The analysis of Past tense expression in the texts of different functional styles

  Instances are not few when patterning with such adverbs becomes an effective stylistic device to express various emotions: annoyance, irritation, displeasure, anger, amusement, praise, etc. The expressive element is often intensified by some other indicators of the given context.

     The emotive factors determine and modify patterns of grammatical structure in innumerable ways. Attention has been repeatedly drawn to the fact that they may affect not only the choice of vocabulary but the character of such metaphors as occur in the use of grammatical forms. The Continuous Tenses of the present-day English are most dynamic in this respect. More and more they are used with special functions of different modal force. The stylistic range of their application in expressive language has become surprisingly wide.

3. We also know such transpositions when the Past Continuous is endowed with special emotive functions and comes to express rather the intention of doing something than the action itself. In such patterns of "implied negation" the connection between the subject and predicate is not to be taken in a direct or positive sense. The meaning is thus negative, that of an unrealised intention to do something (suppositional modality)²⁶.

1.3.3 Perfect tenses in English language.

       As Zandvoort said, the category of time relevance in English is based on the binary opposition "non-perfective: perfective"; the former is known to be unmarked, the latter possesses a special grammatical meaning. This is to suggest that the action denoted by the unmarked form is not correlated with some other moment of time or some other action whereas the perfect form is characterised by a special current relevance.

        Grammarians differ greatly in defining the linguistic nature of the Perfect Tenses in English. That the category of Perfect is a tense category is sometimes denied. Reference is often made to the specific aspective essence of these verbal forms defined as resultative, retrospective, successive, etc²⁷.

      Smirnitsky's viewpoint presents a special point of interest. His basic assumption is that the Perfect Tenses express the category of "time relation" presented by the regular opposition of all Perfect forms to all non-Perfect forms, such as works: has worked; worked: had worked; will work: will have worked, etc. The corresponding relative terms adopted by A. Smirnitsky for these grammatical contrasts are "non-perfect" and "perfect".

    The unmarked non-Perfect forms do not refer to a special current relevance whereas the marked Perfect forms express priority.

    A. I. Smirnitsky presents a logical system of the correlation between the Indefinite, the Continuous, the Perfect and the Perfect Continuous forms graphically as a parallelepiped on whose three dimensions he placed: 1) the category of tense (the Present, the Past and the Future), 2) the category of aspect (the Common and the Continuous) and 3) category of time relation (the non-Perfect and the Perfect forms)²⁸.

  Somewhat similar views on the categories of the English verb are held by the American scholar Joos M.

    In treating the Indefinite, the Continuous, the Perfect and the Perfect Continuous forms M Joos, like Prof. Smirnitsky, marks out three different verb categories which he calls "tense", "aspect" and "phrase".

   Other grammarians advocate the view according to which the category of Perfect is a peculiar tense category, i. e. a category included in the verb paradigm along with the categories “present” and “past”. The category of Perfect is a peculiar aspect category and as such must be included in the regular grammatical contrasts of "common" and "continuous" aspects. 

        The divergency of the linguistic approaches to the identification of the Perfect Tenses in English is indeed striking²⁹.

    The question much debated nowadays is how define the invariable meaning of these grammatical forms.

    What should not escape our notice is that the shift from tense to aspect which is so specific in the functional relationships of English verb-forms cannot be studied in isolation from the distributional meaning of the Perfect Tenses.

    According to Vorontsova, one more question primary in importance is that the grammatical content of the Perfect Tenses cannot be studied without a considerable reference to the lexical character of the verb and variations of denotative and connotative meaning resulting from the use of Perfect forms in different syntactical environment, large patterns, in particular.

    The occurrence of the Perfect Tenses in different syntactic environments will show variations of their basic grammatical content. Instances are not few when the context comes to be explicit enough to neutralise the opposition between the Perfect Tenses and the preterit verb-forms.

    The current relevance as marked by the Perfect Tenses must reasonably be referred to as their basic meaning.

    Observations on the difference of distribution, in the kind of context, linguistic or situational, where each perfect form occurs, give every reason to say that the resultative meaning and the meaning of completeness do not exhaust the aspective content of the Perfect Tenses with all their multiple polysemantic essence in present-day English.

    What needs further investigations as grammar learning advances is the study of the dependence of the meaning of Perfect forms on the tense category (present, past and future) and its distributional meaning in cases when the application of the verb-form seems to go far beyond the strict limits of the system. The fact is that we occasionally find such varied uses of the Perfect Tenses that they may bring to considerable linguistic changes of the meaning of the form itself. It is also interesting to note that considerable variations in their patterning sometimes appear a matter of stylistic preference.

