Tenses As Deictic Category

By referring tense as grammatical category in locating a situation in time, most of grammarian make distinction of tense in three categories between present, past and future (Jespersen, 1933; Lyons, 1968; Comrie: 1985; Quirk: 1985 and Bache: 1997). Following Jespersen’s work in Essential English Grammar (Jespersen, 1933: 230) and also Lyons’ diagrams (Lyons: 1968: 304) about time line diagram as manifestation the concept of time in languages, the writer proposes the main division of time and tense in a diagrams as follows:

Past                                   Present                        Future

 

Before                               Now                            After

Figure 1. Time and Tenses

This diagram shows tense as deictic category as suggested by Bache (1997: 250) comprising meaning which can only be identified in relation to the temporal and spatial location of the locutionary agent at the point of communication. In the diagram above, the deictic zero point is ‘now’.

As category members, the concept of present, past and future share the general category concept of temporality (Bache, 1997: 245). He defines temporality precisely as follows:

a.       A past situation is conceived of as being temporally located before the present.

b.      A present situation is conceived of as being temporally located in the present.

c.       A future situation is conceived of as being temporally located after the present.

Formal Theory of Tense in English

Since it is a grammatical choice, every sentence in English performs the use tense as an obligatory. Therefore, tense can be investigated consistently. In this research the researcher focuses the analysis of tense and its translation in Bahasa Indonesia based on the concept of tense as time reference. In this consideration, Comrie (1985: 36) uses the terms of ‘absolute tense’, ‘relative tense’, and ‘absolute-relative tense’. The analysis then follows Comrie’s work.

Absolute Tense

            The term of absolute tense is used to refer to tenses which take the present moment as their deictic center (Comrie, 1985: 36). Based on this categorization, the absolute tense consists of past, present and future. Comrie completely states as follows:

            Given the present moment as deictic centre, it might seen trivial to define the three basic tenses that have formed the backbone of much linguistics work on time reference in grammar, namely present, past and future, as follows: present tense means coincidence of the time of situation and the present moment; past tense means location of the situation prior to the present moment; future tense means location of the situation of the situation after the present moment. (Comrie, 1985: 36)

            In this case, Comrie suggests that in order to establish formal representation of absolute tense, we have to specify the present moment (moment of speech) in his term, it is abbreviated as “S”, and consider the moment of the event (abbreviated as “E”). after specifying the present moment and the moment of the event, then we will relate them to establish some temporal relations. Based on Comrie’s work (Comrie, 1985: 123) there are three relation between the present moment (S) and the moment of the event (E), they are: simultaneous, before and after.

            These relations then can be represented as the three absolute tenses. The first is present tense. This tense stands for a situation when the moment of event occurred almost on the same time (simultaneously) with the moment of speech. When the moment of event occurred before the moment of speech, it is called as past tense. Menawhile, future tense stands for the moment of event that is occurred after the time of speaking. In short, these three absolute tenses are represented as follows (Comrie, 1985: 123):

                                    Present      : E simul S (the event or moment occurred in the moment of speech)

                                    Past           : E before S (the event or moment occurred before the moment of speech)

                                    Future        : E after S (the event or moment occurred after the moment of speech)

            The explanation of this concept, furthermore an event or a moment is located in a time diagram and it is viewed from deictic center or zero point (0). It means that an event may occurred in the time of speech, before the time of speech, or after the time of speech. In the form of notation, this concept can be presented as follows: E = = (for present), E < 0 (for past) and E > 0 (for future). The writer then discussed these three absolute tense in detail.

Relative tense

In the discussion above, the distinction of absolute tense is done by relating the situation (E) to the present moment (S). in this case, the present situation functions as deictic center. It means that in absolute tense, the reference point for the location of a situation in time is the present moment.

Unfortunately, sometimes there are many situations which have a reference point for its location is not the present moment, that is named as relative tense. Briefly, in relative tense, the reference point for location of a situation is some points in time given by context, not necessarily the present moment (Comrie, 1985: 56).

Further, Comrie stated that one of the characteristics of absolute tense is the use of adverbial. The distinction between absolute tense and relative tense can be identified by the using of this adverbial in sentence. Comrie (1985: 56 gives examples of some adverbials that serve specifically to locate a situation relative to the present moment, e.g. today  (the day including the present moment), yesterday (the day preceding the day including the present oment) and tomorrow (the day following the day including present moment).

In addition, Comrie states that there are adverbials which locate situation relative to some reference points given by the context, such as on the same day, on the day before, on the next day.