THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYSTEM OF THE VERB TENSE IN ME EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

Shleiher, A. Meye, J. Kuvye, E.D. Polivanov, B.A. Serebrennikov, B.G. Gak and others asserted that the development of languages is subordinated to general laws, going on according to the same scenario not only in general but also in details. The following universal has long been established: the loss by languages of relative: past tenses, their substitution by the only form which corresponds the time of the action with the moment of speech and pointing out that the action was going on before that moment. The article demonstrates on the material of some foreign languages that the present tense is going through the same process now. There is just one form left pointing to the coincidence, over crossing the action with the moment of speech. The only way the category of tense of different languages is going on is the increase of the degree of abstraction of its meaning expressed, which is manifested in the loss of tense forms and grammemes with relative tense and different aspect meanings. The final end of this way is the establishment of three forms for the expression of tense meanings correlating only with the moment of speech.