       It will not be superfluous to point out that there is a good deal of difference between the use of the Past and Perfect Tenses in English and some other languages. The Perfect Tense is often used in other languages where the Past Tense is required in English. This is the case when attention is drawn to the time at which an action or event took place in the past; hence especially in questions beginning with when? (Sometimes with where?), and in sentences with adverbial adjuncts answering such questions.

    Next we come to the use of the Past Perfect Tense. It will as well be seen here that the syntax of the verb bears an intimate relation to its morphology because the grammatical content of this verb-form is also greatly conditioned by the syntactical arrangements in which it occurs.

    Observed in different patterns of syntactic environment the Past Perfect will show a considerable variation in its grammatical meaning.

It is important to emphasise the following:

  a) in a great many cases the Past Perfect Tense serves to connect grammatically two past actions, one of which is prior in time. Examples are not far to seek:

  Dinny spun round to the window. Dark had fallen and if it hadn't she couldn't have seen. (Galsworthy)

    Sometimes it is possible to use the simple Past Tense for both actions in analogous arrangements; the difference will be one of emphasis. The Past Perfect emphasises the priority of time. In its stylistic value it is slightly more formal.

Past perfect progressive is formed by had, the grammatical particle been and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. For negation, not is included before been: I had not been waiting. A question sentence is formed by starting with had: Had she been waiting?

If emphasis is put on the duration of a concluded action of the past, since and for are signal words for past perfect progressive.

        The analysis of the distributional meaning of the tense-forms in present-day English, brief as it is, will remind us of the constitutional value of syntactic morphology whose subject matter is "grammar in context". Variations in the use of the verb-forms, their potential polysemy and transpositions conditioned by the mode of the speaker's representation of the verbal idea are a source of constant linguistic interest. Different verb-forms may be used with one and the same time-reference. Observations in this field make it apparent that the various functions of the tenses are not yet finally and absolutely fixed. Making for greater subtleties and finer shades in expressing the speaker's subjective attitude to the utterance functional shifts are still taking place³⁰.  

1.4 Active and Passive Voices in English language system.

     As Kruisinga said, languages differ greatly in their idiosyncrasies, i. e. in the forms which they have adopted, in the peculiarities of their usages in the combinative power of words and idiomatic forms of grammar peculiar to that language and not generally found in other languages³¹.

  From this point of view the category of voice presents a special linguistic interest. Passive constructions play an important part in the English verb-system. Modern English, especially in its later periods, has developed the use of passive formations to a very great extent.

       According to Whitehall, as a grammatical category voice is the form of the verb which shows the relation between the action and its subject indicating whether the action is performed by the subject or passes on to it. Accordingly there are two voices in English: the active and the passive. The active voice shows that the action is performed by its subject, that the subject is the doer of the action. The passive voice shows that the subject is acted upon, that it is the recipient of the action, for example:

I wrote a letter. A letter was written by me.

  The choice of the passive construction is often due to the fact that the agent is unknown or the speaker prefers not to speak of him.

  Sometimes the agent is dropped altogether when it is unknown, well knows or unimportant. Only the passive makes this economy possible.

  Describing the "voice" system in English structural grammarians often lay emphasis on the fact that voice, which theoretically indicates whether the subject acts (active voice), is acted on (passive voice), performs the action for itself (dynamic voice), or acts on itself (reflexive voice), is relatively unimportant in English. The passive voice is accordingly regarded as a word-order device for giving emphasis to what would normally be inner or outer complements. H. Whitehall, for instance, makes reference to words forming the inner and outer complements of the standard sentence by the use of passive constructions³².

        From the point of view of Sweet, the difference between Active and Passive Voice is as the terms are defined. For example, in Active Voice the subject is performing or doing an action, thus the term doer. In Active Voice the subject is actively involved in the action. On the other hand, in Passive Voice the doer is no longer the subject, and the subject is no longer participating in any action, but rather, the action is being done to the subject;  thus, the subject is now the receiver. In this voice, the sentence wants to emphasize the action and not who is doing the action. 

        If you consider all of the skills involved in learning a language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, two are active and two are passive. Speaking and writing are skills that require action while listening and reading require little or no action, thus passive skills. 

For example: The man is reading the newspaper. (Active Voice – The subject or the doer is reading.)            

            The newspaper is being read by the man. (Passive Voice – The subject in this sentence is not doing anything, but it is receiver of the action).

Not all sentences can be written both in Active or Passive Voice. Only those sentences that have a subject, a verb, and an object can be converted into Passive Voice. There are many verbs that have no object. Some examples:

The woman is crying. (No object)

The students are going to the library. (No object)

The above sentences can only be written in Active Voice. Verbs that do not have an object are called intransitive verbs. On the other hand, if there is an object in the sentence, it can be written in Passive Voice. Some examples of sentences with an object are:

The man bought a newspaper. (Active Voice)

The newspaper was bought by the man. (Passive Voice)

The above sentences can be written in both Active and Passive Voice because there is an object in the Active Voice, in this case, the newspaper. Verbs that have an object are called transitive verbs. When you look a verb up in a dictionary to determine if a verb can be in either Active or Passive Voice or both, you will see a “t” after the verb³³.

