THE CATEGORY OF ORDER

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 854.

The category of order is a system of two-member oppositions of the type writes – has written, wrote – had written, writing – having written, to be written – to have been written, etc. It shows whether the action is viewed upon as prior to or irrespective of other actions.

In Old English there existed the following pattern: the verb to have + a noun (a pronoun) + Participle 2 in the function of an attribute. The latter agreed with the noun in case, number and gender.

e. g. He hæ¶ ¶∂ bōk gewritten.

Cf. Modern English: I want to have my hair cut.

In the course of time Participle 2 lost its forms of agreement with the noun, changed its place and the construction became an analytical grammatical form of the Perfect.

Opinions differ on the status of perfect forms in the paradigm of the modern verb. It is treated as a peculiar tense category (O. Jespersen); as a peculiar aspect category (B.A. Ilyish, G.N. Vorontsova); as a peculiar tense-aspect category (I.P. Ivanova). Moreover, some scientists claim that it is neither one of tense, nor one of aspect but a specific category different from both. A.I. Smirnitsky called it the category of time correlation though there exist other names: the category of priority, the category of perfect, the category of phase, the category of order. We call this category the category of order as it shows the order of actions (which action precedes, which follows).

e. g. He had packed deliberately, thenleft.

To prove that the category of order is a specific verbal category we will consider the above mentioned points of view. Let us find out what relations the category of order has with the already established categories of tense and aspect. If we suppose that perfect forms belong to the system of tenses we will have to treat such forms as the present perfect, the past perfect and the future perfect as a unity of two different tenses (the present and the perfect, the past and the perfect and the future and the perfect) in one and the same word form. Since it is impossible from the grammatical point of view the perfect cannot be a tense category. If we treat perfect forms as aspect forms we are sure to have difficulties considering such forms as the present perfect continuous, the past perfect continuous and the future perfect continuous as they occur to be combinations of two different aspects: continuous and perfect. So it is logical to say that the perfect is a specific verbal category.