Theme 7. Verb. Non-finite forms.

1. A general outline of verbals: the categorial semantics, categories, syntac­tic functions.

2. The infinitive and its properties. The categories of the infinitive. Modal meanings of infinitival complexes.

3. The gerund and its properties. The categories of gerund. The notion of half-gerund.

4. The present participle, the past participle, and their properties.

5. Language means of expressing modality.

Terms: modality, aspect, time, tense, time correlation, retrospective coordination, mood, absolute time, relative time, voice.

Non-finite forms of the verb (verbids) are the forms of the verb which have features intermediary between the verb and the non-processual parts of speech. Their mixed features are revealed in their se­mantics, morphemic structural marking, combinability, and syntac­tic functions. Verbids do not denote pure processes but present them as peculiar kinds of substances and properties; they do not express the most specific finite verb categories - the categories of tense and mood; they have a mixed, verbal and non-verbal, valency; they per­form mixed, verbal and non-verbal, syntactic functions.

The strict division of functions clearly shows that the opposition be­tween the finite and non-finite forms of the verb creates a special gram­matical category. The differential feature of the opposition is constitut­ed by the expression of verbal time and mood: while the time-mood grammatical signification characterizes the finite verb in a way that it underlies its finite predicative function, the verbid has no immediate means of expressing time-mood categorial semantics and therefore presents the weak member of the opposition. The category expressed by this opposition is called the category of "finitude". The syntactic content of the| category of finitude is the expression of verbal predication.

The peculiar feature of the verbid verbality consists in their ex­pressing "secondary" ("potential") predication. They are not self-de­pendent in a predicative sense. The verbids normally exist only as part of sentences built up by genuine, primary predicative constructions! that have a finite verb as their core. And it is through the reference to the finite verb-predicate that these complexes set up the situation denoted by them in the corresponding time and mood perspectives.

The English verbids include four forms distinctly differing from" one another within the general verbid system: the infinitive, the ger­und, the present participle, and the past participle. In compliance with this difference, the verbid semi-predicative complexes are dis­tinguished by the corresponding differential properties both in form and in syntactic-contextual function.

The infinitive combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun, as a result it serves as the verbal name of a process. By virtue of its general process-naming function, the infinitive should be considered as the head-form of the whole paradigm of the verb.

The infinitive has a dual, verb-type and noun-type, valency. The infinitive has three grammatical categories: the aspective category of development (the opposition of Continuous and Non-Continuous forms), the aspective category of retrospective coordination (the op­position of Perfect and Non-Perfect forms), the category of voice (the opposition of Passive and Non-Passive forms). Consequently, the categorial paradigm of the infinitive of the objective verb includes eight forms: the Indefinite Active, the Continuous Active, the Perfect Active, the Perfect Continuous Active; the Indefinite Passive, the Continuous Passive, the Perfect Passive, the Perfect Continuous Pas­sive. The infinitive paradigm of the non-objective verb, correspond­ingly, includes four forms.

The gerund, like the infinitive, combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun and gives the process the verbal name. In comparison with the infinitive the gerund reveals stronger substan­tive properties. Namely, as different from the infinitive, and similar to the noun, the gerund can be modified by a noun in the possessive case or its pronominal equivalents (expressing the subject of the ver­bal process), and it can be used with prepositions.

The combinability of the gerund is dual: it has a mixed, verb-type and noun-type, valency. Like the infinitive, the gerund performs the syntactic functions of the subject, the object, the predicative, the at­tribute, and the adverbial modifier. The gerund has two grammatical categories: the aspective category of retrospective coordination and the category of voice. Consequently, the categorial paradigm of the gerund of the objective verb includes four forms: the Simple Active, the Perfect Active, the Simple Passive, the Perfect Passive. The gerundial paradigm of the non-objective verb, correspondingly, includes two forms.

The present participle serves as a qualifying-processual name. It combines the properties of the verb with those of the adjective and adverb.

The present participle has two categories: the category of retro­spective coordination and the category of voice. The triple nature of the present participle finds its expression in its mixed (verb-type, ad­jective-type, adverb-type) valency and its syntactic functions (those of the predicative, the attribute, and the adverbial modifier).The present participle, similar to the infinitive, can build up semi-predicative complexes of objective and subjective types.

The past participle combines the properties of the verb with those of the adjective. The categorial meaning of the past participle is qual­ifying: it gives some sort of qualification to the denoted process. The past participle has no paradigmatic forms; by way of paradigmatic correlation with the present participle, it conveys implicitly the cate­gorial meanings of the perfect and the passive. Its valency is not spe­cific; its typical syntactic functions are those of the attribute and the predicative.

