e.g.: Today is Monday, and tomorrow is Tuesday.

What are you doing tomorrow?

The semantic categories of past, present, future apply not so much to time, as to happenings which take place in time, and which are denoted by verbs.

e.g.: Mary hoped for success. (refers to «a past hope of Mary)

Peter knows a great deal. (refers to Peter's present knowledge)

The home team will be defeated, (refers to «a future defeat of the home»)

The authors shall distinguish different categories under the title of situation types that is they talk of dynamic (count) and stative (noncount) meaning rather then dynamic and stative verbs. This is because one verb may shift from one category to another, for example,

- the stative meaning of «have» is «possess»;

- the dynamic meaning of «have» is «eat».

e.g.: The chair has beautiful carved legs quite frequently. (has=possess, that is «having carved legs» is a state)

We have dinner at Maxim's quite frequently.

(have dinner= eat, that is «having dinner» is an event)

All these verbs are divided into dynamic and stative verbs, which are presented in two tables. We mean, that these two tables are not convenient for teaching and studying and we have replaced and reconstructed them according to our require (Tables 2-3).

Meanings of the simple present tense with reference to present time can be divided into:

l. The state present, or so-called «eternal truths» or «timeless present»:

e.g.: Honestly is the best policy.

Two and three is five.

2. The instantaneous present implies that event has little or no duration and is completed approximately at the moment of speech:

- commentaries, demonstrations, special exclamatory sentences, performatives.

e.g.: Black passes the ball to Fernanders…

Here comes the winner!

3. Special non present uses of the present tense:

- the so-called historical present with stylistic effect, which conveys something of the dramatic immediacy of an eye-witness account. It is found with verbs of communication: say, tell, etc, and the result - the information communicated - is still operative.

e.g.: The Bible speaks…

Historical present describes the past as if it is happening now.

4. The simple present in fictional narrative: the events narrated by means of the historical present are real, but narrated by fictional «historical present» are imaginary. It is the stylistic effect.

e.g.: Millinson enters. The girls immediately pretend to be working hard… (we can present the event of the play before our eyes)

Meanings of the past tense with reference to past time (Table 3) combine two features:

a) the event / state must take place in the past with the gap between its completion and the present moment;

b) the speaker or writer must have in mind a definite time at which the event / state took place («last week, in 1932, several weeks ago, etc) but stylistically the past tense itself means the definite past time.

e.g.: Did you lock the front door? - an immediate situation.

Byron died in Grees. - historical statements.

Rome was not built in a day. - presupposing.

The habitual and state meanings can be paraphrased by means of «used to» (transference, transposition, transmission) used to live

e.g.: In those days we - in the counry.

lived

Meanings of the past tense with reference to the present and future time:

- the phenomenon «backshift» (Did you say you have / had no money?)

- the attitudinal past (Do/Did you want to see me now?)

- the hypothetical past (if-clauses, expectations - «I wish I had a memory like yours».)

To adhere to the main point from «A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language» it is essential to exhibit some facts from chapter «Perfective and progressive ASPECT.» [29; 31]. The term «aspect» refers to a grammatical category which reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded and experienced with respect to t i m e. The two aspect constructions of English: perfective and the progressive, can be seen as realizing a basic contrast if aspect between the action viewed as complete (perfective), and the action viewed as incomplete, i.e. progressive. The morphological realization of tense and syntactic realization of aspect are very closely connected. Quirk R. marks that approximately 10% of finite verb phrases are only perfective. Perfective aspect indicates ANTERIOR TIME - time preceding whatever time orientation is signaled by tense or by other elements of the sentence or its context.

We may now focus on the difference between two constructions:

1. State leading up to the present:

e.g.: That house has been empty for ages. - the state continues at least up to the present.

cf.: That house was empty for ages.-but now it has been sold.

2. Identifinite events in a period leading up to the present:

e.g.: Have ever been to Florence? - the indefinite past.

cf.: Did you go to florence? - last summer! - we have to imagine the definite past.

3. Habit event (recurrent) in a period leading up to the present:

e.g.: Mr Terry has sung in this choir ever since he was boy. - the period identified must continue up to the present.

cf.: The journal was published every month from 1850 to 1888. - the definite past.

Progressive aspect stylistically more frequent in conversations than in scientific discourse. A count of a large number of verb constructions has indicated that less then 5% of verb phrases are progressive, whereas 95% are nonprogressive [32; 29].

The meaning of the progressive can be separated into 3 components:

1. The happening has duration: Joan is singing well.

2. The happening has limited duration: Joan was singing well.

3. Incompletion - the happening is not necessary complete:

e.g.; Joan was reading the novel yesterday evening.

According to the chapter the progressive aspect can be divided into:

1. Stative progressive:

e.g.: We are living in the country. - temporal residence.

cf.: We live in the country.-permanent residence.

2. Event progressive:

e.g.: The referee is/was blowing of whistle. - repeated blowing.

cf.: The referee slows his whistle. - only one time!

3. Habit progressive:

e.g.: At that time she was having regular singing lessons.

Whenever I see her, she's working in the garden.

The «temporal frame» of the present progressive is normally «now», recurrent or imaginary, in accordance with the interpretation of the habitual, the historical, the fiction meanings.

The authors give a piece of information about the perfective progressive meaning that the features of the progressive and the perfective aspects are combined in the same phrase. This problem will be debated by Ukrainian and Russian scientists.

R. Quirk and his team give a lot of information about time, tense and aspect; the tables in which English verbs are divided into stative and dynamic types; difficult theme as «aspect» is presented in clear and lucid language. There are some problems which are debated up to now, for example, «the reality of the perfective progressive».

1.3 The analysis of the stylistic potential of tense-aspect verbal forms in modern English by home linguists

N.N. Rayevska [3; 30] is a well-known Ukrainian (Kiev) scholar who specialized in the study of English language and wrote two monographs:

1. The Essays on Stylistic Grammar of Modern English (1976) [3]

2. Modern English Grammar(1976) [30]

These monographs introduce the results of N.N. Rayevska's philological observations which convey theoretical grammar problems of verbal system and their stylistic possibilities and potentialities. All these features are very useful for insight into writer's context and understanding of their artists' intentions. In Modern English Grammar N.N. Rayevska accentuates:

«A major question in learning the grammar of the English verb is therefore to look for the difference of distribution various context, liguistic or situational, where each verb - form occurs» [30; 137]. The result according to these points can be seen in Table 4-8.

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