        In order to understand in which situations to use active and passive voices, we should look at the explanation, which is given by Stageberg H. According to him, in most nonscientific writing situations, active voice is preferable to passive for the majority of your sentences. Even in scientific writing, overuse of passive voice or use of passive voice in long and complicated sentences can cause readers to lose interest or to become confused. Sentences in active voice are generally clearer and more direct than those in passive voice. Sentences in active voice are also more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive. While active voice helps to create clear and direct sentences, sometimes writers find that using an indirect expression is rhetorically effective in a given situation, so they choose passive voice. Also, as mentioned above, writers in the sciences conventionally use passive voice more often than writers in other discourses. Passive voice makes sense when the agent performing the action is obvious, unimportant, or unknown or when a writer wishes to postpone mentioning the agent until the last part of the sentence or to avoid mentioning the agent at all. The passive voice is effective in such circumstances because it highlights the action and what is acted upon rather than the agent performing the action³⁴.

  Sledd J.A. indicated that passive constructions are often referred to as stilted, indirect and cold, impersonal and evasive. To give its critics their due, the passive, when in large doses, can indeed be ponderous stuffy and bulkier than the active. With all this it is used over and over by best stylists in prose open to none of the preceding objections. This is because it can be most important and useful to shift the centre of communication creating, according to circumstances, varied and effective sentences³⁵.

  To sum up in brief, the frequency value of passive constructions in English is due to a number of reasons. Emphasis will be laid on the following:

  a) There are, in fact, no means in English to avoid the indication of the doer of the action in active constructions.

  The indefinite pronoun one and occasionally the personal pronouns we, you and they, as well as the noun people, may be used in this meaning. But for some reason or other the use of such sentence-patterns seems to be restricted, and English instead often shows here a marked preference of passive constructions.

  b) Variation in the use of different types of passive turns existing in English lends variety to speech. Although some of them are somewhat restricted in use, they still contribute to the frequency value of the passive in general.  

  In the theoretical part of our work we have examined the notion of functional styles and distinguished types of past tense in the English language.

  It can be concluded that within the English formal language the following styles are distinguished: the style of official documents, the scientific prose style, the publicistic style, the newspaper style, the belle-lettres style. Each style is characterised by a number of individual features and can be subdivided into a number of substyles. Each functional style requires the choice of vocabulary and most of all of a special kind of grammatical forms and structures.

  The question of tense is very important in all functional styles because, tense is the timeline of the story. 

       The use of tenses in functional styles depends on what type it is. Every narrative has a base tense, one that moves the action of the communication forward. The use of the tense establishes the mood for the conversation or the story being told – past tense is traditionally the storyteller’s medium, in which events have taken place and people have acted out their destinies. There is a finite basis to expired time. Present tense, on the other hand, promotes a feeling or mood of immediacy and the potential for change or flexibility³⁶. The best way for exploring tense and aspect in English language is to analyse texts in different functional styles. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2 The usage of the past time in the texts of different functional styles.

         The theoretical analysis of the past tense would not be full without giving the concrete language materials. That is why the aim of the practical part is to analyse English texts in different functional styles using the past time. This chapter presents a brief analysis of the past tense use in the texts of six functional styles: belles-lettres style, publicistic style, newspaper style, the style of official documents, scientific prose style and colloquial style. This chapter will exemplify some uses of four tense forms which express events related to the past time in different ways: the simple past, the past progressive, the past perfect and present perfect. Texts illustrate the relationship of form to meaning and use, and the contrast between the meanings associated with tense forms.

        Also, we are going to analyse the use of the active and passive voices in different functional styles.  This work will help you understand what the passive voice is, why many professors and writing instructors frown upon it, and how writer can revise his paper to achieve greater clarity.

        For the analysis we have taken several texts of different functional styles. The texts which are going to be analysed here is taken from different sources.

        Let’s begin our analysis with Belles-lettres style. Belles-lettres style or the style of imaginative literature may be called the richest register of communication. The purpose of the belles-lettres style is not to prove but only to suggest a possible interpretation of the phenomena of life by forcing the reader to see the viewpoint of the writer.

       The question of tense is very important in belles-lettres style because, tense is the timeline of the story.  Authors should use tenses carefully, so that readers will stay with him and not get lost. Readers will know the chronology of events even if the author present them out-of-order.  The technique of jumping right into the story and revealing the past bit-by-bit, like peeling the layers of an onion, is well-suited for middle-grade and young adults as well as adults.