Aspects of the tenses in the Uzbek and in the English languages

There are several views among the learners of English about the quantity of tenses in the English language. The widest one of them cite that there are more than 26 tenses in English. But, in fact there are only three tenses in English: Present, Past and Future. But, there appears another problem: What are “simple (general and repeated action), continuous (progressive and temporary actions), perfect (actions with some results in the present, that is now), perfect continuous (actions lasted for a particular period of time)” considered then? In fact we had better call them not “tenses” but “aspects of the time or of the tenses in English”. And these aspects exist both in Uzbek and in other languages as well. As it is said in in the glossary Cambridge grammar of English (a book on English grammar in an electronic version) “Aspect indicates the speaker’s perspective on time as indicated in a verb phrase, particularly whether an action is treated as finished or is still in progress or still relevant to the moment of speaking. English has two aspects: perfect and progressive (sometimes known as continuous)” [1]. All this is very correct and officially true as it has been proved in many dictionaries with the explanations such as “aspect /ˈæs.pekt/ noun [C or U] specialized the form of a verb which shows how the meaning of a verb is considered in relation to time, typically expressing whether an action is complete, repeated or continuous” [2], “ [uncountable and countable] technical the form of a verb in grammar that shows whether an action is continuing, or happens always, again and again, or once” [3].

Those who say that there are more than 20 tenses in English count them in Active Voice as Present Simple, Present Continuous, Present Perfect, Present Perfect continuous, Past Simple, Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Past Perfect continuous, Future Simple, Future Continuous, Future Perfect, Future Perfect continuous and add available Passive Voice forms of these tense forms/aspects in Present, Past, and Future tenses. If this is considered true then there should be the forms of tenses according to the construction “have something done” and others.

As it has been given above, there are the aspects in Uzbek too, but not many of the learners of English notice that. And, even if they know about them, only a few of them can explain the rules. Because, the explanation of these rules require deep knowledge of Grammar and rich experience on using the both languages in an advanced level. But, unfortunately most learners of English learn English Grammar before learning their own grammar of their mother tongue. So, the experience on using grammatical aspects of time is not wide and cannot give the imagination of their use in its whole view.

Analyzing the uses of these aspects in Uzbek we can say that the progressive aspect of time, which is given as “to be + V.ing” in English, can be given with the help of suffixes “-moq, moqda, -yapti” in Uzbek. It depends on the situation or the style of speech which one to choose “-moq, -moqda” or -yapti”. “-moq” and “-moqda” are more formal than “-yapti”.

Analyzing the other aspects of time in English and in Uzbek we can make this table of expressing the time of actions:

As it is shown in the table, there is some resemblance between forming the Present Simple and Future Simple forms of the verbs and between forming the Perfect and Perfect Continuous forms of the verbs in the Uzbek language.

References:

1. Cambridge Grammar of English, CD version
2. Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, 3^rd edition.
3. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 5th edition