The problem of the category of tense

The idea of locating situations in time is a purely conceptual notion. All the events are referred to one of the three time dimensions – the present, the past or the future. All human languages have ways of locating in time but they do differ in lexicon and grammar in establishing location in time. The Ukrainian language, the objective time has the three mentioned above dimensions. English offers much more forms for the expression. The three temporal dimensions can be expressed by means of different English verb forms: Indefinite (Present, Past, Future), Continuous (Present, Past, Future), Perfect (Present, Past, Future), Perfect Continuous (Present, Past, Future).

When we speak about the category of tense in English several problems arise. One of them is even connected with a number of tense aspect form. The matter is that the category of tense in English is inseparably connected with the category of aspect (indefinite, continuous). Thus, speaking about the problem of the category of tense in English we cannot but mention the problem of polysemy of the English grammatical form. E.g. the form "speak" expresses 6 different grammatical categories. It is not an easy question to answer how many tense are there in English. Some scientists say that English has 16 tenses if one takes into account that tense is expressed by the form which points to the category of aspect. At this we must add that they are in the active voice. But if to take into account the fact that we don't disregard the category of aspect, then we should not disregard the passive voice. If to take into account the polysemy and the possibility for English to have active and passive for transitive verbs then the statistics count about 26 tense - aspect- voice forms of which 16 are in the active and only 10 are in the passive forms. Speaking about the problem of the category of tense and the category of aspect we must solve the question of what they belong to. The category of tense answers the question "when", that's it relates to the type of the action. The category of aspect usually answers the question "how", it doesn't relate to the type of the action, but rather to the manner of that action. So, this category is not a temporal category.

22. The category of Voice: passive voice in English and Ukrainian

The category of voice can be defined as the one showing whether the source of action lies with the subject of the sentence or not. If the subject acts, we have the active voice. E.g. Peter invites somebody. But if the subject is acted upon, that is the action comes to the subject from aside, we have the passive voice. E.g. Peter is invited by smb.

Most grammarians believe that there are only two voices in English: the active and the passive ones. However, some English grammarians speak of more voices, such as the middle voice that is intransitive verbs or transitive verbs used intransitively. E.g. he sleeps; he reads and writes perfectly. In this case the verb has no object. They also recognize the so called reflexive and reciprocal voices and some combine these two into one – reflexive-reciprocal. These voices are made by the combination of active form of the verb and reflexive (oneself) or reciprocal (each other, one another) pronouns.