4.4. The problem of the category of aspect. The Interrelation of the categories of tense and aspect

THE CATEGORY OF ASPECT — grammatical category which reflects the inherent mode of the realisation of the process irrespective of its timing.

The problem of category of aspect is determined by the fact that linguists don’t have unanimous opinion on this point.

Some of them (Kerm, Krazing, Poutman) see under this category “the indication towards the course of the action”. The typical features of this indication are

the beginning of the action

the end of the action

the recurrence of the action

However according to this definition , aspect cannot been seen as grammatical category being characterized my lexical means.

The positive side of this point of view —attention to the aspect character of the verb, the possibility of defining processual limit.

As the result the division into limitive-non –limitive verbs

There are two tendencies towards the defining of the category of aspect.

1) tendency presented in foreign linguistics (two aspect oppositions )

—relatively the moment of speaking

—relatively some other time points – centres taken in the past or future

2) tendency presented in Russian linguistics (the category of aspect is taken in the interrelation with the category of tense)

THE CATEGORY OF TENSE — grammatical category denoting the correspondence between the time described in the situation and the moment of speaking taken as the starting point or some other time taken as the starting point.

The moment of speaking taken as the starting point is known as the absolute time

The absolute time expresses the degree the time of the described situation correlates to the moment of speaking. It indicates when the action takes place either at the moment of speaking or earlier or after it.

Usually we distinguish three main correlations

Present tense — the action takes places at the moment of speaking

Past tense — the action proceeds the moment of speaking

Future tense — the action follows the moment of speaking

The forms that correspond to the moment of speaking are seen as INDEPENDENT TENSE FORMS

The forms that can’t correspond to the moment of speaking are seen as DEPENDANT TENSE FORMS

INDEPENDENT TENSE FORM (all Simple + all present forms)

DEPENDANT TENSE FORMS ( all the rest)

TIME	Indefinite	Continuous	Perfect	Perfect Continuous
Present	INDEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	INDEPENDENT	INDEPENDENT
Past	INDEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT
Future	INDEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT
Future-in-the-Past	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT	DEPENDENT

Some other time taken as the starting point known as the relative time (the taxis)

The taxis expresses the degree the time of the described situation correlates not to the moment of speaking but to some other time or action. It may be expressed mostly by the verbals. Usually we distinguish the following taxis correlations:

simultaneous actions (while reading the book I enjoyed it a lot)

prior actions (having read the book I wrote a composition onto it)

Mostly detailed the interrelation between the category of aspect and the category of tense is described by I.P. Ivanova . She considers time to be seen as permanent verbal characteristics and aspect should be seen as the permanent characteristics of a verbal form.

There are four aspect groups in English (Simple, Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous).

The first group (Indefinite) – corresponds to the moment of speaking , so can be seen as pure tense form.

The second group (Continuous) expresses the processual contents of the action.

The third group (Perfect) expresses the processual limit of the action

The fourth group (perfect Continuous) expresses both the processual contents which leads to the processual limit of the action.