The category of tense

When speaking of the expression of time by the verb, it is necessary to strictly distinguish between the general notion of time, the lexical denotation of time, and the grammatical time proper or grammatical temporality.

Time, as well as space, is the basic forms of the existence of matter, they both are inalienable properties of reality and as such are absolutely independent of human perception. On the other hand, like other objective factors of the Universe, time is reflected by man through his perceptions and intellect, and finds its expression in his language.

The verbal forms denoting time relations are called tenses. Of all the verbal grammatical categories, tense is the most typical, showing how the speaker determines the time relation of the utterance to the moment of speech. The notion of the moment of speech is very important because in some languages tenses are arranged to express the time of an action (past, present and future as in Ukrainian and Russian), but in other languages the relation of the speaker to the moment of speech is conveyed indirectly, e.g. through intermediate points (like the past perfect and future perfect in English).

Some languages are extremely poor in time distinction, others are extremely rich. In the languages of the primitive tribes, time indication in a verb led to great complexity owing to the inclusion in a word of many particular features of each single event. Wishram, for instance, an Indian language of the Pacific Northwest, is said to distinguish between recent past, remote past and mythological past, while native Australian language has five future tenses, two for things that will happen today, the others for more indefinite future periods.

There is reason to believe that the only two true tenses of Proto-Indo-European were the present, used also for the future, and the past. From these two fundamental time-notions there developed in the course of centuries a multiplicity of tenses.

Time relations in Modern English are expressed by different devices:

• tense forms – morphological device

e.g. He worked at a factory.

He will leave for London.

• non-finite forms of the verb (expressing current relevance of action:

priority, simultaneity, posteriority) – morphologo- syntactic device

e.g. Reading the book he was taking notes.

Having done with his work he rang me up.

• conjunctive words (while, after, till, etc.) – lexico- syntactic device:

e.g. I won’t ring you up till I know the truth.

• correlative words (no sooner… than; hardly…when; etc.) – lexico – syntactic device:

e.g. No sooner had I entered the room when the rain began.

• adverbs of time (then, yesterday)

• nouns expressing time (winter, January, futurity)

• adjectives (former teacher, future wife)

• affixes (ex-; post-; pre-)

e.g. ex-minister, post-war, pre-revolutionary

Mention should be made of the “implied relations of time” which are observed in case of transpositions of grammatical forms:

e.g. She is coming up tomorrow morning.