Foreign philology faculty the department of english language and literature

Chapter II Significance of the category of posteriority in English language
2.1. Challenges in using posteriority

Learning and teaching grammar requires some creativity in order to make learning grammar a communicative process. The way to learn is to do. Learn by doing, doing is learning. So this would depend the grammar structure you are targeting, the learners' level, and what "learning grammar" means to the learner. Traditional method book exercises and worksheets are, also, helpful. A multi-faceted approach is practical. Grammar should be part of an integrated approach.
The category of posteriority is the expression of events or actions that occurred after a particular point in time. It is often indicated by the use of specific verb forms that show that the action took place at a later. Time. For example, “I had eaten dinner before he arrived.” In this sentence, the verb form “had eaten” indicates that the action of eating occurred before the arrival of the other person. The verb forms used to express posteriority include the past perfect tense, the past perfect continuous tense, and the past simple tense. In addition, the perfect aspect is often used to indicate the completion of the action at the time of reference. For example, “I had completed the project by the deadline.” The category of posteriority is often confused with the categories of anteriority and simultaneity. Anteriority refers to the expression of events or actions that occurred before a particular point in time, while simultaneity refers to events or actions that occurred at the same time. In contrast, posteriority refers to events or actions that occurred after a particular point in time.
The posteriority is common in storytelling, academic writing, and everyday conversation. In storytelling, it is often used to create suspense by revealing events that occurred after a climactic moment. In academic writing, it is used to indicate the sequence of events or to explain the cause-effect relationship between events. In everyday conversation, it is used to narrate past experiences or to discuss recent events. The most common error in using posteriority is the confusion between the past perfect and past simple tenses. Speakers often use the past simple tense instead of the past perfect tense to express posteriority, leading to ambiguity or inaccuracies. To avoid this error, one should pay attention to the order of events and the use of specific time markers. Rammatical category of tense – denotes the reflection of objective divisions of time – present, past, future + in English, time viewed from some point in the past, so called Future-in-the-past or Future I as opposed to Future I; expresses the relation between the time of the action the moment of speech (now) or any other point in reference taken for the basis of temporal relations.
The category of posteriority denotes actions they are related both to the concept of space time. These conc-s are closely interrelated. The idea of their unity found it’s expression in the theory of Chronotope which concideres them as 2 diffr aspects of the whole. In most langv the expression of time is associated with the gr category of tense with 3 gr tenses: pres, past, future. In E it is expressed lex-ly, gr-ly so on. The gr category of tense is defined as a category which expresses the relations b/w the time of the action and the moment of speech. The problem of Tense has always been in the focus of lingv attention. Lingv –s differ in the number of tense forms. This number various from 2 to 12. Reasons: tense, asp, time, may be expressed simultaneously in one and the same form. This gives ground to interprete such forms as tenses. Korsakov presents the gr cat of tense in E as a complex system which includes absolute and anterior tenses, static and dynamic tenses. Smirnitskiy says that a ormalizel form cannot express at a time several meanings of the same cat – ry, but it can be expressed several meanings of difr gr ormaliz. The pres-day ormaliz of the tense has 3 times: pr, past, future. The tense expresses connection simultaneous to the time of communication. The past tense expr the act prior to the time of communication. The future – an action subsequent to the time of communication. The tense presupposes the immediate perception of the events by the viewer. Whereas past and future denote events which are not percepted directly.
Besides the primary meaning the forms of the pres are regulary transposed into the sphere of future and the forms expose their secondary meaning. The forms may also be transposed into the past time context when the act reffering to the past are described in the pres tense dramatic present. Ex: we were playing golf and suddenly he looks at me and says smth. Effect of immediate pres has a cinematogr effect. The past t denotes an act prior to the time of communic. It is the main tense of narration ab the past events. Past is occasionally used to express universal truths. In dialogs past indef and past contin denote actions reffering to the pres but past is used to be polite preteret of modesty ore ormalizel past. The future denotes an action subsequent to the time of com-on. Besides it may be used to express universal truth ore habitual char-ristics. Ex: boys will always be boys. The system of this category consists of two subsystems: absolute and relative tenses. Tenses are correlated to the moment of I. The category of posteriorities are correlated to some moment in the past..Sequence of tenses is an assentially semantic phenomenon. This rule is observed only if the action refferes to the ontological past past of the real world. If the actions of the objective clause reffere to the ontological pres or future this rule is generally not observed. These 3 tenses may appear in the common or continuous aspect or in the form of the category of correlation perfect. Traditionally 16 tenses are distinguished in Modern English: Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous. Most of them are made analytically. But some scholars find only 3 “genuine tenses” in Modern English professor Smirnitsky – Indefinite Tenses. As to other tense-groups, they have the same time reference, e.g. the difference between the Indefinite and the Continuous Tense is not temporal but aspective. E.g. I got up at 7. I was getting up at 7. 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 believed to be a relative tense.
