Free and Bound Use of Grammar Forms

Grammatical forms are generally used freely according to their own meaning and their use is determined by purely linguistic factors, such as rules of agreement, syntactic construction, etc. in such cases their use is not free but bound. For example, in English the singular or the plural form of a noun preceded by a numeral depends upon the number of things counted: one table, twenty one tables; in Russian the agreement depends on the last numeral: один стол, двадцать пять столов.

The rule of sequence of Tenses is another case in point: the use of the tense in the English subordinate clause is bound. If the past Tense is used in the principal clause, the Past or the Future-in-the-Past must be used in the subordinate clause instead of the Present or of the Future, e.g. He says that he speaks English – он говорит, что знает английский; he said that he spoke English – он сказал, что он говорит по-английски.

This purely formal rule of the sequence of tenses does not find its reflection in translation as no such rule exists in Russian and the use of the tense form in the dependent clause is free and is determined by the situation.

It should be borne in mind that in reported speech – in newspaper articles, in minutes, in reports and records – this rule of the sequence of tenses is observed through the text: the sequences are governed by the Past Tense of the initial sentence – he said, it was reported, they declared, he stressed, etc.

To conclude, only free forms are rendered in translation and bound forms require special attention.