The grammatical content and use of the progressive tenses in modern English (linguodidactic aspect)

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Department of English Grammar Odessa 1.1. Mechnikov National University

Department of Germanic Philology and Methods of teaching of foreign Languages South Ukraine National Pedagogical University named after K. D. Ushynsky

The grammatical content and use of the progressive tenses in modern English (linguodidactic aspect)

Zhaboruk O.A., Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor

Zhaboruk I.A., Candidate of Philological Sciences Associate Professor

Summary

Is dedicated to the 100-th anniversary of an outstanding grammarian of our time, founder of Odessa grammatical school, A. Korsakov. His ideas are still alive and remain topical. In the article we have made an attempt of linguodidactic reconsideration of the theoretical heritage of prf. A. Korsakov, namely his theory of aspect, suggested by him in the 70-ies of the previous century.

Key words: aspect, linguodidactics, model, frequency, aspectual forms.

Анотація

Жаборюк О. А., Жаборюк І. А. Граматичне значення т. зв. «продовжених часів» у сучасній англійській мові

Стаття присвячена 100-річному ювілею видатного граматиста сучасності, засновника Одеської граматичної школи А.К. Корсакова. Його надбання живуть донині й не втратили своєї актуальності. У статті робиться спроба лінгводидактичного переосмислення теоретичного спадку вченого, зокрема запропонованої ним у 70-х рр. минулого століття теорії аспекту в сучасній англійській мові.

Ключові слова: аспект, лінгводидактика, модель частотності, видо-часові форми.

Аннотация

grammar korsakov english linguodidactic

Жаборюк Е. А., Жаборюк И. А. Грамматическое значение т. н. «продолженных времен» в современном английском языке

Статья посвящена 100-летнему юбилею выдающегося грамматиста современности, основателя Одесской грамматической школы А.К. Корсакова. Его идеи живы и поныне и до сих пор не утратили своей актуальности. В статье сделана попытка лингводидактического переосмысления теоретического наследия ученого, в частности предложенной им в начале 70-х гг. прошлого столетия теории аспекта в современном английском языке.

Ключевые слова: аспект, лингводидактика, модель, частотность, видо-временные формы.

This article is dedicated to the 100-th anniversary of prf. A. Korsakov (November, 1916) - an outstanding linguist 'and a talented lecturer. His most significant work “The Use of Tenses in English”, published about 50 years ago, in the late 60-ies, is still in demand. Despite numerous attempts to penetrate into the essence of this phenomenon, it still remains the most fundamental work on the English tenses ever written. Furthermore - it is a model of linguistic research. Based on the enormous corpus of about 50 000 examples collected consecutively - which is a rather rare occurrence, theoretically it presents a unique combination of two philosophical trends: the neo-positivistic approach of the American descriptivism and the materialistic dialectics - an approach not only remarkable in his days but also worth being made a note of by a linguist at present.

The article below is an anniversary one. It touches upon the problem of the English aspect as it has been worked out by prf. A. Korsakov [6]. In doing this we lay special emphasis on the linguodidactic side of A. Korsakov's theory - and this is our own contribution.The reason for this is that, acknowledged theoretically by all, the principle of linguodidactics, which sets forward high demands to the linguistic content and scientific quality of the material delivered, is often ignored in practice. This is especially characteristic of foreign language teachers who, paying much attention to other aspects of teaching, give very little thought, if any, to the linguistic quality of the material presented. In this they wholly rely on books, being unaware that most of what the latter suggest is scientifically not grounded, not to say wrong. Naturally, this makes the process of teaching much less effective than it could possibly be. Another reason for our turning to linguodidactics are the numerous learners of English whose native tongues don't possess progressive tenses (as the Ukrainian language, for instance) and for whom, as the practice shows, it is rather difficult to understand why and when they should be used. Hence the aim of the article is to reveal from within the interdependency between the linguistic content of the material in question and its best possible way of its presentation. Each grammatical issue in our article is supplied with methods of teaching commentaries.

