Anatomía de Marca: Signo verbal y visual

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We have already seen that tense and time do not correspond directly. Even so, we have a strong feeling that the use of different verb forms has some­ thing to do with ideas of time. It is helpful, therefore, before we think about the meaning of particular grammatical forms in English, to ask ourselves what kind of distinctions might be possible. If we think of the English pronoun system we see, for example, that it is possible to distinguish the speaker I, from the listener you, the personal he/she, from the impersonal it, the involvement of the speaker, I/we, from the non-involvement of the speaker, etc. But it is easy to think of other distinctions which could be possible. For example, English we means “the speaker and one or more other people”, but it would be quite possible to have different pronouns for, for example,

1. the speaker and the listener

2. the speaker and somebody else, not the listener 3. the speaker and more than one other person.

By thinking of the distinctions which could be made, rather than those which we know are made, we can to some extent clear our minds of our preconceptions. At this point, therefore, readers are invited to ask them­ selves how time can be divided into “different kinds of time”. Try to make as long a list as possible with distinctions which you can conceptualise, even if you do not think they are realised in the verb system of either English, or your own language. In fact, of course, many more possible distinctions exist than are actually made directly in the verbal system of our languages. It is surprising how difficult it is to think of different kinds of time which are not direcdy related to how we think the verb system works, but it is possible and a useful exercise. Some possible distinctions are given below.

a. Perhaps the simplest of all temporal distinctions is Now versus not-Now, which we could perhaps call Then.

b.

c. We could distinguish finished and unfinished actions.

d. It might be useful to distinguish unique events from repeated events. e. We have already noted that in our normal understanding of time, the point Now naturally divides time into two — Before Now, and After Now.

f. We could divide time into those events or states which include the point

Now, contrasted with those which do not include that point.

So far all of these distinctions have been dichotomies — they have divided things into two parts. In some ways this is rather strange, as what we usually think of as the natural division of time is into three — Past, Present, Future. We have, however, already noted the difficulty which this tri-partite division raises. ‘Now’ is essentially a point in time, an instant with no dura­ tion. If events are to happen in time, we must think of periods, not points.

So far, all we have done is to list possible contrasts in the idea of time. With this last distinction, however, we have met an idea which is of considerable practical importance. We need to ask whether we are talking about real, objective time, or what we might perhaps call psychological time. This distinction is of great importance. Objectively speaking, any event which happens takes a certain length of time. The length of time may be very short, but nothing happens instantaneously. On the other hand it is quite common for us to perceive things as if they happened instantaneously:

The phone rang at exactly ten past three.

From the point of view of the language we use, it is clearly the psycho­ logical time, the way we perceive the action, which is important, not what “objectively happened”. We have here the first clue to the central, and very important idea discussed in the previous chapter. We may state it very simply as we cannot analyse the language a person uses independently of that person’s perception of what happened.

Some years ago language teaching was usually based on a structuralist approach; students studied different structures in sequence. More recently, the idea of a notional/functional approach has been much more popular. A function may be defined as what the speaker is doing with the language at a particular time; most readers will be familiar with such headings as refusing permission and asking for information, from their textbooks. As far as time is concerned, two obvious functions are asking and telling the time. Both of these are dealt with in textbooks and involve a very limited range of words and structures. But what, on the other hand, of the notion of time? I have never seen a language teaching textbook which attempts to discuss this, at least not systematically and coherently. A discussion of this notion would involve such ideas as how we express the difference between completeness and incompleteness, point and period, simultaneous and successive events, the similarities and differences between Then (past) and Then (future). In short, a discussion of the notion of time involves the kind of exploration we are considering, what kinds of time may be conceived, and how these dif­ ferent kinds of time can be expressed in words? Are the different kinds of time and temporal relationships expressed through the use of structures, or through the use of lexical items (adverbialsft

This question may appear abstract, but it is impossible to approach understanding the difference between, for example, the present perfect and the past simple without considering the underlying question, which is the different ways Past Time may be perceived. (This is discussed in Chapters 9 and 10).

Time, tense, aspect, mood