The Grammatical Categories of Person and Number
Person and number in Indo-European languages are expressed simultaneously, i.e. a morpheme expressing person also expresses number.
English verbs distinguish two numbers - singular and plural. Nowadays, the only distinction between the singular and the plural is that the third person singular of the present tense, indicative mood, non-continuous aspect, non-perfect phase, active voice ends in ~(e)s in the singular. Modal verbs have no -(e)s in this case because their present tense form was originally past. In the past and future, the English verb has no number distinctions but for the only example was as opposed to the plural were.
The category of person in Modern English has certain peculiarities, too.
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1. The only person inflection of English regular verbs in the
present tense is the -(e)s of the third person singular, e.g.:
He studies.
The verb be has special forms for the first, second, and third persons. Cf.: lam, you are., he/she/it is.
2. Person distinctions do not go with the meaning of the past
tense in English.
3. As regards the future tense, the first person singular and
plural (shall) is opposed to all the rest (will). These distinctions,
however, are being gradually obliterated a) through the ousting of
the verb shall by the verb will; b) through the spreading of the
contracted form '// for all persons in the singular and in the plural.
In all other cases, it is generally the personal pronoun in the function of the subject that indicates the person and number of the verb. B.A. Ilyish regards pronouns in the nominative case as verbal prefixes rendering the grammatical meanings of person and number.
hi the opinion of A.I. Smirnitsky, personal pronouns preceding a finite verb can hardly be regarded either as being or tending to become verbal morphemes similar to the -(e)s morpheme of the third person singular. He puts forward the following arguments.
1. Personal pronouns in the nominative case can be used not
only as subjects. For instance, in formal English they are used as
predicatives and adverbial s of comparison:
It is I (M. Swan).
It was he (M. Swan).
He was older and so much wiser than I (D. Robins).
2. They can move about in the sentence. Cf.:
He gets up at 7 o'clock (R. Murphy) - before the predicate-verb.
Does he get up at 7 o 'clock? - inside the predicate-verb.
3. They can be coordinated with the help of conjunctions, e.g.:
Neither you nor I could do it (A.S. Hornby, A.P. Cowie,
A.C. Gimson).
4. They can be coordinated with nouns, e.g.:
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Neither my father nor I were there (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English).
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The arguments of A.I. Smirnitsky prove rather convincingly that personal pronouns in the function of the subject are independent words, not grammatical morphemes of person and number.
Neither can they be treated as auxiliary elements of analytical words. In the first place, they are not used when a verb has a noun-subject. Thus, we say Lara rose to her feet (S. Sheldon), not *Lara she rose to her feet, which would be natural if she rose were an analytical word.
In the second place, if a personal pronoun with the following verb formed an analytical word, cases of the kind Doesn 't matter (W. Trevor) would be impossible. But they do occur in English. So, the English verb can express number independently in the absence of a personal pronoun in the nominative case.
The Grammatical Category of Tense
The verb usually denotes processes, and processes proceed in time. The concept of time is common to all mankind and is independent of language. Time is universally conceived as something having one dimension only, thus capable of being represented by a straight line:
| A: Past |
| C: Future |
B: Present
The main divisions of objective time are past, present, and future. Or, rather, we may say that time is divided into two parts: the past and the future, the point of division being the present moment, which has no dimension but is constantly fleeting. It is the borderline where the nature becomes the past.
In reality, the relation between the present, the past, and the future is much more complicated. The present is reflected in speech not as a mere point, but as a more or less long period of time including the present moment. The past is the time preceding the present moment. The future is the time following the present moment. Neither of them includes the present moment.
Tense is a verbal category that represents linguistic expression of time relations, so far as these are indicated in verb forms. Many linguists look upon tense distinctions as the main characteristic of
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the verb. However, one should not overestimate the role of the category of tense in the system of the verb. In the first place, there exist languages that do not have the category of tense in the verb, e.g. the Hopi language. In the second place, languages that do have the category of tense may have a number of verbs that are invariable in so far as tense distinctions are concerned. For instance, the verb ought in English has only one form, i.e. it stands outside the grammatical category of tense. In the third place, time distinctions can be expressed not only by forms of verbs, i.e. grammatically, but also lexically, e.g.: on the 11' of February, at nine o'clock in the morning, etc.
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B.S. Khaimovich and B.I. Rogovskaya mention the following points of difference between lexical and grammatical expression of time.
1. Lexically, it is possible to name any definite moment or
period of time: a century, a month, a week, a day, an hour, a minute,
a second, etc. The grammatical meaning of tense is an abstraction
from only three tenses: the present, the past, and the future.
2. Lexically, a period of time is named directly, e.g.: on
Monday. The grammatical indication of time is extremely
generalized. Thus, a verb in the past tense shows that the action took
place in the past, without saying when exactly.
3. The lexical meaning of time is absolute; the grammatical
meaning of tense is relative. For instance, goes denotes a present
action because it is contrasted with -went denoting a past action and
with will go naming a future action.
In Old English, there existed two tenses: the present and the past Cf.:
Ic cume (I come).
Ic com (I came).
