- •Morphology and syntax as parts of grammar. Grammatical units.
- •Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of words
- •Main grammatical notions.
- •Method of opposition. Types of oppositional reduction.
- •Structure of words. Types of morphemes.
- •Means of form-building in English.
- •Parts of speech. Principles of classification.
- •H.Sweet’s classification of words into parts of speech.
- •Ch.Frie’s syntactico-distributional classification of words.
- •Notional and functional classes of words.
- •General characteristics of the noun as a part of speech.
- •The number category of the noun.
- •The theory of positional cases.
- •16.The theory of the possessive postposition.
- •17. Semantic subtypes of the genetive case.
- •18.The noun. Gender
- •19.The article. General Characteristics.
- •20. Different approaches to the number and meaning of the article.
- •21. General characteristics of the verb as a part of speech.
- •22. Categories expression time in English.
- •23. The aspect cateory. Different views on the number and kinds of aspects in Enlish.
- •24. The voice category. General characteristics.
- •25. Different views on the number and kinds of voices in English.
- •26. Peculiarities of passive constructions in English.
- •28. Means of expressing modality in English.
- •29. The cateory of mood. The Imperetive mood.
- •30. The Subjunctive mood.
- •31. Verbals. The Infinitive
- •32. The Participle.
- •33. The Gerund.
- •34. General characteristics of the adjective as a part of speech.
- •35. The degree category of the adjective.
- •36. The adverb. General characteristics.
- •37. The degree category of the adverb.
- •38.The Adlink. General characteristics.
- •39. The preposition.
- •40. The conjunction.
- •41. The phrase. General characteristics.
- •42. Principles of classification of phrases and types of relations between its constituents.
- •43. Ways of expressing syntactical relations between components of a phrase.
- •44. The sentence as a main unit of syntax.
- •45. Predicativity. Predication.
- •48. Syntactic categories. Sentence paradigm.
31. Verbals. The Infinitive
As the verbals (infinitive, gerund, and participle) make up a part of the English verb system, they have some features in common with the finite forms, and in so far as they are singled out of the forms of the verb, they must have some peculiarities of their own.Verbals have no category of number, mood and person.
What we must examine is the categories of aspect, tense, correlation and voice.The infinitive possesses the category of aspect, i.e. the distinction between the common and the continuous aspect.
To speak – to be speaking
To have spoken – to have been speaking
He seems to be enjoying himself quite a lot – the continuous infinitive gives more prominence to the idea of the continuity, which is obviously much stronger than the mere statement. With the gerund and the participle things are different. They exhibit no such distinction (no continuous forms). Occasionally, a continuous participle is found: The younger Miss Thorpes being also dancing, Catherine was left to the mercy of Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Allen, between whom she now remained а a continuous Participle I is at least potentially a part of the morphological system of the English verb. But this use appears to be obsolete (archaic).
!!! Potentially any verb can be used in the continuous form. Aspect is characteristic for all verbs.
32. The Participle.
The participle is a verbal characterized by the following properties:
Its dual lexico-grammatical meaning of a qualifying action.
The categories of voice, order.
Special suffixes: -ing (participle I), -(e)d, -t, -(e)n (participle II). Participle II is sometimes characterized by internal inflexion (written) or by a zero suffix (put).
Its peculiar combinability partly resembling that of the verb (the participle is associated with adverbs, with nouns and pronouns denoting the object of the action), and partly that of the adjective (it modifies nouns) and of the adverb (it modifies verbs).
Its most characteristic syntactical functions of attribute, adverbial complement, etc.
The participation in analytical forms like is asking, is asked, has asked, is being asked, etc.As to the verbal features of participle I they do not differ in the essential from those of the infinitive and the gerund. The grammeme traditionally called 'past participle' (participle II) stands somewhat apart. the adjectival and the adverbial features of the participle are connected with its combinability.
Participle II is mostly used to modify nouns.As to participle I, the combinability of different gram-memes is different.The non-perfect active participle may modify both nouns and verbs.
The non-perfect passive usually modifies verbs, but occasionally (when the verb is durative) nouns.
The other grammemes are used only to modify verbs.
33. The Gerund.
The Gerund
The gerund is originally a verbal noun in –ing. Similar to the infinitive, the gerund is the name of a process, but its substantive meaning is more strongly pronounced than that of the infinitive: unlike the infinitive, the gerund can be modified by a noun in the genitive case or by the possessive pronoun and used
with prepositions. The general combinability of the gerund, like that of the infinitive, is dual, sharing some features with the verb, and some features with the noun. The verbal features of the gerund. Like the verb, the gerund distinguishes the categories of voice and temporal correlation: writing (non-passive, non-perfect) – being written (passive, non-perfect) having written (non-passive, perfect) – having been written (passive,
perfect) It is obvious that gerunds derived from intransitive verbs have only two forms: non-perfect active and perfect active, e.g. walking vs. having walked. The gerund has the following syntactic features of the verb: it can function as part of the verbal predicate (e.g. If he stops working, he will die); it can be
followed by an object (e.g. I remember locking the door) and an adverbial modifier (e.g. He avoids driving fast). Similar to the noun, the gerund can be modified by a noun in the genitive case or in the common case, which, when pronominalized, turn into the possessive and objective forms, respectively:
She did nothing to encourage John’s going abroad.
She did nothing to encourage John going abroad. vs.
She did nothing to encourage his going abroad.
She did nothing to encourage him going abroad.
The standard form is the form with the noun in the genitive case or with the possessive pronoun. The other form is more common in spoken English. The gerund in the latter construction is traditionally called the half-gerund. Unlike the noun, the gerund cannot be used in the plural; it cannot be preceded by the article (or its substitute); it cannot be determined by the adjective. Like the noun, the gerund can be used as the subject, the object, thepredicative, and the attribute.