Relative tenses, linguistic relativism and media language

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ENThe distinction of tenses to absolute and relative appeared in linguistics in 16th century which was an important for attempt to define the grammatical category of tense. Linguistics describes absolute tenses as grammatical temporal xpressions related to the time of an utterance which are based on conceptual opposition of past/present/future. Relative tenses, in ontrary, are the tenses in which a situation time is related to a contextually-given reference time; moreover, they are based on nceptual opposition of anteriority/simultaneity/posteriority. Relative time reference is inherent to both nonfinite verbs as well as tense-aspect interaction. One of the important aspects of the discussions on general meanings of absolute and relative tenses is the need to differentiate between speech mode and narrative mode. From the point of view of grammar, it is the speech mode which is a canonical communicative situation, while narrative mode presupposes detaching of the utterance from the speaker and speech itself. The aim of the paper is to explain how difference in usage of non-finite forms might reflect different cultural practices of speech/narration. [From the publication]