The Use of Tenses in English

This book, which is based on a series of lectures given recently at the University of Athens, deals solely with the grammar that governs the use of tenses in English. It has been wrritten in simple language but in much greater detail than is usually found because I have long felt that there is a need for such a book among foreign students of the English language. Emphasis has been laid on the strict rules of tense usage because the foreign student will find it much easier to master tense difficulties if he begins by working to strict rules than if, before having gained a mastery of the language, he experiments with elasticity that is correct in somé circumstances but incorrect in most. In many of the rules and explanations, a new terminology will be found: "Perfect" and "Ordinary" periods, " Finished " and " Unfinished " uses of the Perfect Tenses, and so on. Such terminology is necessarily new because, as far as I know, the parts which contain it have not been approached in this way before. JOHN MILLINGTON WARD Athens, London Summer 1953

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