Irrelevancy of the Meaning of Simultaneousness for the Grammatical Content of the Dynamic Tenses

The meaning of the expanded tenses was said by O. Jespersen to be "relative duration, compared with the shorter time occupied by some other action"¹. O. Jes­persen was followed by A. Brusendorf² and in our country by N. F. Irtenyeva³ and V. L. Filatov⁴. To illustrate this meaning, sentences of the type "When I entered the room he was following me"⁵ are usually given. The two verbal processes in this sentence can be graphically represented as the dot and the line standing for the shorter and the longer process, respectively. In the case of the Past Indef­inite the two processes are said to be represented as following each other in time: "When I entered the room he followed me"⁶. From all the authors referred to above only V. L. Filatov made an attempt to prove his point of view by analysing the use of the Past Continuous in actual instances of speech. His method, however, consists in purely statistical counts of the use of the form in different temporal meanings. The aspectual meaning of the tense and the use of other tenses in like patterns are not investigated. Therefore, it can only give an answer to the ques­tion in what function the Past Continuous Tense is most frequent.

The analysis that follows shows that there are no special forms in English to denote the relation of simultaneousness as it is understood by V. L. Filatov

First,'V. L. Filatov has found that in R. Stevenson's Treasure Island the Past Continuous in the function of relative duration makes about 94% of all its uses (152 out of 162)⁷. After a thorough check-up this figure has been found to be only 56% (97 out of 173).

Second, V. L. Filatov counts the uses of the Past Continuous Tense only. He, therefore, analyses sentenses like "About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drink and medicine. He was lying very much as we had left him", completely disregarding like examples with the Past Indefinite Tense, e. g.: "Then my mother got a candle in the bar, and, holding each other's hands, we advanced into the parlour. He lay as we had left him" (—) All other tenses can also be used to express relative duration, e. g.:

1. "Get your business attended to, and then return. I shall wait up for you» (O. Henry); 2. "I shall be cleaning up when you come with my luggage" (J. Gals­worthy); 3. "Since I've stayed in one of your homes here, I think I've grasped the reason why" (Ibidem); 4. "Young gentlemen, I've finished it while you have been barking at me" (G. Meredith); 5. Never once had Erik sensed the struggle for life in the city during all the time he had lived there (M. Wilson); 6. Brandon had been talking to him when suddenly Ronder had appeared in their midst (H. Wal­pole).

The fact that all tenses can be used to express relative duration shows strongly that the latter is not the meaning of the expanded forms: “The proper way to dis­prove the claim that the peculiar function of the expanded form is to express dura­tion, E. Calver says, is to show that the simple form also expresses duration”.

Third, V. L. Filatov does not consider at all sentences like "Does anyone know we are here?" Davy was asking him when he was getting into the water again (J. Aldridge). Such sentences, however, are a definite indication of the fact that the meaning of relative duration has nothing to do with the gram­matical content of expanded forms because, first, there is no shorter action in them and, secondly, the expanded tenses in them are used to represent verbal processes as progressing. This becomes evident after any of the expanded forms has been replaced by the simple: "Does anyone know we are here?" Davy asked him when he was getting into the water again" (—) and "Does anyone know we are here?" Davy was asking him when he got into the water again" (—). The two transforms are typical instances of the use of the expanded form to express rela­tive duration. But the representation of the verbal processes becomes different: where the expanded form represented the process as going on, the simple one re­presents it in its limits, as completed.

Fourth, the sources analysed contain hundreds of examples in which the duration of the process denoted by the verb in the simple form is greater than that denoted by the expanded past, e. g.:

1. He was quickly rolling a cigarette while the other man made coffee (J.Lon­don); 2. One evening Mary sat in front of her mirror. George was struggling into a shirt (G. Gordon); 3. The sweat was soon pouring down Davison's face as he hurried along the interminable windings of the alley (R. Aldington).

Relative duration in such sentences is expressed by the simple form.

Fifth, frequently a sentence or a larger context contains no process parallel to that denoted by the verb in the expanded past, and the latter is used not rel­atively but absolutely, e. g.:

1. "Well, that's a fine finish", said Drouet, "pack up and pull out, eh? You take the cake. I bet you were knocking around with Hurstwood or you wouldn't act like that" (Th. Dreiser); 2. "What does your backsight do?" —"It tells me what you would say is going to happen, and the insight sometimes says what is or was happening in other places" (Th. White); 3. "What has been the matter with you these last few months?" — "Nothing, darling — except of course that new corn on my little toe I was telling you about — remember?" (M. Aden).

The point of view that the expanded tenses denote simultaneousness cannot also explain their use to express series of verbal processes, as in:

1. But at that moment she woke with a start, sat up, and pulled her dress down. "What was I saying?" — "You were asking me what film, and I was telling you I don't know" (J. Lindsay); 2. Then there was the prick of the needle and the doctor was gone. Doreen was closing the door behind her and tiptoeing back into the room (D. Cusack); 3. "Good-bye, people". One of the foresters had pushed out the machine (the water plane) and turned it a little; the other had twirled the propeller; and already the heavenly rescuer, was dashing away in a gush of foam; it was lifting from the water and climbing (S. Lewis).

Finally, V. L. Filatov while defending his point of view refers to the authority of Otto Jespersen and A. Brusendorf. It is true that the point of view that the expanded forms denoted relative duration was advanced by O. Jespersen and supported by A. Brusendorf. But it is also true that neither of these linguists denied aspectual meaning in them. "If we say he was (on) hunting,— O. Jespersen explains,— we mean that the hunting (which may be completed now) had begun, but was not completed at the time mentioned or implied in the sentence, and this element of incompletion (at that time) is very important if we want to understand the expanded tenses, even if it is not equally manifest in all cases. But it should be noted that it is not the period of time that is incomplete, but the action or state indicated by the verb itself"¹. "That these tenses,— A. Brusendorf writes, — ...have a special task to perform, express a special aspect (or Aktionsart) of the verb, cannot very well be doubted².

Therefore, while V. L. Filatov himself finds the temporal meaning of relative duration in the expanded past to be present only in about 94% of its uses³, he overlooks completely the fact that the aspectual mean­ing of the process represented in its development is present in the form in 100% of its total use.