Traditional and Modern Theories of TAM - Research Paper Example

Modern theories have shown many deficiencies of the traditional grammar approach, which is typically complex and highly prescriptive. In practice, "There are matters of style, matters of change (albeit extremely slow change) and matters of dialect" (Bauer, 2007). Furthermore, substitution frames, for example, do not always help, and they can become cumbersome for structuralists to define for all instances of word occurrences. Moreover, differences between form and function can arise. Descriptive grammarians on the other hand attempt to describe the language as well as explain why it is the way it is and various theoretical models are used for the purpose.

In this regard, Chomsky's work on transformational generative grammar was very significant in shaping modern linguistic theories. The modern discipline of generative linguistics made its appearance from the 1960s. However, as many linguists have experienced, modeling verb systems of many languages is a very complex affair. Bache et al., (1994) view the semantic complexity of language-specific categories as “the main problem in the analysis of any verb system” (p.3). This complexity they believe is due to “categorical interplay between verbal categories, which creates functionally derived meanings and which explains certain constraints on language-specific constructions… [and] members of different meta-categories (tense, aspect) sometimes merge into one language-specific form” (p.3-4). Bache’s simple description of tense and aspect are a useful introduction and are therefore outlined below.

Bache’s types of tenses and aspect categoriesTense is the form of the predicate verb used that besides the action or state of being understood by the verb itself usually indicates the time reference. The Chambers English Dictionary (1992) defines tense simply as "the form of a verb to indicate the time of the action". Traditionally, especially amongst Indo-Europeans, the time has been divided into past, present (present) and future (future), which according to the 18th century grammarian James Harris, is an “obvious division”.