Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

5. The category of tense 
Time is an unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening 
in the past, present or future. Time stands for a concept with which all mankind is 
familiar. Time is independent of language. Tense stands for a verb form used to 
express a time relation. Time is the same to all mankind while tenses vary in 
different languages. Time can be expressed in language in two basic ways: 1) 
lexically; 2) grammatically.
The category of tense is considered to be an immanent grammatical category 
which means that the finite verb form always expresses time distinctions. The 
category of tense finds different interpretations with different scholars.
According to one view, there are only two tenses in English: past and 
present. Most British scholars do not recognize the existence of future. It is 
considered to be a combination of the modal verb and an infinitive used to refer to 
future actions. The modal verbs 
“shall”
and 
“will”
preserve their lexical meaning 
of 
“wish, volition”
. In that case combinations of the modal verbs with notional 
verbs should be regarded as free syntactical constructions, not as analytical 
structures. However, there are some examples in which the notion of volition 
cannot be implied: 
eg
. He will die in a week.
I shall be twenty next Friday.
Provided that the situation is realistic, in these contexts lexical meanings of 
“
shall
” and “
will
” are not present. These elements render only grammatical 
meanings, therefore they serve as auxiliaries and such combinations must be 
regarded as analytical structures. So we have to recognize the existence of pure 
futurity in English.
In traditional linguistics grammatical time is often represented as a three-
form category consisting of the “linear” past, present and future forms. The 
meaning of the category of tense is the relation of the action expressed by a finite 
verb to the moment of speaking. Present denotes coincidence, past denotes a prior 
action, future denotes a posterior action which follows the moment of speaking. 

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The future-in-the-past does not find its place in the scheme based on the linear 
principle since it does not show any relation to the moment of speaking, hence this 
system is considered to be deficient, not covering all lingual data. Those who deny 
the existence of simple future in English consider future-in-the-past one of the 
mood forms. Those who recognize the existence of simple future argue that it is 
used in the same situation when simple future is used, in subordinate clauses when 
the principal clause contains a past form. So, this form is different only in one 
respect – it is dependent on the syntactic structure.
According to the concept worked out by Prof. Blokh, there exist two tense 
categories in English. The first one – the category of primary time – expresses a 
direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted. It is based upon 
the opposition of past vs. present, the past tense being its strong member. The 
second one – the category of “prospective time” – is based on the opposition of 
“after-action” and “non-after-action”, the marked member being the future tense.