TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY SISTEM IN DISCOURSE

                     TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY SISTEM IN DISCOURSE

By : Nurti Rahayu

A.   INTRODUCTION

Language is not taught in isolation. Each word has a large number of meanings. The meaning is clear when it lies in a sentence. Then, a group of sentences will make up a discourse. The discourse which will surely decide the exact meaning of a word. What makes the discourse discernable is, one of the so many people, a teacher.

Effective teachers of English as a second or foreign language must, among other things, have a mastery of the content they are teaching -- the English language itself. To understand this, it is much more than being a native speaker of English. Both native and local teachers are expected to be experts in the grammatical and discourse structures of the English language. Therefore, it is a must for the teachers to equip themselves with basic knowledge on grammar and discourse in the classroom. Tense-aspect-modality system is one of them.

Tense-aspect-modality system or better known as TAM is seemingly still one of the problems encountered by foreign language learners. Ferdinand de Haan, from Arizona University, mentions that the terminology involved with the TAM areas is notoriously confusing and unfortunately far from consistent so that a comparison between scholarly works is not always straightforward. It is also mentioned that TAM combinations tend to occur together in discourse. Based on the reasons above, indulging more on TAM system is badly needed especially for English teachers. Those reasons encourage the writers to discuss more on this field. To clarify more on this topic, each of the terminology will be described separately.

B.   DISCUSSION

1.    TENSE

Various researches have been conducted to explore more on the teaching learning of tenses. Some of the findings show that students failed to effectively comprehend the tenses, as the concept of tenses in English is quite distinctive from what we have in Bahasa Indonesia. Failure to efficiently apply these tenses will surely affect the user to effectively compose sentences in a discourse, either oral or written one.

In order to provide a clear description on tense concept above, the nature of tense will be explained based on some definitions given by outstanding linguists.  Bernard Comrie states that tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time (1976:1-2). In his book entitled Tense, he also mentions that tense is defined as grammaticalised expression of location in time. Comrie further explains the differences between grammaticalisation and lexicalization. According to him, grammaticalisation refers  to integration into grammatical system of a language, while lexicalization refers merely to integration into the lexicon of a language, without any necessary repercussion on its grammatical structure (1985:9-10)

   After knowing the definitions, it’s now time to discuss the types of tense. Comrie mentions two different types of tense, namely absolute and relative tenses. The first category is absolute  tense. Absolute tenses refer to tenses which take the present moment as the deictic time (Comrie,1985:36). Tense is said to be deictic system, since the reference point for the system is usually the act of speaking (p.125). Based on this assumption, Comrie divides absolute tenses into three, namely present, past and future. Another tense category is relative tense. It is a type of tense with respect to contextually given reference time.

2.    ASPECT

Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation (Comrie,1985:30). the category of aspect tells us how the action unfolds. That is, aspect is a means of marking whether the action is viewed as complete or not, whether it is a repeated action, an action in progress or whether it is engaged in habitually.(Haan p.7).

Dealing with the previous discussion, Comrie (1976:5) also states the differences between tense and aspect. He further claims that tense is deictic category,i.e. locates situation in time, usually with referent to the present moment, though also with reference to other situations. Aspect is not concerned with relating the time of the situation to any other time point, but rather with the internal temporal constituency of the one situation; one could state the difference as one between situation-internal time (aspect) and situation-external time (tense).

In other part of his book, Comrie (1976:25) classifies aspect into Perfective and Imperfective. The latter is then subcategorized into Habitual, and Continuous. Continuous is divided into Nonprogressive and progressive.

                Table 1. Classification of aspectual oppositions

           

         Perfective                        Imperfective

     

                 Habitual                                  Continuous

        Nonprogressive                          Progressive

The meaning of the perfective and imperfective aspects are explained by many linguists. Comrie (1976:16) takes the view that the use of the perfective aspect shows the action as a whole, without taking individual parts of that action into account. Dahl (1985:74) criticizes that view and points out that there are cases in which the action is viewed as a whole, yet there are languages in which the imperfective aspect must be used. He opts to use prototype definitions (1985:78), according to which the prototypical use of a perfective aspect is one in which the verb denotes a single event, has a well-defined result (or end-state) and has past time reference. It also tends to denote a punctual event. The further away from this prototype, the more likely it is that an imperfective aspect is used.

Besides the perfective and imperfective aspect, there are other types that can be expressed by means of separate morphemes. There are a number of such aspects, not all can be discussed. The most common ones include the progressive, which indicates that the action is in progress. Although it has been proposed to view progressive as a type of imperfective (see Comrie 1976:25), there are enough differences between the two to view them as separate aspects (the fact that progressives can occur with any tense while imperfective is more restricted is one).

 According to Comrie (1976:27-8), the habitual shows that the action described is ‘characteristic of an extended period of time’ so that the action is essentially a characteristic feature of that period. In addition, languages may make a distinction between past and present habituals to distinguish whether the characteristic feature is still holding or not. The English Habitual phrase used to is Past Habitual because it refers to situations that no longer hold. The sentence he used to walk to school can only be used if the subject no longer walks to school.

