tailieunhanh - The grammar of the english verb phrase part 23

The kind of English treated is Standard British English (including both written and spoken registers). However, there is a link to American English on the (rare) occasions when the two languages make different choices in connec¬ tion with a particular principle of the English tense system. | IV. The present and past time-spheres 147 IV. The present and past time-spheres The conceptualization of time-spheres English tenses appear to reflect a mental division of time into past and nonpast. The main evidence for this is that all tenses carry either a past or a nonpast present tense morpheme. There is no future tense morpheme. We will represent this division of time as involving two time-spheres a past time-sphere and a present time-sphere. In English the use of tenses implies a conceptual division of time into two time-spheres the present time-sphere and the past time-sphere. Note that a time-sphere is a length of time and should not be visualized as something spherical round . The claim that English speakers conceptualize linguistic time as divided into two not three viz. past present and future time-spheres is based on several observations. Firstly all the tenses make use of an inflectional tense morpheme which expresses either past or There is no inflectional future tense morpheme in English the future tense is formed with the help of the present tense form of an auxiliary will i. e. a free morpheme rather than a bound one. Thus will do which realizes PRESENT will do contains a present tense inflectional morpheme and would do which expresses PAST will do contains a past tense inflectional morpheme. Secondly it is in keeping with this that the future tense use of shall and will has developed from their use as forms expressing present nonepistemic modality more specifically some kind of volition . Thirdly in order to temporally relate a situation time to a future situation time English uses the same tense system as it uses to temporally relate a situation time to t0 compare I am ill with Next time he will pretend that he is ill and He has left with I will do it when he has left see . This means that English treats a future situation time which functions as a starting point for the temporal location of other situation times as a .