There was no special tense form for the future. Actions referring to the future used to be expressed by the form of the present tense, often in conjunction with an adverbial, e.g.:
Ic ga sona (I soon go).
Very often the idea of futurity became clear from the context only. The starting point of the present-day analytical future tense form was the free phrase 'sculan (willan) + infinitive'. The development of the future tense belongs to the Middle English
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period, when the verbs \villan and sculan gradually lost their primary lexical meaning and became auxiliaries,
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O. Jespersen denies the existence of the future tense in English. On analyzing the constructions with shall and will, which are generally looked upon as future tense forms, O. Jespersen draws the conclusion that the verbs shall and will retain, to a certain degree, their original lexical meanings of volition and obligation and cannot be treated as pure tense auxiliaries, although they approach that function especially when applied to atmospheric conditions, e.g.:
On June the twenty-first the sun will rise at 3.42 ana" set at 5.75 (AS. Hornby).
Speaking about the future tense, A.I. Smirnitsky also stresses the fact that it stands somewhat apart from the present and the past. The future tense represents something as not yet realized; consequently, it is often modally coloured. Besides, the verbs shall and -will, used to render futurity, are not always mere auxiliaries. In a number of cases, especially when will is used with the first person and shall - with the second and third persons, they preserve their modal meaning and cannot be looked upon as tense auxiliaries. Cf.:
I will do as Hike (A.S. Hornby).
You shall suffer for this\ (M. Swan).
Nevertheless, A.I. Smirnitsky recognizes the existence of the future tense as a grammatical form. Sentences of the type: Tomorrow will be Sunday (A.S. Hornby) and My father will be seventy-five in May (A.S. Hornby), in his opinion, express mere futurity, free from any modal shades of meaning.
The wide use of the contracted form 'II both for shall and will also testifies to the fact that the verbs in question lose their respective meanings and turn into pure auxiliaries.
R. Quirk and his co-authors, D. Biber and his co-authors also deny the existence of the future tense in English, but for a different reason. They say that English verbs are not inflected for the future tense. Really, English verbs are inflected only for present and past tenses. But English is an analytical language, and it often expresses grammatical meanings not by inflections, but by auxiliary words. The future tense is just a case in point.
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Linguists who regard perfect and continuous forms as tense forms find a lot of tenses in Modern English [e.g, H. Sweet]. If
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perfect and continuous were tense forms, we would have a unity of several tenses in one form, e.g.: present and perfect in present perfect; present, perfect, and continuous in present perfect continuous, etc. But one grammatical form cannot express several grammatical meanings characteristic of the same grammatical category, i.e. one form cannot express two or more tenses simultaneously. Consequently, perfect and continuous cannot be regarded as tense forms. There exist only three grammatical tenses in Modern English: present, past, and future.
A close study of present and past tense forms has led D. Biber and his co-authors to the conclusion that the present tense is strongly associated with mental verbs and existence verbs, while the past tense is strongly associated with activity verbs and communication verbs.
The distribution of present and past tense forms differs considerably across registers. The preference for present tense forms is particularly strong in conversation and academic prose, but for quite different reasons. In conversation, the reliance on present tense reflects the speakers' general focus on the immediate context. Academic prose, on the other hand, uses the present tense not so much to focus on the immediate context, as to convey the idea that the propositions are true, regardless of time.
In contrast, fiction writers use past tense forms much more frequently than present tense forms. In fact, many fictional narratives are written entirely in the past tense, with present tense verbs being used only in the direct speech attributed to fictional characters.
News uses both present and past tense forms to about the same extent.
All the verbal categories, the category of tense including, can be represented in the form of oppositions. The theory of oppositions has been worked out on the basis of phonology by N. Trubetzkoy, a representative of the Prague linguistic school. It was also N. Trubetzkoy who wrote on the applicability of the opposition theory to grammar.
A morphological opposition is a contrast of two morphological units possessing a ground for comparison and a basis for distinction. In the category of tense, we have two oppositions: present - past and present - fature.
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The ground for comparison in these oppositions is the relation to the present moment. The present tense includes the present moment; the past tense excludes the present moment, expressing priority to it; the future tense also excludes the present moment, expressing posteriority to it.
Each member of tense oppositions has a specific form. The present tense is homonymous with the base of the verb [in the third person singular the inflection -(e)s is added]; the past tense is characterized by the dental suffix -(e)d\ the future tense is formed by means of the word will with the following infinitive.
Since all the members of tense oppositions are characterized by their own specific meaning and form, tense oppositions are referred by T.B. Khlebnikova to equipollent oppositions.
Oppositions as paradigmatic phenomena are realized on the syntagmatic axis in speech situations, which can create conditions where one of the differential features of the opposition may prove irrelevant in the given context. The unmarked member that possesses a more general meaning appears in the position of neutralization.
In the process of morphological neutralization, it is not the form that is neutralized, but the meaning, or rather one component of the meaning relevant for the given opposition and on which the opposition is built. Consequently, those oppositions are generally neutralized, the relations between whose members are not polar. In view of the fact that tense oppositions are equipollent, i.e. polar, they refer to permanent oppositions.
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