Английского

"Have you really never been to a ball before, Leila? But, my child, 
how too weird —" cried the Sheridan girls. 
The resultative implication of the perfect in the first of the above 
examples can be graphically shown by the diagnostic transforma-
tion, which is not applicable to the second example: → The sun 
burns more fiercely than ever as a result of the wind having 
dropped. 
At the same time, the plain resultative semantics quite evidently 
appears as a particular variety of the general transmissive meaning, 
by which a posterior event is treated as a successor of an anterior 
event on very broad lines of connection. 
Recognising all the merits of the aspect approach in question, how-
ever, we clearly see its two serious drawbacks. The first of them is 
that, while emphasising the aspective side of the function of the 
perfect, it underestimates its temporal side, convincingly demon-
strated by the tense view of the perfect described above. The sec-
ond drawback, though, is just the one characteristic of the tense 
view, repeated on the respectively different material: the described 
aspective interpretation of the perfect fails to strictly formulate its 
oppositional nature, the categorial status of the perfect being left 
undefined. 
The third grammatical interpretation of the perfect was the "tense-
aspect blend view"; in accord with this 

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interpretation the perfect is recognised as a form of double tempo-
ral-aspective character, similar to the continuous. The tense-aspect 
interpretation of the perfect was developed in the works of I. P. 
Ivanova. According to I. P. Ivanova, the two verbal forms express-
ing temporal and aspective functions in a blend are contrasted 
against the indefinite form as their common counterpart of neutral-
ised aspective properties. 
The achievement of the tense-aspect view of the perfect is the fact 
that it demonstrates the actual double nature of the analysed verbal 
form, its inherent connection with both temporal and aspective 
spheres of verbal semantics. Thus, as far as the perfect is con-
cerned, the tense-aspect view overcomes the one-sided approach to 
it peculiar both to the first and the second of the noted conceptions. 
Indeed, the temporal meaning of the perfect is quite apparent in 
constructions like the following: I have lived in this city long 
enough. I haven't met Charlie for years. 
The actual time expressed by the perfect verbal forms used in the 
examples can be made explicit by time-test questions: How long 
have you lived in this city? For how long haven't you met Charlie? 
Now, the purely aspective semantic component of the perfect form 
will immediately be made prominent if the sentences were contin-
ued like that: I have lived in this city long enough to show you all 
that is worth seeing here. I haven't met Charlie for years, and can 
hardly recognise him in a crowd. 
The aspective function of the perfect verbal forms in both sen-
tences, in its turn, can easily be revealed by aspect-test questions: 
What can you do as a result of your having lived in this city for 
years? What is the consequence of your not having met Charlie for 
years? 
However, comprehensively exposing the two different sides of the 
integral semantics of the perfect, the tense-aspect conception loses 
sight of its categorial nature altogether, since it leaves undisclosed 
how the grammatical function of the perfect is effected in contrast 
with the continuous or indefinite, as well as how the "categorial 
blend" of the perfect-continuous is contrasted against its three 
counterparts, i.e. the perfect, the continuous, the indefinite. 
As we see, the three described interpretations of the perfect, actu-
ally complementing one another, have given in combination a 
broad and profound picture of the semantical 

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content of the perfect verbal forms, though all of them have failed 
to explicitly explain the grammatical category within the structure 
of which the perfect is enabled to fulfil its distinctive function. 
The categorial individuality of the perfect was shown as a result of 
study conducted by the eminent Soviet linguist A. I. Smirnitsky. 
His conception of the perfect, the fourth in our enumeration, may 
be called the "time correlation view", to use the explanatory name 
he gave to the identified category. What was achieved by this bril-
liant thinker, is an explicit demonstration of the fact that the perfect 
form, by means of its oppositional mark, builds up its own cate-
gory, different from both the "tense" (present — past — future) 
and the "aspect" (continuous — indefinite), and not reducible to ei-
ther of them. The functional content of the category of "time corre-
lation" («временная отнесенность») was defined as priority ex-
pressed by the perfect forms in the present, past or future con-
trasted against the non-expression of priority by the non-perfect 
forms. The immediate factor that gave cause to A. I. Smirnitsky to 
advance the new interpretation of the perfect was the peculiar 
structure of the perfect continuous form in which the perfect, the 
form of precedence, i.e. the form giving prominence to the idea of 
two times brought in contrast, coexists syntagmatically with the 
continuous, the form of simultaneity, i.e. the form expressing one 
time for two events, according to the "tense view" conception of it. 
The gist of reasoning here is that, since the two expressions of the 
same categorial semantics are impossible in one and the same ver-
bal form, the perfect cannot be either an aspective form, granted 
the continuous expresses the category of aspect, or a temporal 
form, granted the continuous expresses the category of tense. The 
inference is that the category in question, the determining part of 
which is embodied in the perfect, is different from both the tense 
and the aspect, this difference being fixed by the special categorial 
term "time correlation". 
The analysis undertaken by A. I. Smirnitsky is of outstanding sig-
nificance not only for identifying the categorial status of the per-
fect, but also for specifying further the general notion of a gram-
matical category. It develops the very technique of this kind of 
identification. 
Still, the "time correlation view" is not devoid of certain limita-
tions. First, it somehow underestimates the aspective plane of the 
categorial semantics of the perfect, very 

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convincingly demonstrated by G. N. Vorontsova in the context of 
the "aspect view" of the perfect, as well as by I. P. Ivanova in the 
context of the "tense-aspect blend view" of the perfect. Second, 
and this is far more important, the reasoning by which the category 
is identified, is not altogether complete in so far as it confuses the 
general grammatical notions of time and aspect with the categorial 
status of concrete word-forms in each particular language convey-
ing the corresponding meanings. Some languages may convey 
temporal or aspective meanings within the functioning of one inte-
gral category for each (as, for instance, the Russian language), 
while other languages may convey the same or similar kind of 
meanings in two or even more categories for each (as, for instance, 
the English language). The only true criterion of this is the charac-
ter of the representation of the respective categorial forms in the 
actual speech manifestation of a lexeme. If a lexeme normally dis-
plays the syntagmatic coexistence of several forms distinctly iden-
tifiable by their own peculiar marks, as, for example, the forms of 
person, number, time, etc., it means that these forms in the system 
of language make up different grammatical categories. The integral 
grammatical meaning of any word-form (the concrete speech entry 
of a lexeme) is determined by the whole combination ("bunch") of 
the categories peculiar to the part of speech the lexeme belongs to. 
For instance, the verb-form "has been speaking" in the sentence 
"The Red Chief has just been speaking" expresses, in terms of im-
mediately (positively) presented grammatical forms, the third per-
son of the category of person, the singular of the category of num-
ber, the present of the category of time, the continuous of the cate-
gory of development, the perfect of the category under analysis. As 
for the character of the determining meaning of any category, it 
may either be related to the meaning of some adjoining category, 
or may not — it depends on the actual categorial correlations that 
have shaped in a language in the course of its historical develop-
ment. In particular, in Modern English, in accord with our knowl-
edge of its structure, two major purely temporal categories are to 
be identified, i.e. primary time and prospective time, as well as two 
major aspective categories. One of the latter is the category of de-
velopment. The other, as has been decided above, is the category of 
retrospective coordination featuring the perfect as the marked 
component form and the imperfect as its unmarked counterpart. 
We have considered it advisable 

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to re-name the indicated category in order, first, to stress its actual 
retrospective property (in fact, what is strongly expressed in the 
temporal plane of the category, is priority of action, not any other 
relative time signification), and second, to reserve such a general 
term as "correlation" for more unrestricted, free manipulations in 
non-specified uses connected with grammatical analysis.