2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Tense and time. In grammar a tense is a distinctive form or phrase of a
verb (ask, asked, have asked). The traditional names of the tenses are mainly
words indicating time (past, present, future); it is therefore assumed that the
function of tense is to show time and that the time shown is that suggested by the
name of the tense. Both assumptions are only partly true. In He was here, He is
here, and He will be here, the tenses of be are respectively past, present, future;
the times indicated are also past, present, and future; and the function of the verb
is primarily to show time. But in When did you say you were going home? only
one tense, the past, is used; but two times, past and future, are indicated. And in
Art is long but life is fleeting, though the tense is present, the time is of little
consequence. (In the Latin form of the aphorism no verb is used—Ars longa, vita
brevis.)
In English most sentences require a finite verb, and the verb necessarily
occurs in a tense form. But the indication of time in the sentence may be supplied
by an adverb, or the adverb may modify the time suggested by the verb. In He
plays well, the verb, despite its present tense form, does not declare that his
playing is good only at the present moment; we infer, rather, that it is good at all
times. But in He plays tomorrow the adverb restricts the time to the future, though
the tense is still present. In I've got two letters from him already, I've got time
now, and I've got two exams tomorrow, the tense is the same-perfect-but the times
The tense names in English should be considered, then, as convenient but
rather arbitrary terms used to identify verb forms and phrases, the actual function
of the verb in each sentence being finally determined by other elements in the
construction.
Tense forms. It is customary to distinguish six tenses in English,
corresponding in name to the six in Latin. Of these only the present and the past
can be single words (ask, asked). Like the other four tenses, they also occur as
phrases (is asking, was asking, progressive. The following table presents forms
most commonly associated with time distinctions along with their traditional
names:
Special tense function.
a- The "progressive phrases" (is asking, was asking, has been asking.. .) tend
to emphasize the actual activity and are increasingly being used in English
b- The present tense is used to make a statement that is generally true,
without reference to time:
Oil floats on water.
The Captain reminded the ladies that the equator is an imaginary line.
c- Participles and infinitives express time in relation to that of the main verb.
The present infinitive expresses the same time as the main verb or, often with an
adverb, a time in the future:
Our team is playing to win.I hope to go abroad next summer.
A perfect infinitive expresses action prior to that of the main verb:
A present participle generally refers to the time of the main verb:
Rounding a turn in the road, he came suddenly in full view of the lake.
d- The present tense with an adverb may show future time: He leaves
tomorrow.
Sequence of tenses. When the verb of a main clause is in the past or past perfect
tense, the verb in a dependent clause is also past:
Frank knew that the Statlers were visiting us.
Frank knew that the Statlers would visit us the following week.
The old man wondered whether the train had arrived.
I have never seen Slim when he hadn't or: didn't have; not hasn't] a wad of
tobacco in his mouth.
A present infinitive is, however, usual after a past verb:
I thought you would have liked to ride [not: to have ridden] in their car.
They intended to stop [not: to have stopped] only an hour in the village.
The perfect infinitive is used chiefly to indicate action previous to the time of
the main verb: She is sorry to have started the gossip.
Consistent use of tenses. It confuses a reader to find tenses shifted without
definite reason, as in this paragraph:
I sit down at my desk early with intentions of spending the next four hours
studying. Before many minutes passed, I hear a great deal of noise down on the
floor below me; a water fight is in progress. Study was forgotten for half an hour,
for it was quite impossible to concentrate on Spanish in the midst of all this
started when a magazine salesman comes into the room, hoping to snare a large
sale. After arguing with him for several minutes 1 finally got rid of him.
In single sentence the inconsistency usually comes from carelessness,
especially from forgetting the form of the first of two parallel verbs:
Last fall in the Brown game I saw Bill Geyer hit so hard that he was knocked
five feet in the air and then land [for landed] on his head. [The writer forgot the
tense of was knocked.]
Grammar is a term with a number of senses. Linguistics is concerned with
the first two which are defined in the article of grammar. The structures of
meaning, in so far as they exist, are certainly far less apparent than the structures
examined in phonology, morphology, and syntax. The modern linguist has
therefore given most of his attention to these more obvious aspects of language.
There is an irony in this because the layman is far more interested in what an
utterance means than in how it is structured. And his attitude is right to this extent:
Language does have as its primary purpose the communication of meaning. But
the educated layman tries to/have some understanding of all the more significant
aspects of his environment. Language is the most important of these and he should
therefore have some understanding of it. This linguistics tries to provide.
A language is a human phenomenon, which will differ from other creations
of God,what even from person to person; it will differ far more from one place to
another and from one time to another.
In the last few decades linguists have developed a rigorous technique for
particularly philology, which was concerned chiefly with the Indo-European
languages and based largely on the study of literature, especially of written
literature. A basic principle of linguistics is that language is primarily speech; the
methods of analyzing speech (such as establishing categories by comparing
"minimal pairs," two locutions alike in all but one linguistic feature - cat, rat)
have become relatively standardized and have been applied to other aspects of
language. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of linguistics has been the separating
(for the purposes of analysis) of linguistic activities from the current of life in
which they appear. The words structure and structural, often applied to linguistic
study (sometimes almost with a mystical or magical overtone), emphasize this
separation. Structural linguistics isolates the linguistic activity and stresses that
despite the variety in a language there is a system or a series of patterns which can
be discovered and described by linguistic methods and which alone are the proper
subject of linguistics.
Because of the tremendous importance of language in life, there have been
numerous pressures for practical applications of the methods and findings of the
new science. To date, the notable successes have been in recording and analyzing
languages not previously written, recording many that were on the point of
extinction, and in teaching the spoken form of a second language through more
detailed and accurate analysis.
Considerable progress has been made in describing English in newer and
more precise terms. Features like word order and intonation patterns have been
least minimizing some categories inherited from Latin grammar but not
significant for English, such as forms for case in nouns and mood in verbs; in
defining various categories more objectively, such as the parts of speech (or form
classes)—defining them by reference to form and function rather than to meaning;
in giving more definite recognition to the phrase patterns basic to syntax; and in
providing a syntax grounded in observation of speech.
The purpose of a communication course is to further the communicative
skills of the students. Its organization and general direction should aim toward this
end, based on the principles of composition—rhetoric. The current language is the
medium, and consequently the rhetoric must be presented on the basis of this
language. (In the last few generations "grammar" has often triumphed over
"rhetoric," partly because of the uncertain control of Standard English by many
students and partly because the elementary facts of language have seemed more
definite and consequently easier to present and test.)
The description of English should be as accurate as possible, and gradually
linguistics is furnishing a more complete and consistent description. Even now
there are gains in using some of the terms and categories of linguistics: a few
topics such as sentence boundaries and restrictive punctuation can be more
accurately presented than formerly, even though the precise definitions of the
terminals involved are uncertain.But a composition course is not an introduction
to linguistics and can hardly spare time for a very secure grounding in such a
technical field—though some teachers with specialized training in the field report
The language course, beyond a few pretty elementary topics, is certainly in
the area of meta linguistics, involving social habits and attitudes. Most of the
questions are of the order of "Shall I say or write this in this situation?" Linguistic
generalizations, whether in traditional tor more scientific form, can helpin
presenting general patterns, in summarizing general practices, but they do not go
far in guiding choices between similar expressions when both are in the range of
Standard English. To make these decisions students need not only the paradigms
but a wide knowledgebf the varieties of current usage, what educated people say
and write. Since this knowledge by itself will not answer the questions, principles
are also needed, especially principles of appropriateness. These involve value