Professor Smirnitsky was of the opinion that Future in the Past is a mood form (conditional) in meaning and form, while Khaimovich and Rogovskaya point out, that it belongs to a special grammatical category of posteriority which is expressed by a system of 2 I opposemes: shall will come – should would come, the former has the meaning of absolute posteriority, the latter – relative posteriority. This category shows whether the action is posterior as to the moment speech or some moment in the past. Professor Barkhudarov, following American linguists, denies the future tense in Modern English and treats “shall and will + Infinitive”
as a modal phrase..Thus the English verb has 2 tenses present, past category of correlation non-perfect – vs –perfect, aspect Non-continuous Common –vs- Continuous, category of posteriority absolute future – relative future.
A different view of the English tense system has been put forward by professor Irtenyeva. According to this view the system is divided into two halves: that of tenses centering in the present, and that of tenses centering in the past. The view has the advantage of reducing the usual threefold division of tenses past, present and future to a twofold division past and present and each of the two future tenses is included into the past or the present system..All these theories fail to serve practical purposes. The real use of these forms does not come under the frame of an ideal system. This happens because within each group of tenses the forms lack uniformity of the meaning and application. Most of the forms are characterized by various uses, i.e. at the same time they have basic meanings and marginal uses. E.g. Present Indefinite’s basic meaning is that of permanent or recurrent actions I get up at 7 but when used figuratively it may express a past action Historic present a general truth, an action taking place at the moment of speaking I hear it. Present and Past Continuous’s basic meaning is an action in progress at a definite moment in the past and present, but Future Continuous is oftener used to express a future action which is supposed to take place as a matter of course E.g. I feel I shall be asking you the same question tomorrow. Past and Future Perfect serve to express priority, but the basic meaning of Present Perfect is the completion of the action.
More even than number, extension which is continuous quantity, shows the characteristics of compositeness, and of posteriority. On the other hand, anteriority and posteriority exist in dimension as well as in numbers. If movement exist along with the priority and posteriority which relate thereto, why will we not have time without number . Clauses commonly do not receive temporal marking, since they are inherently future-oriented and do receive modal marking, since they are inherently hypothetical-desiderative. Put in other words, one category is not overtly marked because it is already given, while another category is overtly marked because it is already given. So one and the same factor carries the burden of explaining two opposing outcomes. Transferring this to infinitives of posteriority, even if we can prove that in most cases posteriority but not anteriority is given from context in infinitival constructions, we still have to choose between two predictions: posteriority will be marked simply because it is given or posteriority will not be marked precisely because it is already given. One might object that in contrast to the arguments quoted above, posteriority in infinitival constructions is not an inherently given property at least not in all cases; obviously there is an overlap between infinitival constructions and purpose clauses. However, as far as I can see, nothing in those arguments hinges on the property being inherent. As an interim summary, the directly functional hypothesis “in most infinitival constructions, speakers rather need to mark anteriority than posteriority, since the latter is mostly given from context” can explain both the asymmetry we find “don’t mark the obvious” and a hypothetical situation where posteriority as well as anteriority is regularly marked after all “do mark the obvious”. However, an explanation that does not only account for the explanandum but also for its opposite does not appear very convincing. There are two ways out of this, which presumably have to be combined: ormaliz on diachrony and ormaliz on synchronic systems as a whole. Both bring in additional factors and interaction among these factors, even including dysfunctional analogies.
Crucially, this means that certain phenomena in isolation might be very hard to motivate by functional factors like expressive power or speaker/hearer economy. Examples from German are given by Seiler for instance the requirement that the prefield position be filled by exactly one constituent – despite the fact that this position is used for topicalisation and speakers might want to topicalise information that is encoded in more than one constituent. For any such phenomenon, the challenge is motivating it anyhow by taking into account its syntagmatic, paradigmatic, and historical connections. Thus, the asymmetry between infinitives of anteriority and infinitives of posteriority might receive a more complex but still functional account, even if the few existing infinitives of posteriority should prove completely useless in
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isolation. The basic question of this contribution was: are there posterior infinitives in

the languages of the world and if yes, what are they good for? Accordingly, It is carried out a small survey on their occurrence in grammars, the result of which suggested that these forms are rather rare. This outcome reinforced the second part of the question: if many languages can do without such forms, then which function do they serve in others, where they do exist? Starting from the assumption that having a function is not exhausted by having a meaning, It is explored the utility of posterior infinitives for one language that possibly has them, i.e.
It had to be argued in the first place that the forms under scrutiny are in fact infinitives of posteriority. Then their potential merits could be explored, taking into account systematic as well as historical connections. In spite of the broad perspective, however, the forms appeared to lack an obvious asset. Only when the perspective was broadened even further, a plausible function of posterior infinitives in German surfaced: by analogically extending verbal paradigms, they increase systematicity and hence processability of the language. In conclusion, even if a certain change seems to be pointless in every regard, i.e. a waste of effort, it might still have a function at a higher level.

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