: 123]. This category indicates neither a tense or an aspect or a blend of the two. This view was first put forward by A.I. Smirnitsky and was for a long time supported by the majority of Russian linguists.
The essence of the grammatical category expressed by the perfect and differing both from tense and from aspect, is hard to define and to find a name for. Prof. A.I. Smirnitsky originally proposed to call it “the category of time relation” (категория временной отнесенности). This term was criticized by a number of Soviet linguists. For instance, B.A. Ilyish considers this term not to be a very happy one because it seems to bring us back to the old view that the perfect is a special kind of tense, the view that A.I. Smirnitsky criticized himself. Later it was proposed to replace the term “time relation” by that of “correlation” (соотнесенность), which has the advantage of eliminating the undesirable term “time”. B.A. Ilyish considers this term the most suitable one.
Other linguists come up with their ideas about the label for the newly coined category. Thus, B.S. Khaimovich and B.J. Rogovskaya use the term “the category of order”. They suggest this term because they identify the general meaning of the category as that of order. They emphasize the fact that the notion of priority is the most essential notion when speaking about the perfect forms. In their opinion the category of order presents a process as prior to some action or situation.
Other linguists come up with a range of different terms. For instance, M.Y. Blokh prefers the term “the category of retrospective coordination”, or just “the category of retrospect”.
Mention should be made of another approach to perfect forms as an independent grammatical category. Within this approach linguists explore perfect forms as the category of phase. George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith in ‘An Outline of English structure’ suggested this unconventional name. Martin Joos explains that this name derives from special relation between cause and effect signified by verbs in the perfect phase. The perfect-marked verbs are used for the sake of the effects of the events they designate, and that is their essential meaning. The verbs in the current phase are “in phase with each other”; the effect is never delayed behind the recurrent phase. Quite unlike it, “the meaning of perfect phase is that the principal effects of the event are out of phase with it <…>. The perfect phase means that the event is not mentioned for its own sake but for the sake of its consequences”60. The idea that perfect is an independent category has found its proponents among present-day linguists. Thus in an Oxford edition of 2009, R.M.W. Dixon describes perfect as a category of completion covering perfect and imperfect [Dixon 2009: 333].
The meaning of completion as a categorial meaning of perfect forms is totally denied by O.V. Alexandrova and T.A. Komova. They insist that perfect forms do not convey the meaning of completion, it is wholly related to the lexical semantics of the verb (cf.: It happened, They replied, on the one hand, and I have lived here for 20 years, on the other) [Alexandrova, Komova 1998: 116-123]. Perfect forms make up the category of Taxis, or simultaneity – anteriority which is used to describe two actions correlated in time.
Bernard Comrie states that the perfect is neither an aspect nor a tense. He makes the point that the perfect is retrospective as “it establishes a relation between a state at one time and a situation at an earlier time” [Comrie 1998: 64]. B. Comrie identifies four major uses of the perfect: perfect of result (I have had a bath, meaning I am clean), experiential perfect (Bill has been to America), perfect of persistent situations (I’ve shopped there for years), perfect of recent past (I have recently learned that the match is to be postponed).
Drawing upon the idea that perfect makes an independent category D.A. Shteling further develops it and gives an insightful analysis of the nature of perfect forms. Due to its inherent grammatical meaning of correlation the perfect form is capable of establishing in an utterance (or in a text) various semantic relations, i.e. those of cause-effect, consequences, etc. The perfect forms introduce the correlative point indicating the termination of some period. Thus it creates the effect of expectation of the consequences or the results this period brings about [Штелинг 1996: 157, 160, 161].
The compromise approach
M.Y. Blokh develops A.I. Smirnitstky’s views on the categorial semantics of perfect/ non-perfect forms. He comes to the conclusion that there are two aspective categories in English: the category of development which is based on the opposition of continuous and non-continuous forms, and the category of retrospective coordination which is based on the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms.
According to M.Y. Blokh, the perfect form is characterized by a mixed categorial meaning: it expresses both retrospective time coordination of the process and the connection of the prior action with a time limit reflected in a subsequent event. Thus perfect continuous forms are to be treated as forms having marks in both the aspect categories.
Recommended literature:
Блох М.Я., Семенова Т.Н., Тимофеева С.В. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 169-170, 176-216.
Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2008. – С. 180-190.
Кобрина Н.А. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: Учебное пособие / Н.А. Кобрина, Н.Н. Болдырев, А.А. Худяков. – М.: Высшая школа, 2007. – С. 86-90.
Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка. Л.: Просвещение, 1971. – С. 90-98.
Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 60-66.
Хаймович Б.С., Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1967. – С. 130-134.
Supplementary literature:
Гуревич В.В. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2003. – С. 30-38.
Мурясов Р.З. Типология глагола в разноструктурных языках. – Уфа: РИЦ БашГУ, 2011. – 74-110.
Смирницкий А.И. Морфология английского языка. – М.: Изд-во литературы на иностранных языках, 1959. – С. 289-316.
Штелинг Д.А. Грамматическая семантика английского языка. Фактор человека в языке. – М.: МГИМИ, ЧеРо, 1996. – С. 149-166.