§ 7.The category of retrospective coordination (retrospect) is constituted by the opposition of the perfect forms of the verb to the non-perfect, or imperfect forms. The marked member of the opposition is the perfect, which is built up by the auxiliary have in combination with the past participle of the conjugated verb. In symbolic notation it is expressed by the formula have ... en.
The functional meaning of the category has been interpretedinlinguistic literature in four different ways, each contributing to the evolution of the general theory of retrospective coordination.
The first comprehensively represented grammatical exposition of the perfect verbal form was the "tense view": by this view the perfect is approached as a peculiar tense form. The tense view of the perfect is presented in the works of H. Sweet, G. Curme, M. Bryant and J.R. Aiken, and some other foreign scholars. In Russian linguistic literature this view was consistently developed by N.F. Irtenyeva. The tense interpretation of the perfect was also endorsed by the well-known course of English Grammar by M.A. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevskaya.
The difference between the perfect and non-perfect forms of the verb, according to the tense interpretation of the perfect, consists in the fact that the perfect denotes a secondary temporal characteristic of the action. Namely, it shows that the denoted action precedes some other action or situation in the present, past, or future. This secondary tense quality of the perfect, in the context of the "tense view", is naturally contrasted against the secondary tense quality of the continuous, which latter, according to N.F. Irtenyeva, intensely expresses simultaneity of the denoted action with some other action in the present, past, or future.
The idea of the perfect conveying a secondary time characteristic of the action is quite a sound one, because it shows that the perfect, in fact, coexists with the other, primary expression of time. What else, if not a secondary time meaning of priority, is rendered by the perfect forms in the following example:
Grandfather has taken his morning stroll and now is having a rest on the veranda.
The situation is easily translated into the past with the time correlation intact: → Grandfather had taken his morning stroll and was having a rest on the veranda.
With the future, the correlations is not so clearly pronounced. However, the reason for it lies not in the deficiency of the perfect as a secondary tense, but in the nature of the future time plane, which exists only as a prospective plane, thereby to a degree levelling the expression of differing timings of actions. Making allowance for the unavoidable prospective temporal neutralizations, the perfective priority expressed in the given situation can be clearly conveyed even in its future translations, extended by the exposition of the corresponding connotations:
→By the time he is having a rest on the veranda. Grandfather will surely have taken his morning stroll. →Grandfather will have a rest on the veranda only after he has taken his morning stroll.
Laying emphasis on the temporal function of the perfect, the "tense view", though, fails to expose with the necessary distinctness its aspective function, by which the action is shown as successively or "transmissively" connected with a certain time limit. Besides, the purely oppositional nature of the form is not disclosed by this approach either, thus leaving the categorial status of the perfect undefined.
The second grammatical interpretation of the perfect was the "aspect view": according to this interpretation the perfect is approached as an aspective form of the verb. The aspect view is presented in the works of M. Deutschbein, E.A. Sonnenschein, A.S. West, and other foreign scholars. In Russian linguistic literature the aspective interpretation of the perfect was comprehensively developed by G.N. Vorontsova. This subtle observer of intricate interdependen-cies of language profoundly demonstrated the idea of the successive connection of two events expressed by the perfect, prominence given by the form to the transference or "transmission" of the accessories of a pre-situation to a post-situation. The great merit of G.N. Vorontsova's explanation of the aspective nature of the perfect lies in the fact that the resultative meaning ascribed by some scholars to the perfect as its determining grammatical function is understood in her conception within a more general destination of this form, namely as a particular manifestation of its transmissive functional semantics.
Indeed, if we compare the two following verbal situations, we shall easily notice that the first of them expresses result, while the second presents a connection of a past event with a later one in a broad sense, the general inclusion of the posterior situation in the sphere of influence of the anterior situation:
The wind has dropped, and the sun burns more fiercely than ever.
"Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila? But. my child, how too weird - " cried the Sheridan girls.
The resultative implication of the perfect in the first of the above examples can be graphically shown by the diagnostic transformation, which is not applicable to the second example:
→ The sun burns more fiercely than ever as a result of the wind having dropped.
