Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 39 стр.

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The future-in-the-past does not find its place in the scheme based on the linear

principle since it does not show any relation to the moment of speaking, hence this

system is considered to be deficient, not covering all lingual data. Those who deny

the existence of simple future in English consider future-in-the-past one of the

mood forms. Those who recognize the existence of simple future argue that it is

used in the same situation when simple future is used, in subordinate clauses when

the principal clause contains a past form. So, this form is different only in one

respect – it is dependent on the syntactic structure.

According to the concept worked out by Prof. Blokh, there exist two tense

categories in English. The first one – the category of primary time – expresses a

direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted. It is based upon

the opposition of past vs. present, the past tense being its strong member. The

second one – the category of “prospective time” – is based on the opposition of

“after-action” and “non-after-action”, the marked member being the future tense.

6. The category of aspect

The category of aspect is a linguistic representation of the objective category

of manner of action. It is realized through the opposition Continuous::Non-

Continuous (Progressive::Non-Progressive). The opposition is privative both in the

plane of content and in the plane of expression. It is easily neutralized, i. e. non-

continuous forms substitute continuous forms when the notion of duration is

expressed by other means (eg. lexical).

The realization of the category of aspect is closely connected with the lexical

meaning of verbs. There are some verbs in English that do not normally occur with

progressive aspect, even in those contexts in which the majority of verbs

necessarily take the progressive form. Among the so-called ‘non-progressive’

verbs are think, understand, know, hate, love, see, taste, feel, possess, own, etc. The

most striking characteristic that they have in common is the fact that they are

‘stative’ - they refer to a state of affairs, rather than to an action, event or process.

It should be observed, however, that all the ‘non-progressive' verbs take the