3) The category of Aspect.

The category of aspect is a verb category which denotes the character of the development of an action or event. Care should be taken that the character of the development of an action can also be expressed not by the morphological category of aspect but by some other lexical means, e.g. continued to work, jumped and jumped and jumped.

As the character of the development of an action in English is often expressed by lexical means or even remains unexpressed, some scholars, especially in this country, doubt the existence of this category with English verbs.

Nevertheless the morphological category of aspect of the English verb is established on the basis of the privative opposition of verb-forms like: writes – is writing, wrote – was writing and so on.

Only the forms containing Participle I explicitly present the action as a process of developing in time. They are the marked members of the opposition. They are the forms which actually express the category of aspect. So the morphological category of aspect is expressed by the auxiliary verb “to be” in the required tense-form and Participle I of the notional verb. The unmarked member of the opposition does not express explicitly the character of development of the action. It only names an action and so it does not actually express the category of aspect.

Both members of the opposition under consideration are contrasted as continuous and non-continuous forms.

Traditionally we name forms like “is writing”, “was writing” as the Present continuous and Past Continuous tense. Such terms do not seem to be satisfactory from the theoretical point of view, because we deal not with different tenses in such oppositions.

The tense is the same in both marked and unmarked members of the opposition but in the marked member the basic tense category is modified by the additional category of aspect. If we agree that Present Continuous is a special tense form which is contrasted to the Present Indefinite tense then we’ll have to agree that continuous is another tense category and the action is developing in two different tenses – present and continuous – at once and that is hardly acceptable.

Hence, forms like “is writing” should be called the Present Tense of the Continuous aspect. Finally it is necessary to say that continuous verb-forms are more expressive than non-continuous and so they are very often used in colloquial speech or for stylistic purposes even with verbs which denote a process and are not usually used in the continuous aspect (love, like, understand etc).

Such forms as “I’m loving you” become stylistically marked and express a peculiar emotional state of the speaker.

I am not understanding you (some additional feelings are expressed).

4) The Category of Retrospective Coordination (perfect).

Perfect forms are widely used in English, having no corresponding forms in Russian. They are distinguished by their form as all of them include the auxiliary verb “have” and Participle II or when modified by the category of aspect, they also include participle I. Participles name the action itself while the auxiliary verb “have” expresses the categories of tense and mood. The problem of the status and meaning of the perfect has always been disputable.

There are 4 principal points of view on this problem:

1. It is a tense category;

2. it is an aspect category;

3. it is a tense-aspect category;

4. it is a special self-dependent verb-category.

Let’s comment on these opinions.

1) Many linguists and the traditional grammars treat the perfect as a tense form. This idea was put forward in the works of Henry Sweet, Irteneva, and others. They stress that the principal meaning of the perfect is to express priority and that implies personal relations. However this idea seems to be deficient. Let’s take such oppositions as: writes – has written, wrote – had written etc. We can notice that in both members of these oppositions the same tense is expressed but in the second member the category of perfect is added. So, if the perfect were a tense form then we should speak of two tenses in the second members, but an action can exist and develop only in one tense form (time plane). It can’t develop in two tenses simultaneously. Hence, the perfect can’t be a special tense.

2) Other linguists – Deutschbein, West, Vorontsova – treat the perfect as a special aspect category, the grammatical meaning of which is that of result or retrospective connection. Although we can’t deny the presence and significance of this meaning, it is hard to agree to the idea that the perfect is an aspect form. If we take oppositions like “has written – has been writing, had written – had been writing”, we can see that both members express the same tense, but they differ in their aspect because the second member happens to be modified by the continuous aspect. And if we should treat the perfect as a special aspect form then in the second member of these oppositions we shall have to admit the presence of two aspect forms at once: perfect and continuous. But that is hardly acceptable because the action can’t develop in two different aspects simultaneously.

3) Professor Ivanova treats the perfect as a peculiar tense-aspect form. This opinion implies that the categories of tense and aspect are fused together in the Perfect form. So the perfect is a verb-form of double nature. As a tense form, the Perfect expresses priority, as an aspect form it denotes the development and completion of some action. The completion is logically based on priority and is a result of it. This idea seems quite reasonable. However, the status of the perfect remains indefinite, because we can’t part with the notions of tense and aspect here as well.

4) A number of authors treat the perfect as a special verb category, neither tense nor aspect. This opinion was put forward in the works of professors Smirnitsky, Ilyish and Blokh. Smirnitsky was the first to treat the perfect as a special verb category. He defined it as the category of “time correlation”. The basic meaning of this category is to bring together by contrast two temporally different actions of stages of the same action and to express the idea of precedence of one of them.

However, professors Ilyish and Blokh say that the aspective characteristic of the action is underestimated in Smirnitsky’s definition of the perfect. Besides, professor Ilyish was right to note that the idea of priority can also be expressed lexically, e.g. First he copied the text and then he learnt it.

Emphasizing the presence of the meaning of result and completion, Ilyish defines the perfect as the category of correlation, but this notion is also rather vague. That is why professor Blokh defined the perfect as the category of retrospective coordination, which seems to be most adequate at present. This definition implies precedence, coordination of actions, based on the completion or coordination of an action and some moment of time to stress the resultative aspect of the action.

So, the category of perfect or retrospective coordination is a special verb category which is based on two oppositions: Perfect – non-Perfect; Perfect Continuous – Continuous.

So we can conclude that the verb has one basic category of tense, which when we actualize an action or event can be modified by some other verb categories, like aspect, perfect, and voice. All of them can be treated as secondary to the primary category of tense.