At the same time, the plain resultative semantics quite evidently appears as a particular variety of the general transmissive meaning, by which a posterior event is treated as a successor of an anterior event on very broad lines of connection.
Recognizing all the merits of the aspect approach in question, however, we clearly see its two serious drawbacks. The first of them is that, while emphasizing the aspective side of the function of the perfect, it underestimates its temporal side, convincingly demonstrated by the tense view of the perfect described above. The second drawback, though, is just the one characteristic of the tense view, repeated on the respectively different material: the described aspective interpretation of the perfect fails to strictly formulate its oppositional nature, the categorial status of the perfect being left undefined.
The third grammatical interpretation of the perfect was the "tense-aspect blend view": in accord with this interpretation the perfect is recognized as a form of double temporal-aspective character, similar to the continuous. The tense-aspect interpretation of the perfect was developed in the works of I.P. Ivanova. According to I.P. Ivanova, the two verbal forms expressing temporal and aspective functions in a blend are contrasted against the indefinite form as their common counterpart of neutralized aspective properties.
The achievement of the tense-aspect view of the perfect is the fact that it demonstrates the actual double nature of the analysed verbal form, its inherent connection with both temporal and aspective spheres of verbal semantics. Thus, as far as the perfect is concerned, the tense-aspect view overcomes the one-sided approach to it peculiar both to the first and the second of the noted conceptions.
Indeed, the temporal meaning of the perfect is quite apparent in constructions like the following:
I have lived in this city long enough, I haven't met Charlie for years.
The actual time expressed 'by the perfect verbal forms used in the examples can be made explicit by time-test questions:
How long have you lived in this city? For how long haven't you met Charlie?
Now, the purely aspective semantic component of the perfect form will immediately be made prominent if the sentences were continued like that:
I have lived in this city long enough to show you all that is worth seeing here. I haven't met Charlie for years, and can hardly recognize him in a crowd.
The aspective function of the perfect verbal forms in both sentences, in its turn, can easily be revealed by aspect-test questions:
What can you do as a result of your having lived in this city for years? What is the consequence of your not having met Charlie for years?
However, comprehensively exposing the two different sides of the integral semantics of the perfect, the tense-aspect conception loses sight of its categorial nature altogether, since it leaves undisclosed how the grammatical function of the perfect is effected in contrast to the continuous or indefinite, as well as how the "categorial blend" of the perfect-continuous is contrasted against its three counterparts, i.e. the perfect, the continuous, the indefinite.
As we see, the three described interpretations of the perfect, actually complementing one another, have given in combination a broad and profound picture of the semantical content of the perfect verbal forms, though all of them have failed to explicitly explain the grammatical category within the structure of which the perfect is enabled to fulfil its distinctive function.
The categorial individuality of the perfect was shown as a result of study conducted by A.I. Smirnitsky. His conception of the perfect, the fourth in our enumeration, may be called the "time correlation view", to use the explanatory name he gave to the identified category. What was achieved by this' brilliant thinker, is an explicit demonstration of the fact that the perfect form, by means of its oppositional mark, builds up its own category, different from both the "tense" (present - past - future) and the "aspect" (continuous-indefinite), and not reducible to either of them. The functional content of the category of "time correlation" («временнаяотнесен-ность») was defined as priority expressed by the perfect forms in the present, past or future contrasted against the non-expression of priority by the non-perfect forms. The immediate factor that gave cause to A.I. Smirnitsky to advance the new interpretation of the perfect was the peculiar structure of the perfect continuous form in which the perfect, the form of precedence, i.e. the form giving prominence to the idea of two times brought in contrast, coexists syntagmatically with the continuous, the form of simultaneity, i.e. the form expressing one time for two events, according to the "tense view" conception of it. The gist of reasoning here is that, since the two expressions of the same categorial semantics are impossible in one and the same verbal form, the perfect cannot be either an aspective form, granted the continuous expresses the category of aspect, or a temporal form, granted the continuous expresses the category of tense. The inference is that the category in question, the determining part of which is embodied in the perfect, is different from both the tense and the aspect, this difference being fixed by the special categorial term "time correlation".
