Problematical Aspects Encountered When Using The English Language - Essay Example

Problematical Aspects Encountered When Using The English Language According to Kerstens, Ruys & Zwarts (1996-2001), the term “tense” refers to “a grammatical feature or category expressing a temporal relation between the event described by the verb and the moment of utterance”. Therefore, through the usage of already known tenses, the emitter of a communicational sequence is able to choose the most convenient solution for expressing his purpose in communication, that of offering the receiver an appropriate vision regarding the time in which the presented action takes place. Moreover, English grammar also recognizes the importance of the “aspect”, which is considered to be “a cover term for those properties of a sequence that constitute the temporal structure of the event denoted by the verb and its arguments” (ibid.). In his “Translating English Perfect Tenses into Arabic” study, Hassan A.H. Gadalla develops the idea of Kerstens, Ruys & Zwarts (1996–2001), that the English language contains four tense forms (past, present, future, future-in-the-past or conditional) and that for every one of these tenses there exist four “aspectual references” (simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive). Either one of the verbal tenses can therefore admit an aspect, in order to express a certain idea regarding the moment in which the presented action occurs. According to the previous definitions and ideas, the use of the English tenses and aspects is primarily influenced by the speaker’s intention regarding the framing of time that he wishes to offer to his communicational sentence. Furthermore, this essay will develop the appropriate theories and real situations in order to exemplify the usage of the English Perfect Tenses, in both English native communication and in translation. Considering these aspects regarding time value in an action and discussing the issues that may occur is vital for the appropriate transmission of the message, since the English grammar offers a wide range of examples and situations in which the knowledge, and therefore the correct usage of aspects and tenses tends to have a great impact on the communication activity. Moreover, when translating from English to other languages, an adequate understanding of the linguistic phenomena such as transferring the modal aspects or perfect expressions into a language with different grammar and tenses usage probably is the most important part of the process. In order to avoid the loss in translation or the misunderstandings that may occur even among native English speakers, the appropriate knowledge of the phenomena that asserts the differences between the two categories of tenses that register confusions most often, the Simple Past and the Perfect Tense Simple, is very important. The speaker or the translator must be aware of the differences between these two verbal tenses and must also have a good mastery of the English language, in order to understand correctly the situations in which the use of one of the tenses is preferred over the other. The concrete examples given in the following section will focus on offering a wider vision of the general usage of the English Perfect Tenses, the difficulties that may occur in real communication and will also contain a fundamental approach in order to avoiding these problematic communication circumstances. Since the issue of Perfect Tenses usage is complex and it also covers a wide range of other connected fields of study such as linguistics, translation, syntax, the great quantity of Academic work concerning it is natural. Therefore, various theories regarding this subject have been developed, since it still constitutes a vast area for research in the Academic field. Several articles and specialized books have observed and explained the phenomena connected to the usage and problematic aspects encountered in relationship with the English Perfect Tenses, in the attempt to establish rules and tendencies in this field of research. As a first direction in my paper, I wish to underline the idea that in the thoroughly debated case of using simple past on behalf of present perfect tense, it is fairly understood by the general public and also by the researchers that these two tenses are not equivalent in sense or in the situational usage in communication. This idea has been stated by several researchers, and the phenomena that involve it have been periodically extended through articles, essays or more complex Academic work. The emphasis of English Perfect Tenses in this case is fairly justified, since this aspect remains problematic for medium knowledge, proficient or even native English speakers. The frame in which this phenomenon has appeared is still not completely clear. It can’t be certified that the impact of psychological factors, such as convenience in communication have had any sort of influence in this specific usage of these tenses, that appears to disrespect the grammatical norms of the language. In her work “The perfect crime? Illicit uses of the present perfect in Australian police media releases” (10.9.2007), Marie-Eve A. Ritz asserts that “the PP appears frequently in sequences expressing temporal progression, and that it is often combined with a range of adverbials, including dates and time”. By considering previous studies and her own Academic work, Ritz also affirms that, given particular situations, the usage of the Present Perfect is preferred for introducing discourse elements that are either new or unexpected, while “the SP is used in-between clauses in the PP to continue a sub-segment”. Therefore, the researcher admits that between the two verbal tenses exists a strong inter-dependence and she also considers that the previous works in the domain certify a different general usage of the two in the case of communication. She also presents and expands the ideas extracted from the Claudal and Roussarie’s (2006) analysis and Vikner’s (1985) relations system in order to represent verbal tenses. Moreover, Ritz issues the idea that “the non-standard PP in Australian English can be represented as having a result stage filling a temporal interval between a past reference time and a present one, the extended-now”. In addition to that aspect, she suggests that the given interval should be used in order to issue “various meanings and discourse effects”. As a first step of her research, Ritz presents the impact that the Present Perfect has in the case of Australian police officers. She has therefore arrived to the conclusion that these individuals present a tendency in using, quite often, the tense in ways that are not normally accepted by the Standard English norms. Specifically, through the examination of the police media reports, the researcher has discovered that “the PP is frequently found in sequences where temporal progression is expressed as well as in combination with a range of ‘illicit’ adverbials”. Moreover, the author revealed, through the examination of police media report, several patterns of use that also exist in the narrative corpus. These patterns “contain a larger number and wider range of combinations of the PP with adverbials, some of which do not appear in the narrative corpus al all”. Furthermore, the author asserts that, vividness effects observed in the police officer media releases tend to be used in this specific case only to signalize new or unexpected information. The media interviews are often marked by the usage of word combinations, such as the ones with definite past adverbials, which do not respect the norms of the Standard English. (Bybee et al.,1994). In order to illustrate this idea, the author offers a concrete example: “A male aged between 25 and 30 years HAS ENTERED the bank at about 12:45 pm on Friday 29th April 2005 and approached staff and made demands. The person HAS then LEFT with an undisclosed amount of money.” (Brian Cowie, WA police media, 2.5.2005) This example therefore contains a illustration of the “cross-linguistic tendency” that nowadays consist in expressing past tenses overtly. On the other hand, the study asserts that in the case of written data from the police media reports, “further innovations in the form of combinations of the PP with specific dates and times, as well as uses in rhetorical relations that confirm involvement of a past reference time with this tense.” A very interesting theory that the author emits is that the English Present perfect is “not immune to change, and confirms that perfects are truly ‘unstable as a category”, idea supported by her study (Caudal, 2006). This study therefore supports the idea that the uncertainty and lack of conformance to the English Standards regarding the use of Present Perfect continues to exist and that we could find concrete examples of that linguistic and grammatical problem in the everyday life, such as in the media releases or news. The second part of this essay concerns the phenomenon of translation, in the specific are of translating English perfect tenses. In order to illustrate the problematic aspects in this field, Hassan Gadalla’s work seemed to be relevant in this matter. The article that he wrote presents a detailed view of the aspects, problems and solutions encountered while analyzing the specific transfer of perfect tenses into Arabic. In order to have a larger view, the author conducted a research by comparing two translation works of the novel “The Good Earth”. Gadalla observed that, in order to translate the English tenses into Arabic, the translators adopted Fayyad’s (1997) fourteen tenses. Furthermore, by analyzing the translation, he discovered that there exist two more tenses that could be added to that list: - Perfect Future, formed by ‘/(sa-)ya-kuun/ + (/qad/) + perfect’ and - Perfect Progressive Past, formed by ‘/kaana/ + /qad/ + /ẓalla/ + imperfect Additionally, the author added several structures in order to represent the tenses proposed by Fayyad (1997). According to Gadalla, the approach developed in his study asserts that the translation of English perfect tenses to Arabic is possible and it can even include several rules. As an example, he considers that when translating English Present Perfect, the Arabic Simple past can be used for “connection between past and present and for the repetition of a past activity” and that the Progressive past could be used “for past actions continuing to the present moment”. The English past perfect can be also translated by recurring to ten Arabic equivalents: simple past, distant past, negative simple present, near past, progressive past, verbal noun, subjunctive verb, simple present, negative distant past or progressive future (Fayyad,1997). Therefore, the author sets a clear frame of usage when translating into Arabic the tenses that are presented in this essay. Moreover, the author sets a clear distinction between the translation of future perfect and present perfect progressive, as well as past perfect progressive. This study enables the translator and general public interested in linguistics to have a wider view upon the difficulties that a translator can encounter while transferring an English text into a language that is completely different in style, word usage and grammar, and even in alphabet, such as Arabic (Iskandar, 1999). It also represents further prove that the perfect tenses in English should be correctly used, in order to offer the correct communication perspective and accomplish its goal, that of transmitting the right message to the reader or listener. Given that the field of translation includes difficult issues during the process of transferring the sense from a language to another, it is therefore vital that the source language, in this case English, offers a fair usage of the grammar and respects its standard norms. Various understanding problems can develop from the misuse of grammatical features (Vikner, 1985). In conclusion, the problematical aspects encountered when using the English language and also when transferring it into another idiom, could be easily avoided by taking into consideration that the perspective offered to the receiver of our communication should be clear and it should lack ambiguities. Academic work that emphasizes this particular area of communication is therefore justified, since the phenomena that it researches could have an important impact on the language development and the translation field. References Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere, Pagliuca, William, (1994). The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect and Modality in the Languages of the World. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London. Caudal, Patrick, Roussarie, Laurent, (2006). Brands of Perfects. Semantics and Pragmatics. In: Proceedings of TLS ‘8’. Cascadilla, Somerville (MA). Fayyad, Soliman. 1997. Azminat Al-Fi’l Al-Arabi Al-Nahwiyyah: Arba’ata Ashara Zamanan [Grammatical Tenses of the Arabic Verb: Fourteen Tenses]. Beirut: Dar Al- Mustaqbal Al-Arabi. 80 pp. Gadalla, Hassan, Translating English Perfect Tenses into Arabic: A comparative study of two translations of Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth”. Faculty of Education for Girls, Raghdan, Saudi Arabia. Iskandar, Ibrahim, trans. (1999). Al-Ard Al-Tayyibah [The Good Earth] Pearl Buck. Beirut: Dar Al-Sharq Al-Arabi. 221 pp. Kerstens, Johan, Eddy Ruys & Joost Zwarts. eds. 1996–2001. Lexicon of Linguistics. Netherlands: Utrecht institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University. http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/ Ritz, Marie-Eve, 2007, The perfect crime? Illicit uses of the present perfect in Australian police media releases in Linguistics M258. The University of Western Australia, Australia Vikner, Sten, 1985. Reichenbach revisited: one, two or three temporal relations ?, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 19 (2), 81–98. Read More