Like the present participle, the past participle is capable of mak­ing up semi-predicative constructions of complex object, complex subject, as well as absolute complexes.

The consideration of the English verbids in their mutual compar­ison, supported and supplemented by comparing them with their non­verbal counterparts, reveals a peculiar character of their correlation.

The correlation of the infinitive, the gerund, and the verbal noun, being of an indisputably systemic nature and covering a vast propor­tion of the lexicon, makes up a special lexico-grammatical category of processual representation. The three stages of this category repre­sent the referential processual entity of the lexemic series, respective­ly, as dynamic (the infinitive and its phrase), semi-dynamic (the ger­und and its phrase), and static (the verbal noun and its phrase). The category of processual representation underlies the predicative dif­ferences between various situation-naming constructions in the sphere of syntactic nominalization.

Another category specifically identified within the framework of substantival verbids and relevant for syntactic analysis is the catego­ry of modal representation. This category, pointed out by L.S. Barkhudarov, marks the infinitive in contrast to the gerund, and it is revealed in the infinitive having a modal force, in particular, in its attributive uses, but also elsewhere.

In treating the ing-forms as constituting one integral verbid entity, opposed, on the one hand, to the infinitive, on the other hand, to the past participle, appeal is naturally made to the alternating use of the possessive and the common-objective nounal element in the role of the subject of the ing-form, the latter construction is known in linguistics as "half-gerund". The half-gerund is an intermediary form with dou­ble features whose linguistic semi-status is reflected in the term itself. In fact, the verbid under examination is rather to be interpreted as a transferred participle, or a gerundial participle, since semantic accent in half-gerundial construction is made on the situational content of the fact or event described, with the processual substance as its core (e.g.: / didn't mind the children playing in the study).

The linguistic means of expressing modality.

The category of modality is one of the most complex and contradictory category of grammatical theory. In linguistics there are two approaches to the category of modality – wide and narrow. In wide understanding modality is the category of a sentence, expressing the attitude of its contents to reality from the point of view of the speaker and including such aspects of utterance, as its expressiveness, communicative aim, negation, evaluation, time (V.V.Vinogradov). In the narrow sense modality is the category which shows the attitude of the speaker towards the utterance.

Emotions can be expressed by extra-lingual means, but modality can not. Sentence can be emotionally neutral, but modality is semantically necessary component of a sentence. It performs the constitutive function and that’s why it is obligatory. Emotions are not represented on categorical level, they are expressed lexically; on the contrary, modality is on the categorical level and is expressed grammatically.

Communicative aim of a sentence and its modality are different things, as the sentence can be interpreted from the view of three aspects:

1. grammatical structure (formal level)

2. meaningful structure (semantic level)

3. the level of organization of the utterance (communicative level).

The communicative aim of an utterance is understood in communicative linguistics as its illocutive power.

Modality exists in any time plan. Modality always has external expression but modal meanings are not expressed by word-building suffixes. Modality can be objective and subjective. Objective modality is a reflexive category, as it reflects the onthological link between the object and its characteristics, and its subjective type is a cognitive category as it is a product of mental activity of a person, the result of gnoseological activity of a person. So the category of modality in its aspect is a cognitive – reflexive category and to its belonging to some linguistic level – it belongs to syntactic level.

There is also another syntactic category – predicativeness. In logic it is marked that the characteristics of a thing can be assigned in two ways:

1. the characteristic is viewed as permanent which cannot be taken from the object. Such method is called attribution; and linguistic expression of attribution is attributive word combination. A green apple, a cold water, a beautiful building

2. second method supposes that the characteristic is viewed as separate from the object; which has temporal and changeable character. And to view this characteristic as belonging to the object we need to make mental operation or predication. The lingual expression of the process of predication is a sentence:

The apple is green. The water is cold. The building is beautiful.

The existence of the predicate in the sentence tells about its predicativeness.

Therefore we may say that modality and predicativeness are obligatory and necessary meaningful characteristics of a sentence: predicativeness, supplying the presence of characteristics in the sentence leads to the existence of modality; modality provides the link between predicativeness to the object of speech and at the end is responsible for the ability of a sentence to reflect the appropriate part of the world situation as actual and potential. Being a meaningful parameter of a sentence modality can be expressed in its structure by the system of lingual units of different levels.