Past tenses as part of the english grammatical category

Introduction

The following paper attempts at elucidating the system of Past Tenses as part of English category of apect and tense by means of extensive confrontational situations taken from more than twenty relevant sources. As is well known, Past Tenses present many theoretical and practical difficulties and peculiatities, and it is our primary task to make free from ambiguity these grammatical aspects.

By the syntagm grammatical category we understand Aspect and Tense collectively.The purpose of the present research is thus to acquaintance non-native speakers of English with the distinctive features of Past Tenses as parts of grammatical categories and also with the categories of aspect and tense in the context of meaningful focused comparison of static, elsewhere denominated indefinite or synthetic form, of the Past Indefinite and the analytical Past Perfect, on the one hand and the dynamic aspect of Past Continuous and Past Perfect Continuous on the other hand. Deliberating on such topics and bringing forth multiple examples from many languages (Indo-European, Germanic and Slavic) constitutes a sine qua non prerequisite for a better understanding of the English system of Past Tenses (formerly nominated).

We have of course kept to some methodological procedures. The paper consists of an introduction two parts, conclusion and bibliography. The main principles of analysis of the use of Past tenses are given inthe introduction. Chapter 1 is entitled as follows: “A Theoretical Outline of the Category of Tenses in the Context of the English Language”.Its main subtitles are I.1 “The Category of Tense and Verbal System in O.E. and M.E.” and I.2 “The Category of Aspect in Modern English”. The purpose of the first chapter is that the English Tense System has many peculiarities which any other language, by which we understand languages of non-Germanic origin, and represents the core issue of the present paper.In some languages, verb tenses are not very important or do not even exist. In English, the concept of tense is very important. What is tense and how the tense system looked like in the grammar of O.E.(Old English) are questions of great concern in our research. We have later turned to O.E. grammatical category of tense, brought forth instances from many languafes and detected whether the same features remained in Modern English (M.E.).

Chapter 2 is, by its nature, a practical one. It bears the following title: “Empirical Aspects of The Past Tenses in Certain Contexts” having as its main sub-units: II.1 “The Static Form of Past Simple and Past Perfect” and II.2 “The Dynamic Form of Past Continuous and Past Perfect Continuous”. We have switched from a more general area of research to the particular analysis of the English system of Past Tenses and tried to unfold the obfuscations of Past Indefinite, Past Continuous, on the one hand and Past Perfect and Past perfect Continuous, on the other hand. Many exemplifications have been brought forward to better understand the peculiarities of these Past Tenses. The paper conludes with a conclusion and bibliographical references (in which thirty five consulted sources have been cited).

The necessity of such a course paper inheres in the many subtleties and oddities the English Past Indefinite/Past Perfect and Past Continuous/Past Perfect Continuous presents to the non-native speakers of English. That is why we tried to bring information regarding not only the theoretical aspects of the employ of Past Tenses in different contexts, but also we have sought to offer a truly unique philological and linguistical approach. By proceeding in suchlike manner, we hope that all the requirements, e.g. the aspectual form and the methodological paradigm of delving into a topic like Past Tenses have been met successfully.

Chapter 1: “A Theoretical Outline of the Category of Tenses in the Context of the English Language”

I.1 “The Category of Tense and Verbal System in O.E. and M.E.”

The English Tense System has many peculiarities which any other language, by which we understand languages of non-Germanic origin, and represents the core issue of the present paper.In some languages, verb tenses are not very important or do not even exist. In English, the concept of tense is very important. What is tense and how the tense system looked like in the grammar of O.E.(Old English) are questions of great concern in our research. Let us turn to O.E. grammatical category of tense and see whether the same features remained in Modern English (M.E.).

Tense is a form of a verb used to indicate the time, and sometimes the continuation or completeness of an action in relation to the time of speaking. In O.E. the verb was characterised by many peculiar features. Though the verb itself had few grammatical categories, its paradigm hed a very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form-building means. In her book on the History of the English Language (M. 1969), Rastorgueva T.A. asserts that all the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to emerge. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech (p.109). To make a slight deviation, Melenciuc D., specialist in Germanic Philology, in his very recent A Reader on the History of Germanic Languages (Chisinau 2005) reveals that the category of tense, which originally consisted of past and present forms, was supplemented by future forms (p.45). It would be interesting to notice that the category of aspect cannot be regarded as a grammatical category of the verb at that stage. We will develope extensively this facet later (see below, I.2). Rastorgueva explains that the category of tense in O.E. consisted of two categorical forms, present and past. To understand better the structure of the verb system one should get acquainted with the meanings and the use of moods and tenses in O.E. The former bears no relevance to our survey.