ive). In reality, though, it cannot be done, because the perfect expresses not only time in relative retrospect, but also the very connection of a prior process with a time-limit reflected in a subsequent event. Thus, the perfect forms of the verb display a mixed, intermediary character, which places them apart both from the relative posterior tense and the aspective development. The true nature of the perfect is temporal aspect reflected in its own opposition, which cannot be reduced to any other opposition of the otherwise recognised verbal categories. The suggested name for this category will be "retrospective coordination", or, contractedly, "retrospect". The categorial member opposed to the perfect, for the sake of terminological consistency, will be named "imperfect" (non-perfect). As an independent category, the retrospective coordination is manifested in the integral verb-form together with the manifestations of other categories, among them the aspective category of development. Thus, alongside of the forms of perfect continuous and perfect indefinite, the verb distinguishes also the forms of imperfect continuous and imperfect indefinite. p align="justify"> At this point of our considerations, we should like once again to call the reader's attention to the difference between the categorial terminology and the definitions of categories.
A category, in normal use, cannot be represented twice in one and the same word-form. It follows from this that the integral verb-form cannot display at once more than one expression of each of the recognised verbal categories, though it does give a representative expression to all the verbal categories taken together through the corresponding obligatory featuring (which can be, as we know, either positive or negative). And this fact provides us with a safe criterion of categorial identification for cases where the forms under analysis display related semantic functions. p align="justify"> We have recognised in the verbal system of English two temporal categories (plus one "minor" category of futurity option) and two aspective categories. But does this mean that the English verb is "doubly" (or "triply", for that matter) inflected by the "grammatical category" of tense and the "grammatical category" of aspect? In no wise. p align="justify"> The course of our deductions has been quite the contrary. It is just because the verb, in its one and the same, at each time uniquely given integral form of use, manifests not one, but two expressions of time (for instance, past and future); it is because it manifests not one, but two expressions of aspect (for instance, continuous and perfect), that we have to recognise these expressions as categorially different. In other words, such universal grammatical notions as "time", "tense", "aspect", "mood" and others, taken by themselves, do not automatically presuppose any unique categorial systems. It is only the actual correlation of the corresponding grammatical forms in a concrete, separate language that makes up a grammatical category. In particular, when certain forms that come under the same meaningful grammatical heading are mutually exclusive, it means that they together make up a grammatical category. This is the case with the three Russian verbal tenses. Indeed, the Russian verbal form of the future cannot syntagmatically coexist with the present or past forms - these forms are mutually exclusive, thereby constituting one unified category of time (tense), existing in the three categorial forms: the present, the past, the future. In English, on the contrary, the future form of the verb can freely re-occur with the strongly marked past form, thereby making up a category radically different from the category manifested by the system of "present - past" discrimination. And it is the same case with the forms of the continuous and the perfect. Just because they can freely coexist in one and the same syntagmatic manifestation of the verb, we have to infer that they enter (in the capacity of oppositional markers) essentially different categories, though related to each other by their general aspective character.
The aspective category of development is constituted by the opposition of the continuous forms of the verb to the non-continuous, or indefinite forms of the verb. The marked member of the opposition is the continuous, which is built up by the auxiliary be plus the present participle of the conjugated verb. In symbolic notation it is represented by the formula be ... ing. The categorial meaning of the continuous is "action in progress"; the unmarked member of the opposition, the indefinite, leaves this meaning unspecified, ie expresses the non-continuous.
The evolution of views in connection with the interpretation of the continuous forms has undergone three stages.
The traditional analysis place...