3.    MODALITY

The area of modality is concerned with notions such as obligation and necessity (strong modality), possibility and permission (weak modality), volition and ability. The notions of necessity and possibility are instances of epistemic modality, and those of obligation and permission are instances of. In English, such notions are grammaticalized as modal verbs:

a. John must go to school. [obligation]

b. John must be at school. [necessity]

c. John may be at school. [possibility]

d. John may go to school. [permission]

e. John can swim. [ability]

f. John wants to swim. [volition]

In English, as well as many other languages, notions such as obligation and necessity can be expressed by one and the same morpheme.The verb must in English can be both obligative and necessitive in nature. Similarly, the verb may can be both permissive and probabilitive. Usually the context disambiguates between the two meanings but sometimes even in context it is impossible to decide which meaning is meant.

4.    TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY SYSTEM IN DISCOURSE

TAM is clearly defined as TAM is the grammatical system in a language that covers tense (grammatical expression of location in time), aspect (expression of fabric of time — a single block of time, continuous flow of time, repetitive occurrence), and mood or modality (expression of degree of necessity, obligation, probability, ability).(www.wikipedia.com).

The concept of TAM in discourse, both spoken and written is considered complicated as they  tend to occur together in discourse. The following discussion will explain the analysis on the usage of TAM system in discourse. Various perspectives on the usage of Tam are given by some scholars.

A.   THE BULL FRAMEWORK

William Bull, an outstanding Spanish linguist, firstly proposed a framework to describe tense in Spanish; however he intended that the system be very general and applicable to any language. Bull framework has three distinct time axis, and this enables us to illustrate all tense-aspect forms in a single line. Below is the graph.

               

                The following are Bull concepts dealing with his framework.

1.    Bull forces us to make a conceptual shift and to think in terms of viewing the tense-aspect system as resource for taking different temporal perspectives on actions, events and states of affair.

2.    It is possible for an event/action described with a future perfect to have occurred before one described with the simple past.

3.    What makes Bull a unique feature is that the so-called perfect aspect in English is shown to be much more closely associated with tense than in the progressive aspect.

4.    Bull framework is more sophisticated and subtle than the usual structural account of the English tense-aspect system.

B.   CHAFE’S OBSERVATION ON TENSES IN DISCOURSE

            Chafe introduces the notion of generic tense in order to clarify tense sequences in discourse. Chafe further mentions that a “generic” tense (usually the simple present) is used for comment or aside. He also states that a new explicit time marker-or clearly implied shift- aims to terminate the old tense and replaces it with another.

C.   LABOV’S STRUCTURE FOR NARRATIVE

            Labov also elaborates more on what the so-called ‘tense shifts in narrative. He mentions six elements for any narrative, three of which are obligatory and the elements in the bracket are optional. The elements are mentioned below.

                        Six elements of Narrative               Description of Each Element

(the abstract)                                     who and what the narrative is about

Orientation                                        the background for the narrative

Complication                                                the conflict or problem in the story

(Evaluation)                                      asides or comment from the narrator

Result or resolution                         the outcome of the narrative

(coda)                                                 an epilogue or the moral of the story

            Besides Labov, Tense-shifting has also been discussed by various scholars. They are, among other, Shriffin (1981), Wolfson (1981) and baquedano-Lopez (1994). The latter points out that tense shifting can mark boundaries between elements within narrative itself, but they also can function much more locally to mark contrasts such as main story vs speaker aside, agent X vs agent Y, or narrative storyline vs reported speech, etc.

D.   SUH’S FRAME-ELABORATION HYPOTHESIS

            Suh states that in the course of constructing oral narratives, English speakers often uses one tense-aspect-modality form to very generally  introduce (or sometimes to close) a type of a narrative or an episode, and then they switch for the remainder of the episode to another form to elaborate the episode and provide details.

The following ideas belong to Suh.

1.    Present perfect tense can be used to either introduce or sum up a habitual present tense narrative.

2.    Present perfect provides transition from the moment of speaking and introduces or frames a specific past experience, then it’s reported in past tense.

3.    The use of ‘going to’ or ‘gonna’ is considered present, and they reflect possible future consequences of the events being reported.

4.    The use of ‘used to’ and ‘would’ for habitual narratives and ‘be going to’ and ‘will’ for future scenarios

5.    TAM  AND INTERACTION IN ORAL DISCOURSE

The following are some ideas on the case:

1.    Suh  (1992a) stated that Present perfect interrogative  form in the middle of story-telling is to check the interlocutor’s knowledge before proceeding further.

2.    McCarthy and Carter (1995)

                           be going to expresses greater personal involvement

                          will  is more neutral, detached formal option

3.     Batstone (1995)  argues that tense and aspect are used covertly in written discourse signal pragmatic notions such as negative attitude in past tense or positive attitude in present tense.

4.    There are some types of patterning, for example: past perfect can be used to mark climax, past perfect is used to terminate a narrative episode, simple past tense is to show real- life illustration, and simple presnt is for generalization and discussion.

6.    CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

              To end this discussion, it is necessary to make a conclusion with some suggestion for the improvement of  this study. Below are some of them.

1.    TAM system can only be fully grasped only  when we consider the use in the discourse

2.      Two or more forms can often be used to express the same thing.

3.     Teachers need to help learner understand how the English TAM  works, so it’s high time  for them to indulge more on authentic materials and discuss more on them.

4.    We deeply hope that there will be more upcoming researches conducted on this TAM system in Indonesia, therefore it will provide abundant resource to analyze.