Историческое развитие и современное употребление длительных времен в английском языке

The tense category in English is universally recognised. Nobody has ever suggested to characterise the distinction, for example, between wrote, writes, and will write as other than a tense distinction. The category of tense may, then, be defined as a verbal category which reflects the objective category of time and expresses on this background the relations between the time of the action and the time of the utterance. The main divisions of objective time appear to be clear enough. There are three of them: past, present, and future. So the three main divisions of time are represented in the English verbal system by the three tenses. Each of them may appear in the common and in the continuous aspect. Thus we get six tense-aspect forms.

• Introduction
• 1. Historic development of continuous tenses in English
• 2. The modern usage of Continuous Tenses
o 2.1 Main points
o 2.2 Present Continuous Tense
o 2.3 Past Continuous Tense
o 2.4 Future Continuous Tense
o 2.5 Conclusions
• 3. The practice
• Main conclusions
• Supplement
• References