The analysis undertaken by A.I. Smirnitsky is of outstanding significance not only for identifying the categorial status of the perfect, but also for specifying further the general notion of, a grammatical category. It develops the very technique of this kind of identification.
Still, the "time correlation view" is not devoid of certain limitations. First, it somehow underestimates the aspective plane of the categorial semantics of the perfect, very convincingly demonstrated by G.N. Vorontsova in the context of the "aspect view" of the perfect, as well as by I.P. Ivanova in the context of the "tense-aspect blend view" of the perfect. Second, and this is far more important, the reasoning by which the category is identified, is not altogether complete in so far as it confuses the general grammatical notions of time and aspect with the categorial status of concrete word-forms in each particular language conveying the corresponding meanings. Some languages may canvey temporal or aspective meanings within the functioning of one integral category for each (as, for instance, the Russian language), while other languages may convey the same or similar kind of meanings in two or even more categories for each (as, for instance, the English language). The only true criterion of this is the character of the representation of the respective categorial forms in the actual speech manifestation of a lexeme. If a lexeme normally displays the syntagmatic coexistence of several forms distinctly identifiable by their own peculiar marks, as, for example, the forms of person, number, time, etc., it means that these forms in the system of language make up different grammatical categories. The integral grammatical meaning of any word-form (the concrete speech entry of a lexeme) is determined by the whole combination ("bunch") of the categories peculiar to the part of speech the lexeme belongs to. For instance, the verb-form has been speaking inthe sentence "The Red Chief has just been speaking" expresses, in terms of immediately (positively) presented grammatical forms, the third person of the category of person, the singular of the category of number, the present of the category of time, the continuous of the category of development, the perfect of the category under analysis. As for the character of the determining meaning of any category, it may either be related to the meaning of some adjoining category, or may not - it depends on the actual categorial correlations that have shaped in a language in the course of its historical development. In particular, in Modern English, in accord with our knowledge of its structure, two major purely temporal categories are to be identified, i.e. primary time and prospective time, as well as two major aspective categories. One of the latter is the category of development. The other, as has been decided above, is the category of retrospective coordination featuring the perfect as the marked component form and the. imperfect as its unmarked counterpart. We have considered it advisable to re-name the indicated category in order, first, to stress its actual retrospective property (in fact, what is strongly expressed in the temporal plane of the category, is priority of action, not any other relative time signification), and second, to reservp such a general term as "correlation" for more unrestricted, free manipulations in non-specified uses connected with grammatical analysis.
§ 8. Thus, we have arrived at the "strict categorial view" of the perfect, disclosing it as the marking form of a separate verbal category, semantically intermediate between aspective and temporal, but quite self-dependent in the general categorial system of the English verb. It is this interpretation of the perfect that gives a natural explanation to the "enigmatic" verbal form of the perfect continuous, showing that each categorial marker - both perfect and continuous-being separately expressed in the speech entry of the verbal lexeme, conveys its own part in the integral grammatical meaning of the entry. Namely, the perfect interprets the action in the light of priority and aspective transmission, while the continuous presents the same action as progressive. As a result, far from displaying any kind of semantic contradiction or discrepancy, the grammatical characterization of the action gains both in precision and vividness. The latter quality explains why this verbal form is gaining more and more ground in present-day colloquial English.
As a matter of fact, the specific semantic features of the perfect and the continuous in each integrating use can be distinctly exposed by separate diagnostic tests. Cf:.
A week or two ago someone related an incident to me with the suggestion that I should write a story on it, and since then I have been thinking it over (S. Maugham).
Testing for the perfect giving prominence to the expression of priority in retrospective coordination will be represented as follows: → I have been thinking over the suggestion for a week or two now.
Testing for the perfect giving prominence to the expression of succession in retrospective coordination will be made thus: → Since the time the suggestion was made I have been thinking it over.
Finally, testing for the continuous giving prominence to the expression of action in progress will include expansion: → Since the suggestion was made I have been thinking it over continually.
Naturally, both perfect indefinite and perfect continuous, being categorially characterized by their respective features, in normal use are not strictly dependent on a favourable contextual environment and can express their semantics in isolation from adverbial time indicators. Cf:.