The category of aspect. Different ways of expressing aspect in English.
The verb is characterised by an elaborate system of morphological categories: tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number. There 2 different forms in Modern English – of use or non-use of the pattern "be + first participle":
writes — is writing wrote — was writing
' will write — will be writing has written — has been writing
The basic characteristic of “is writing” is this: it denotes an action proceeding continuously at a definite period of time, within certain time limits. On the other hand, “writes” denotes an action not thus limited but either occurring repeatedly or everlasting, without any notion of lasting duration at a given moment. So the basic difference between these two sets of forms, then, appears to be this: an action going on continuously during a given period of time, and an action not thus limited and not described by the very form of the verb as proceeding in such a manner. The grammatical notion described as the category of aspect: it is a difference in the way the action is shown to proceed. The terms used to denote the two aspects of the Modern English verbs are continuous aspect and common aspect.
The category of aspect
it reflects the inherent mode of the realization of the process irrespective of its timing: continuous aspect (reflects the inherent character of the process performed by the verb) and non-continuous aspect. The main difference lies in the interpretation of the opposition. Continuous aspect = meaning of duration, indefinite forms - have no aspective maning (Иванова), have a vague content (Воронцова), stress the fact of the performance of the action (Смирницкий) - widely accepted view.
The category of phase (time-correlation).
Since the perfect is neither a tense nor an aspect, it is bound to be some special different grammatical category. This view, though not quite explicitly stated, was first put forward by Prof. A. Smirnitsky. It is in complete harmony with the principle of distributive analysis, though he did not use that term. The essence of the grammatical category expressed by the perfect, and differing both from tense and from aspect, is hard to define but Prof. Smirnitsky proposed to call it "the category of time relation", which is not a very happy term, because it seems to bring us back to the old view that the perfect is a special kind of tense — a view which Prof. Smirnitsky quite rightly combated. Later it was proposed to replace his term of "time relation" by that of "correlation" (соотнесенность).
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As to the opposition in such pairs as writes — has written, wrote — had written, will write — will have written, is writing — has been writing, was writing — had been writing, will be writing — will have been writing, Prof. Smirnitsky proposed to denote it by the correlative terms "non-perfect" and "perfect". Perfect and non-perfect verb-forms: категория соотносительности и относительности времени - временной относительности - aspective (Есперсен, Иванова, Воронцова) opposition of tense forms (Sweet, Curme, Корсаков) the category of "time correlation" (Смирницкий). The category of retrospective coordination and the category of development which are based on the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms. Perfect forms have mixed categorial meaning, because perfect forms express both retrospective time coordination of the process and the connection of the prior action with a time limit, reflected in a subsequent event - перфектные формы имеют смешанное категориальное значение, т.к. показывают ретроспективность в совершенных действиях + связь совершенного действия с некоторым ограниченным временем следующего за ним события.
37. General characteristics of the verbals- неличная форма глагола (infinitive, participle, and gerund)
V. make up a part of the English verb system, they have some features in common with the finite forms, and they lack some others. All the verbals have categories of correlation and voice; the infinitive, in addition, has the category of aspect. None of the verbals has the categories of tense, mood, person, or number.
With reference to aspect we shall have to examine each of the verbals separately.
In the infinitive, we find an opposition between two sets of forms:
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(to) speak — (to) be speaking
(to) have spoken— (to) have been speaking,
which is obviously the same as the opposition in the sphere of finite forms between:
speak — am speaking spoke — was speaking
The conclusion here is quite obvious: the infinitive has the category of aspect, there is a distinction between the common and the continuous aspect. With the gerund and the participle, on the other hand, things are different. Generally speaking, they exhibit no such distinction. Neither in the one nor in the other do we find continuous forms.
Time correlation:
In the infinitive, we find the following oppositions:
(to) speak — (to) have spoken
(to) be speaking— (to) have been speaking,
and in the gerund and the participle the oppositions
speaking — having spoken being spoken — having been spoken
The base category for these oppositions is correlation, because it finds its expression here (no pattern "have + second participle" in first column, the second-column forms has this very pattern) + the meaning of precedence (the second-column forms), whereas the first-column forms do not express it. Once again we see that in each pair one item is unmarked both in meaning and in form whereas the other (the perfect) is marked both in meaning (expressing precedence) and in form (consisting of the pattern "have + second participle").
If this view is accepted it follows that the category of correlation is much more universal in the Modern English verb than that of tense: correlation appears in all forms of the English verb, both finite and non-finite, except the imperative, while tense is only found in the indicative mood and nowhere else.
Since the verbals are hardly ever the predicate of a sentence, they do not express the category of tense in the way the finite verb forms do. Thus, it seems pointless to argue that there is a present and a past tense in the system of verbals.
The verbals have a distinction between active and passive voice, as will readily be seen from the following oppositions:
(to) read — (to) be read
(to) have read — (to) have been read reading — being read
having read — having been read
As to other possible voices (reflexive, reciprocal, and middle) there is no reason whatever to treat the verbals in a different way from the finite forms (if we deny their existence in the verbs, we must deny it in the verbals as well).
SYNTAX
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