Specification and English tenses

Abstract

The adverbials, as far as I am aware, have never been systematically considered in relation to English verbal description and definition, most traditional text-books resolving the relationship in terms of a vaguely-defined notional ‘modification’. Scholars have of course noted the existence of regular formal co-occurrences between temporal adverbials and tense-forms, but this has been only for the most obvious cases, and there has been no general, empirical study of all the mutual restrictions and formally definable correlations in English. For example, Jespersen (1933) introduces adverbials into some sections of his description of English tenses (e.g. 23.43) but omits them from others (e.g. 23.41 or 23.54) where one could suggest a comparable relevance, and in many sections (e.g. 23.63–23.67) gives only a partial picture of the total number of possible relationships. Again, Ward (1954:44) notes the frequency of adverbials with ‘past ordinary’ tenses, but gives only a few examples, and then lists ‘exceptions’ with no apparent order. Adverbials with other tense-forms are given little mention, and are in any case given a different orientation, which makes it difficult to compare the sets of information. This approach seems typical of that found in most teaching handbooks on the subject: one could instance Zandvoort (1957: 58–63), who gives adverbials only incidental mention in his description of present, past and perfect tenses, despite the fact that the majority of his examples involve their obligatory use. However, Ota (1963) has studied in more detail correlations between verb forms and certain adverbs of particular semantic classes in English; and Osman (1964: 28–106) has recently given adverb-tense relationship a great deal of prominence in his exposition of English tenses; but the scope of his handbook does not allow a sufficiently detailed treatment to show the full range and complexity of the situation. (Cf. also Hornby, 1954: Part 2.)

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