The Present Tense

As to its syntagmatic semantics, the Present is the richest tense form. Its paradigmatic meaning is that of immediate present coinciding with the moment of speech. It’s syntagmatic meanings are: habitual recurrent actions characterising a person (He hates authority); universal truths (usually in maxims)(The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. O.Wilde); the biblical timeless present ( One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the Earth abideth forever…); futurity ( He returns from London tomorrow); a long stretch of time from the past into the future( I know him all my life); a past occurrence ( the so called Historic, Dramatic Present) (Yesterday she comes in, sits down, gasps and dies. A. Christie. Then he turned the corner and what do you think happensnext?).

The Past Tense

It seems to be semantically simpler as it merely refers to something that happened in the past. According to Otto Jespersen’s theory of the imaginative use of tenses, the Past or the before Past conveys, under certain conditions, hypothetical actions, unreality, impossibility (I wish you did it. I wish You had done it yesterday. He looks as if he had never been here). O.Espersen did not distinguish the Subjunctive Mood (neither Subjuncive I nor Subjunctive II).

The Future-in-the-Past Tense

There’s no agreement as to the place the forms should/would + infinitive occupy in the system of the English language. Often, these forms are placed outside the morphological categories. Prof. Smirnitsky finds them to be an expression of the Conditional mood. Prof. Ivanova put forward the idea of two temporal centres: the centre of the Present and that of the Past. The Future-in-the-Past is a dependent future belonging to the past. According to prof. Khaimovich should/would are the manifestations of the category of posteriority which is based on the oppositions shall : should, will : would. M.Y. Blokh distinguishes the category of prospective posteriority. He distinguishes two Futures: the Future-of-the-Present and the Future-of-the-Past . According to prof. Plotkin, the Future-in-the-Past is the 4 -th member of the tense paradigm in modern English.

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The Future Tense	\|	The Category of Aspect

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