1. What does the term "grammar" mean? What is a morpheme?

6. Grammatical categories of the verbs

6. The verb has the following grammatical categories: person, number, tense, aspect, voice and mood.

The category of tense denotes the relation of the action either to the moment of speaking or to some definite moment in the past or future. The notion of absolute time with its division into past, present and future may not correspond to the grammatical tense. Tense shows the temporal (временные) relationship between the action in question and the moment of speaking.

The past form shows that the time of the action belongs to the time sphere prior to the moment of speaking. The future form shows that the time of the action is included in the time sphere following the moment of speaking. The present form shows that the time of the action and of the moment of speech belong to one and the same time sphere.

According to the traditional grammar, tense is a system of three member opposeme (write – wrote – will write) showing the time of the action in relation to the moment of speech.

These 3 tenses may appear in aspect or correlation categories.

Traditionally it tenses are distinguished in modern English: 4 indefinite, 4 continuous, 4 perfect and 4 perfect continuous. Most of them are made analytically. Some scholars find only 3 genuine (истинных) tenses and these tenses are indefinite (Smernitsky). As to the other tense groups they have the same time reference.

I have cut my finger.

She has got many Oscars.

The perfect forms express priority with regard to the moment of speaking and they are treated as relative tenses the future in the past is also a relative tenses (относительное). Smirnitskiy was of the opinion that future in the past is a mood form. Rogovskaya pointed out that it belongs to a special grammatical category of posteriority (позднейшее обстоятельство) which is expressed by a system of 2 member opposition (will come – would come), the former has meaning of absolute posteriority, the latter – relative posteriority. This category shows whether the action is posterior as to the moment of speech or some moment in the past.

! Barhudarov denies the future tense in modern English and treats will+infinitive as a modal phrase. Thus the English verb has 2 tenses (present and past indefinite) category of correlation (perfect – non-perfect), the category of aspect (continuous – non-cont.) and category of posteriority (absolute future – relative future)
The category of aspect shows the way in which the action develops, if it is in progress or completed, etc. There are four groups of tenses: Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous. The Indefinite form has no aspect characteristics while, the Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Con­tinuous forms denote both time and aspect relations. Each of these forms includes four tenses: Present, Past, Future and Future in the Past (future from the point of view of the past). Thus there are 16 tenses in English.

The category of Voice indicates the relation of the predicate to the subject and the object. There are 2 voices in English: the active voice, the passive voice, The active voice shows that the subject is the doer of the action expressed by the predicate. The passive voice shows that the subject is acted upon.

The category of Mood indicates the attitude of the speaker towards the action from the point of view of its reality. We distinguish the indicative mood, the imperative mood, and the subjunctive mood.