Английского

§ 2. At this point of our considerations, we should like once again 
to call the reader's attention to the difference between the categorial 
terminology and the definitions of categories. 
A category, in normal use, cannot be represented twice in one and 
the same word-form. It follows from this that the integral verb-
form cannot display at once more than one expression of each of 
the recognised verbal categories, though it does give a representa-
tive expression to all the verbal categories taken together through 
the corresponding obligatory featuring (which can be, as we know, 
either positive or negative). And this fact provides us with a safe 
criterion of categorial identification for cases where the forms un-
der analysis display related semantic functions. 
We have recognised in the verbal system of English two temporal 
categories (plus one "minor" category of futurity option) and two 
aspective categories. But does this mean that the English verb is 
"doubly" (or "triply", for that matter) inflected by the "grammatical 
category" of tense and the "grammatical category" of aspect? In no 
wise. 
The course of our deductions has been quite the contrary. It is just 
because the verb, in its one and the same, at each time uniquely 
given integral form of use, manifests not one, but two expressions 
of time (for instance, past and future); it is because it manifests not 
one, but two expressions of aspect (for instance, continuous and 
perfect), that we have to recognise these expressions as categorially 
different. In other words, such universal grammatical notions as 
"time", "tense", "aspect", "mood" and others, taken by themselves, 
do not automatically presuppose any unique categorial systems. It 
is only the actual correlation of the corresponding grammatical 
forms in a concrete, separate language that makes up a grammati-
cal category. In particular, when certain forms that come under the 
same meaningful grammatical heading are mutually exclusive, it 
means that they together make up a grammatical category. This is 
the case with the three Russian verbal tenses. Indeed, the Russian 
verbal form of the future cannot syntagmatically coexist with the 
present or past forms — these forms are mutually exclusive, 
thereby constituting 

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one unified category of time (tense), existing in the three categorial 
forms: the present, the past, the future. In English, on the contrary, 
the future form of the verb can freely re-occur with the strongly 
marked past form, thereby making up a category radically different 
from the category manifested by the system of "present — past" 
discrimination. And it is the same case with the forms of the con-
tinuous and the perfect. Just because they can freely coexist in one 
and the same syntagmatic manifestation of the verb, we have to in-
fer that they enter (in the capacity of oppositional markers) essen-
tially different categories, though related to each other by their 
general aspective character.