Proceeding from the statistics on tenses and aspect given by prf. A. Korsakov and relying on our long-term practical experience we recommend to take up the topic of aspect after the learners have gone through the system of the indefinite and perfect tenses (according to A. Korsakov - the system of absolute and anterior tenses [6, p. 14-16]. This order of succession is called forth not only by the much lower frequency of occurrence of the progressive tenses compared with the non-progressive ones but also by the fact that the progressive tenses never occur in their pure form, as is the case with the Indefinite and Perfect tenses, but blend with the latter. That is why to grasp the nature of the aspect is much more difficult than that of the tense. So to understand what the aspect is one has first to know what the tense is. The suggested order is much more scientifically justified than the one presented in most of manual on grammar, where the aspect is not treated as a separate grammatical topic based on the category of tense, but where aspectual forms simply alternate with the tense forms [25, p. 1; 1, p. 332, 38, 40-50; 5, p. 159-171; 2 p. 3-7].

Another method of teaching recommendation is that the presentation of the theory of aspect should be carried out in five strictly outlined stages (portions of material). Let us dwell upon each stage in detail.

The first stage includes the explanation of the general notions: the difference between tense and aspect. The tense is a grammatical category which implies the set of forms denoting time relationships. The term aspect is understood as a system of oppositions of different verbal forms referring to different modes of action. In the English grammar aspect is the opposition of the forms -ing0 // -ing denoting the speed of the development of the process in time [6, p. 11]. As such it could be treated as a specific measure of time, which makes it closely related to the category of tense. That explains the fact of blending by linguists of the two categories in the morphological boundaries of the English verb.

We believe that here it would be appropriate to draw the attention of the students to the cognitive value of this grammatical category. The category of aspect is not only a matter of linguistics or a matter of practical mastering of the language but is also a specific means of understanding the objective reality in quite a new, unaccustomed way, typical of a nation, namely - the English nation.

The second stage implies the use of visual aids, namely, The Frequency Table of the English Tense and Aspect Forms, which should be commented on with the focus on the progressive tenses. The comments should be made by students with the help of the teacher.

The Frequency Table of the English Tense and Aspect Forms is given below. The Table is compiled by on the bases of statistics taken from A. Korsakov's manual and the works by his postgraduates [6, p. 51, 52], [8, p. 28; 10, p. 12]. It presents the frequency of tense and aspect forms in narration, dialogue speech and technical literature. The basis of comparison is narration. Therefore the tense and aspect forms are listed in order of their decreasing frequency in narration. Besides the traditional names we also give the names, suggested by A.K. Korsakov (table 1).

Judging by the Table the aspectual forms (“the progressive tenses”)are used by the Englishmen much less frequently than the indefinite and perfect tenses: from about two and a half to less than one percent. The exception is the present progressive which makes up 7.3% in dialogue speech. The second frequent tense is the past progressive tense. It is registered in 2.5% in narration and 1.4% in dialogue speech. The rest three tenses are used extremely rarely- in less than one per cent each. The future perfect progressive exists only theoretically and is practically never used by Englishmen.

This fact of the rare occurrence of the progressive tenses is unfortunately ignored by most grammar manuals [1, p. 9], especially secondary school exercise books, which make emphasis in the material delivered precisely on the progressive forms at the expense of the frequently used tenses. What concerns the present progressive form it should be practiced mostly on extracts from dialogue speech, which is a natural sphere of its occurrence. Our methods of teaching recommendations areespecially important for secondary school teachers, who waste much time and efforts on training tense and aspect-forms that are practically out of use.

The third stage is focused on the morphological and syntactic paradigm of the progressive tenses. This material is allotted much space to in all grammar books. The task of the teacher therefore is only to outline the items that should be paid special attention to. They are: affirmative, negative and interrogative forms of the progressive tenses; full and contracted variants of these forms; spelling variations before “-mg”.

It would be also important to stress that all the changes in the morphological paradigm of the progressive tenses are caused by the changes of the auxiliary “to be”, the “-ing-element” being unaltered.

