- •4И(Англ.) к69
- •Preface to the second edition
- •General notions the verb
- •Actions and states
- •Qualitative characteristics of processes
- •Verbal modes of action
- •General and variant lexical meanings of verbs
- •Part I grammatical content of the finite forms grammatical categories of the english verb
- •Verbal aspect
- •Finite and non-finite verbal forms
- •Time and aspect relations denoted by the english verbal forms
- •Time content of the finite verb forms
- •Logical Time
- •Processes of the Objective World and Time Relationships
- •Irrelevancy of the Meaning of Simultaneousness for the Grammatical Content of the Dynamic Tenses
- •Aspectual content of tenses
- •Present, past, and future tenses (absolute tenses)
- •PastStatic a n d p a s t d у n a m і с
- •Future Static and Future Dynamic
- •Present Static and Present Dynamic
- •Model II
- •Present Static and Present Dynamic
- •Past Static and Past Dynamic
- •Future Static and Future Dynamic
- •Model III
- •Present Static and Present Dynamic
- •Past Static and Past Dynamic
- •Future Static and Future Dynamic
- •Model IV
- •The Beforefuture Static Tense1
- •Irrelevancy of the Meaning Concrete Process for the Grammatical Content of the Dynamic Tenses
- •Irrelevancy of the Meanings Resultative Connections, Current Relevance, and Completeness for the Grammatical Content of the Anterior Tenses
- •The system of the english tenses
- •Part II the use of the tenses relative frequency of the tenses
- •Table III frequency of use of anterior dynamic, beforefuture static, and future dynamic tenses
- •Table IV the use of tenses in technical literature1
- •In different kinds of text
- •In the passive voice
- •Table VII
- •Factors influencing the choice of the tenses in speech
- •Factors Conditioned Mainly by the Peculiarities of the English Verb System
- •The Historical Factor
- •Harmony Between Tense-sequence Meaning and Speech Information
- •Factors Permitting the Speaker to Choose From Two or More Tenses
- •Economy of Speech Efforts
- •Direction of Speech Intentionality
- •Stylistic Considerations
- •The use of absolute static tenses
- •The present static
- •Processes Objectively Belonging to Present Time
- •Processes Objectively Belonging to Past Time
- •Adverbials of Time Used with the Present Static
- •The past static
- •The use of the past static to refer to sequent processes
- •The use of the past static to refer to simultaneous processes
- •The Past Static in Sentences Where Resultative Connections with the Present are Expressed
- •The Past Static in Sentences with Ever, Never, Always, Before
- •The Use of the Past Static after the Beforepresent Static in the Same or Different Sentences
- •Parallel uses of the past and the beforepast static
- •The past static and definiteness of verbal processes in time
- •Adverbs and Adverbial Phrases of Time Frequently Combined with the Past Static
- •Miscellaneous
- •The future static
- •Miscellaneous
- •The use of absolute dynamic tenses
- •The present dynamic
- •Processes Objectively Belonging to Present Time
- •Processes Objectively Belonging to Future Time
- •Processes Objectively Belonging to Past Time
- •The present dynamic to refer to simultaneous processes
- •The present dynamic to refer to sequent processes
- •Adverbs and adverbial phrases of time combined with the present dynamic
- •Verbs used in the present dynamic
- •Miscellaneous
- •The past dynamic
- •Examples of Verbal Processes of Increasing Length
- •The past dynamic to refer to simultaneous processes
- •Synchronous Processes:
- •Sentences with a While-Clause (see Table XIV).
- •The past dynamic to refer to processes begun or terminated when another process represented in its limits took place
- •The past dynamic to refer to processes correlated with a situation existing or a process occurring at the moment of speaking
- •Parallel uses of the past dynamic and anterior tenses
- •The past dynamic to refer to processes future relative to some moment in the past
- •Adverbs and adverbial phrases of time combined with the past dynamic
- •Verbs used in the past dynamic2
- •Miscellaneous
- •The future dynamic
- •Examples of Verbal Processes of Increasing Length
- •The future dynamic to refer to simultaneous processes
- •The future dynamic to refer to sequent processes
- •Adverbials of time combined with the future dynamic
- •Verbs used in the future dynamic3
- •Verbs used in the beforefuture static
- •Inclusive and Exclusive Processes
- •Verbs used in the beforepresent dynamic
- •Independent Clauses
- •Included Clauses
- •Verbs used in the beforepast dynamic
In the passive voice
Relative frequencies of different tense-aspect forms (the data are based on successive selection from 1,000 pages of fiction text and 500 pages of text for each of the other functional styles) are given in Table VI I.
Table VII
Tenses |
Relative Frequency in % |
||||
|
F iction |
Technical text |
L inguistic text |
Newspapers |
Plays |
Past Static |
62.22 |
11.6 |
9.20 |
44.7 |
17.9 |
Present Static |
15.80 |
64.7 |
73.50 |
26.5 |
63.4 |
Beforepast Static |
12.55 |
0.1 |
0.07 |
5.2 |
1.9 |
Future Static (incl. Future- in-the-Past) |
2.94 |
15.0 |
5.76 |
6.5 |
4.9 |
Beforepresent Static |
2.56 |
7.1 |
9.64 |
11.1 |
9.4 |
Past Dynamic |
2.50 |
— |
— |
1.0 |
0.2 |
Beforefuture Static (incl. Beforefuture-in-the-Past) |
0.68 |
— |
0.06 |
0.3 |
— |
Present Dynamic |
0.14 |
1.0 |
1.51 |
3.5 |
1.9 |
54
Only ten tense-aspect forms out of the theoretically possible sixteen (See p. 50) are used in the Passive Voice against fourteen in the Active. Practically not used are the Dynamic Anterior (the Beforepresent Dynamic, Beforefuture Dynamic, Beforepast Dynamic, and the Before-future Dynamic-in-the-Past), the Future Dynamic as well as the Future Dynamic-in-the-Past, that is the tenses that would contain be + being in their structures (the thumb rule: practically no be — be tenses in English), for example:
*He will have been being asked.
This rule, however, is not absolutely airtight, as is witnessed by such extremely rare (three instances, including two infinitives, .per 150,000 pages of text) examples as:
"I shall always be being pushed away from him by her (J. Galsworthy); At the same moment an elephant calf may be being born a mile or two away in the Jungle (J. Williams); "She may have been being blackmailed by someone" (A. Christie).
The relative frequencies of different tense-aspect verb forms are comparable with those of the Active Voice (See Tables II and IV on pp. 51 and 53).
In accordance with the statistic counts (1000 pages of consecutive selection) the Active Voice in fiction is about 9 times more frequent than the Passive. In linguistic text the relation of Active to Passive is about 1.4 to 1.