Chapter IX

THE VERB: TENSE

While the existence of the aspect category in English is a disputed matter, the tense category is universally recognised. Nobody has ever suggested to characterise the distinction, for example, between wrote, writes, and will write as other than a tense distinction. Thus we shall not have to produce any arguments in favour of the existence of the category in Modern English. Our task will be on the one hand to define the category as such, and on the other, to find the distinctions within the category of tense, that is, to find out how many tenses there are in English and what each of them means and also to analyse the mutual relations between tense and other categories of the English verb.

GENERAL DEFINITION OF TENSE

As to the general definition of tense, there seems no necessity to find a special one for the English language. The basic features of the category appear to be the same in English as in other languages. The category of tense may, then, be defined as a verbal category which reflects the objective category of time and expresses on this background the relations between the time of the action and the time of the utterance.

The main divisions of objective time appear to be clear enough. There are three of them, past, present, and future. However, it by no means follows that tense systems of different languages are bound to be identical. On the contrary, there are wide differences in this respect.

ENGLISH TENSES

In English there are the three tenses (past, present and future) represented by the forms wrote, writes, will write, or lived, lives, will live.

Strangely enough, some doubts have been expressed about the existence of a future tense in English. O. Jespersen discussed this question more than once. ¹ The reason why Jespersen denied the existence of a future tense in English was that the English future is expressed by the phrase "shall/will + infinitive", and the verbs shall and will which make part of the phrase preserve, according to Jespersen, some of their original meaning (shall an element of obligation, and will an element of volition). Thus, in Jespersen's view, English has no way of expressing "pure futurity" free from modal shades of meaning, i. e. it has no form standing on the same grammatical level as the forms of the past and present tenses.

¹ See, for example, O. Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar, p. 50.

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However, this reasoning is not convincing. Though the verbs shall and will may in some contexts preserve or indeed revive their original meaning of obligation or volition respectively, as a rule they are free from these shades of meaning and express mere futurity. This is especially clear in sentences where the verb will is used as an auxiliary of the future tense and where, at the same time, the meaning of volition is excluded by the context. E. g. I am so sorry, I am afraid I will have to go back to the hotel — (R. WEST) Since the verb will cannot possibly be said to preserve even the slightest shade of the meaning of volition here, it can have only one meaning — that of grammatical futurity. Of course numerous other examples might be given to illustrate this point.

It is well known that a present tense form may also be used when the action belongs to the future. This also applies to the present continuous, as in the following example: "Maroo is coming, my lad," he said, "she is coming to-morrow, and what, tell me what, do we make of that?" (BUECHNER) The adverbial modifier of time, to-morrow, makes it clear that the action expressed by the verb come in the present continuous tense actually belongs to the future. So it might also have been expressed by the future tense: Maroo will come, my lad, she will come to-morrow. But the use of the present continuous adds another shade of meaning, which would be lost if it were replaced by the future tense: Maroo's arrival to-morrow is part of a plan already fixed at the present; indeed, for all we know, she may be travelling already. Thus the future arrival is presented as a natural outcome of actions already under way, not as something that will, as it were, only begin to happen in the future.

So the three main divisions of time are represented in the English verbal system by the three tenses. Each of them may appear in the common and in the continuous aspect. Thus we get six tense-aspect forms.

Besides these six, however, there are two more, namely, the future-in-the-past and the future-continuous-in-the-past. It is common knowledge that these forms are used chiefly in subordinate clauses depending on a main clause having its predicate verb in one of the past tenses, e. g., This did not mean that she was content to live. It meant simply that even death, if it came to her here, would seem stale. (R. WEST) However, they can be found in independent clauses as well. The following passage from a novel by Huxley yields a good example of this use: It was after ten o'clock. The dancers had already dispersed and the last lights were being put out. To-morrow the tents would be struck, the dismantled merry-go-round would be packed into waggons and carted away. These are the thoughts of a young man surveying the scene of a feast which has just ended. The tenses used are three: the tense which we call past perfect

88 The Verb: Tense

to denote the action already finished by that time (the dancers had dispersed), the past continuous to denote an action going on at that very moment (the lights were being put out) and the future-in-the-past to denote an action foreseen for the future (the merry-go-round would be packed and carted away). The whole passage is of course represented speech ¹ and in direct speech the tenses would have been, respectively, the present perfect, the present continuous, and the future.

The future-in-the-past and future-continuous-in-the-past do not easily fit into a system of tenses represented by a straight line running out of the past into the future. They are a deviation from this straight line: their starting point is not the present, from which the past and the future are reckoned, but the past itself. With reference to these tenses ² it may be said that the past is a new centre of the system. The idea of temporal centres propounded by Prof. I. Ivanova as an essential element of the English tense system seems therefore fully justified in analysing the "future-in-the-past" tenses. It should be noted that in many sentences of this kind the relation between the action denoted by the verb form and the time of the utterance remains uncertain: the action may or may not have taken place already. What is certain is that it was future from the point of view of the time when the action denoted by the verb form took place.³

A different view of the English tense system has been put forward by Prof. N. Irtenyeva. According to this view, the system is divided into two halves: that of tenses centring in the present, and that of tenses centring in the past. The former would comprise the present, present perfect, future, present continuous, and present perfect continuous, whereas the latter would comprise the past, past perfect, future-in-the-past, past continuous, and past perfect continuous. The latter half is characterised by specific features: the root vowel (e.g. sang as against sing), and the suffix -d (or -t), e.g. looked, had sung, would sing, had been singing. ⁴ This view has much to recommend it. It has the advantage of reducing the usual threefold division of tenses (past, present, and future) to a twofold

¹ See Chapter XLII, p. 333.

² And, of course, also the future-perfect-in-the-past and the future-perfect-continuous-in-the-past.

³ Prof. I Ivanova thinks the term "future-in-the-past" inappropriate and suggests for these forms the term "dependent future". It would appear that both terms will do equally well, and it is undesirable to change a term unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. We will therefore keep the term "future-in-the-past", (See В. Н. Жигадло, И. П. Иванова, Л. Л. Иофик, Современный английский язык, стр. 109.)

⁴ See Н. Ф. Иртеньева, Грамматика современного английского языка, стр. 77.

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division (past and present) with each of the two future tenses (future and future-in-the-past) included into the past or the present system, respectively. However, the cancellation of the future as a tense in its own right would seem to require a more detailed justification.

A new theory of English tenses has been put forward by A. Korsakov. ¹ He establishes a system of absolute and anterior tenses, and of static and dynamic tenses. By dynamic tenses he means what we call tenses of the continuous aspect, and by anterior tenses what we call tenses of the perfect correlation. It is the author's great merit to have collected numerous examples, including such as do not well fit into formulas generally found in grammars. The evaluation of this system in its relation to other views has yet to be worked out.

¹ See A. Korsakov, The Use of Tenses in English. Lvov University Press. 1969.