The fourth stage is devoted to the grammatical content of the Progressive tenses in opposition to the non-progressive ones. It is the most important and at the same time the most complicated one. The grammatical content is covered by four semantic models [6, p. 21-35].

Before passing over to presenting the models we would like to make one reservation: the models given below are illustrated with the simplest examples. This is necessary to make the explanation as clear as possible. The analysis of the examples from the original sources should be given later - only after the students have understood the models perfectly.

The verbal presentation of the models is supplemented with their graphic variants.

Model I: the non-progressive tenses represent verbal processes with emphasis on their limits, while the progressive ones represent verbal processes in their development.

Graphic representation of M I: [V] // VVV

The peculiarity of this model lies in the fact that it corresponds to the Ukrainian perfective and imperfective aspects (in the past and future time spheres). That is why we recommend to begin with the explanation of Model I by opposing examples of the past indefinite and the past progressive tenses (the future indefinite and the future progressive ones). The examples should be translated into Ukrainian [6, p. 21].

Examples:

He opened his eyes //He was opening his eyes.

(Він відкрив очі) // (Він відкриває очі).

Cf.: He opens his eyes //He is opening his eyes.

(Він відкриває очі) Ф (Він відкриває очі).

He closed his eyes //He was closing his eyes.

He took off his coat// He was taking off his coat.

He jumped from the fence // (while) he was jumping from the fence.

Since some grammarians associate the grammatical meaning of the progressive tenses with duration of the processes in time (from here is another name of them - the “continuous tenses”) ask the students to perform the actions mentioned in the above examples in order to see if opens really differs in duration from is opening, etc.

Model II: the non-progressive tenses represent processes as a relatively static feature or a static relationship characteristic of them, while the progressive represent processes in their development (exactly as in Model I).

Graphic representation of M II: F; R // VVV

a) General processes: not pinned up to the moment of speech (not going on at the moment of speech):

Examples:

1. They teach English. // They are teaching English.

2. He paints portraits // He is painting portraits.

3. He plays football // He is playingfootball.

(Model I is out of question as the above processes are represented as non-terminative: He taught English ^ Він викладав англійську // He was teaching English ^ Він викладав англійську).

Here we may come across the difficulty of the students' not understanding of the fact that the semantics the verbs, besides actions and states, as it usually said in grammar books, also has a shade of the meaning of a feature. The evidence of this is the existence in some languages semantically identical but structurally different utterances: Він хворів (the verb) and Він був хворий (verb + adjective) (Ukrainian) Er hat sich verspдtet and Er war spat (German). In the English language, however, there is just one structurally corresponding translation of each of the two utterances that is with the help of the structure “verb + adjective": He was ill and He was late. Semantically the latter utterances represent the specific existence of the substance he by its property (feature) at a certain moment (period) of time expressed by an adjective ill (late). From here it follows that They teach English could also be understood as They are teachers of English. So the answer to “What do they do for living?” could be both: They teach English or They are teachers of English. The same concerns other examples with the present indefinite: He paints portraits (He is a portraitist); He plays football (He is o football player), etc.

Another case is the utterance They are teaching English. It could also be an answer to the question “What do they do for living?" In this case we mean that every day they are in the process of performing activities typical of a teacher.

So both answers They teach English and They are teaching English to the question “ What do they do for living?" are perfect English, the difference between them being that by the first utterance we mean that they are teachers of English while by the second that they every day are in the process of performing activities typical of a teacher. This could be compared to a photograph and a video. Some more examples of Model II:

Why is she so pale?

She smokes hard // - She is smoking hard.

(She is a hard smoker) // (She is often in the process ofsmoking).

b) “On line” processes: going on or being performed at the moment of speech:

The above mentioned difference in meaning between indefinite and progressive forms concerns not only general processes as in the above examples but also the processes that are going on right now, before the eyes of the speaker.

Table 1 The Frequency Table of the English Tense and Aspect Forms