The Continuous tence forms of the English language in the cognitive-semiotic aspect

The article offers a cognitive-semiotic analysis of English Continuous tense forms. The purpose of this study is to analyze the internal form of Continuous tenses which are considered as grammatical phraseological units. By describing the cognitive phraseosemantic modelling of ‘conceptual complexes’ through grammar means the authors endeavour to define and formulate basic cognitive-semiotic features of English Continuous tense forms. As a result it is concluded that the general cognitive model of the Continuous tenses actualises the discursive identity between the Actant-Subject and the Actant-predicate noun expressed by the gerund of the meaningful verb. This model expresses the semantics of a confined action developing in a limited spatio-temporal frame without a rigid attachment to the temporal markers of the beginning and end of the action. Different Continuous tenses show different positions of the observing subject in relation to the time of action, as well as modifications of the basic cognitive model of Continuous. For Present Continuous and Past Continuous, the specificity of their discourse syntagmatics is that the position of the observing subject differs. Future Continuous is characterised by a modified model of Actant-Subject and Actant- predicate noun identity, which develops an additional cognitive parameter. In this case the paradigmatic dependence of the predicate noun on the subject of an statement is observed. The paper also considers the cognitive model of the construction to be going to + infinitive as a special case of the cognitive model of Continuous.