Гос филология / Гос филология / Теор.грамматика / 18. The grammatical category of time correlation

The grammatical category of time correlation

Grammatical category of time correlation

There is one more category in the English verb in which the concept of time finds its grammatical expression. It is the category of time correlation which deals not with the relation between the action and the moment of communication, but with temporal correlation of actions. This category is constituted by the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms.

The marked member of the opposition Perfect::Non-Perfect is built with the help of the discontinuous morpheme “have …ed” in which the second element has a lot of variants. The semantic marker, the meaning of the perfect form, includes two interrelated components: priority and correlation to another action or point of time in the present, past or future.

If we compare: he came up to the window and looked out. / He had come up to the window and was looking out. The order of events in the real world situation is the same. But 1) presented as following each other in succession, 2) the focus is on the second event, presented as developing at a certain moment in the past, the first one priors it.

The meaning of priority is more obvious in the case of past perfect or Future Perfect, and not so obvious in case of Present Perfect (priority to the moment of communication), but this priority is also expressed by Past Indefinite form. Both of them may denote an event which took place before the time of communication, but using P.P. the speaker accentuates the relevance of that past action for the present. In the case of P.I. the past moment of action is cut off from the present which is often done by the indication of the past moment (I was in Paris last summer). In case of P.P. the past is not cut from the present but rather continues into the present. (I have been to Paris. I can be your guide.)

The general paradigmatic meaning of priority and correlation to another action or point of time can be modified in various contextual conditions and presented by following syntagmatic meanings:

1. Result. With terminative verbs. Summer had died, fall was. / лето закончилось. Была осень.

2. Experience. P.P. denotes past action which has a present time relevance for the speaker. But I’ve been a President’s wife before. / я уже была однажды женой президента.

3. Continuation of a past action into the present. With prepositions for / since. I feel as I have been here for months. / у меня чувство словно я нахожусь здесь уже несколько месяцев.

4. An unfulfilled action. After the modal verbs be, might, should, ought and after the verbs of hope and expectation used in the past tense.

Due to their paradigmatic meaning of priority to another action the Perfect forms carry out an important text forming function. They helps the readers to better understand the motives of characters’ actions. The Past Indefinite carries out a function of the text progression, presents events in chronological order, and creates flashback in the text. It helps to understand the reasons for the characters’ actions.

Priority doesn’t find a grammatical expression in Russian and there is no analogical grammatical category. In translation the meaning of priority is usually expressed lexically, contextually.

The coat had been grey. Пальто когда-то было серым.