- •С.В. Иванова
- •Ббк 81.2 Англ
- •Foreword
- •Preface
- •Preface to the second edition
- •Major trends in Theoretical Grammar of the English language
- •Classical English grammar
- •Transformational grammar
- •Functional Communicative Approach
- •Cognitive Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics
- •Supplementary literature:
- •2. Major grammatical notions
- •Language as a system
- •Chart 1. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
- •Chart 2. Paradigmatic patterns of a clause by m.A.K. Halliday
- •Interrogative→ “wh”
- •Indicative→ declarative→
- •Imperative → jussive38 →
- •Inclusive
- •Grammatical meaning, grammatical form and grammatical category
- •E.G. Work –worked
- •The notion of opposition in Theoretical Grammar
- •Synthetic and analytic forms
- •Morphology and Syntax as two main parts of grammar
- •Chart 3. The scope of morphology
- •Inflection word-formation
- •3. The notion of a morpheme
- •The idea and the definition of the morpheme
- •Types of morphemes
- •Problems connected with the notion of a morpheme
- •Characteristic features of inflectional morphology and types of word-form derivation
- •4. The parts of speech system
- •In foreign linguistics
- •Introduction to the problem
- •Classification of parts of speech suggested by Henry Sweet
- •3. O. Jespersen’s classification of parts of speech
- •4. Principles of the classification of words suggested by Charles Fries
- •Woggles ugged diggles
- •Uggs woggled digs
- •5. Classifications of parts of speech developed within structuralist linguistics
- •6. R. Quirk’s approach to the problem in his
- •Verb Preposition
- •Interjection
- •Modern grammars of contemporary English
- •5. The parts of speech system
- •In russian linguistics
- •The main criteria for the classification of parts of speech in Russian Linguistics
- •The concept of notional and formal words
- •6. The article
- •1. The status of the article in English
- •2. The number of articles in English
- •3. The categorial meaning and the functions of the article
- •7. Noun and its grammatical categories
- •Introduction. The categories of gender and number
- •The category of case
- •The syntactic function of the noun
- •8. The verb. General characteristics
- •The verb. General overview
- •2. The categories of person and number
- •3. The category of tense
- •9. The category of aspect
- •In modern english
- •The definition of aspect as a verbal category
- •Different approaches to the interpretation of aspect
- •The connection of the aspect interpretation with other lexicological issues: terminative and durative verbs
- •The correlation of the English aspect forms and Russian aspect forms
- •10. The category of retrospective coordination
- •The problem of the Perfect forms in the system of the English language
- •2. Different approaches to the interpretation of perfect forms
- •Interpretation of perfect forms as an independent grammatical category
- •11. The category of mood in modern english
- •1. The category of mood and its semantic content
- •Debatable issues connected with the interpretation of the category of mood
- •12. The category of voice
- •In modern english
- •The nature of the grammatical category of voice
- •2. Debatable problems within the category of voice
- •He told me a story.
- •3. The notion of transitivity
- •13. Syntax
- •Syntax as a branch of grammar
- •Units of syntactic description
- •The theory of phrase
- •Types of syntactic relations (linkage)
- •14. The sentence
- •The sentence: the problem of its definition
- •2. The sentence. Its major categories
- •3. Typology of the sentence
- •15. Sentence as an object of syntactic studies
- •Major features of the sentence as a syntactic unit
- •Syntactic structure of the sentence as an object of linguistic studies
- •Immediate constituents of the sentence: ic analysis
- •Adjoinment - the use of specifying words, most often particles: He did it – Only he did it.
- •The utterance. Informative structure of the utterance
- •Basic notions of pragmatic linguistics
- •Speech act theory. Direct and indirect speech acts. Types of speech acts
- •Discourse analysis as the study of language in use
- •Implicatures of discourse
- •Implicatures and indirectness
- •It is only due to making an assumption about the relevance of b’s response that we can understand it as an answer to a’s question.
- •A List of Selected Bibliography
- •List of reference and practice books
- •Terminological dictionaries
- •Seminars in theoretical grammar
- •Contents
8. The verb. General characteristics
The Verb. General overview.
The categories of person and number.
The category of tense.
The problem of time and tense correlation in the language system. Absolute and relative use of tense forms.
Different interpretations of the tense system in English.
The verb. General overview
The verb seems to be an area of grammar that has always gained the greatest interest in language learning. We can say with little fear of exaggeration that in most developed modern languages the verb is indeed the most intricate single mechanism, the keystone of the architecture of human communication.
In Modern English as well as in many other modern languages, verbal forms imply not only subtle shades of time distinction but serve other purposes, too; they are also often marked for person and number, for mood, voice and aspect.
As a part of speech the verb is characterized by a number of properties.
The exact definition of the verb as a word class may give grounds for dispute.
According to Aristotle the verb signifies actions and passions. According to Scaliger the verb signifies what is passing as opposed to the noun that signifies what is permanent. J.C. Nesfiled (1898) defined the verb “as a word used for saying something about some person or thing” making little difference between a verb and an adjective. Some grammars prefer to talk about “doing words” or “action words”, but this seems to exclude many state verbs (e.g. know, remember, be, etc.). Thus the lexico-grammatical meaning of the verb in modern terms is that of action, process or state.
Its grammatical categories are person, number, tense, aspect, retrospective coordination, mood, and voice. The grammatical categories of the English verb find their expression in synthetic and analytical forms. The formative elements expressing these categories are grammatical affixes, inner inflexion and function words. Some categories have only synthetic forms (person, number), others – only analytical (voice distinctions, retrospective coordination). There are also categories expressed by both synthetic and analytical forms (mood, time, aspect). We generally distinguish finite and non-finite forms of the verb. Non-finites, or the so-called verbids, are the infinitive, the gerund and the participle.
The characteristic combinability of the verb is closely linked with its lexico-grammatical meaning. Denoting an action, the verb is naturally associated:
with nouns indicating (1) the doer or
(2) the recipient
with adverbs (1) to modify the verb.
Its syntactic function is a predicate for finites and various other functions for non-finites.
2. The categories of person and number
The category of person in Indo-European languages serves to present an action as associated by the speaker (1) with himself (or a group of people including the speaker), (2) the person or people addressed, and (3) the person or thing (people or things) not participating in the process of speech. Or in other words, B.A. Ilyish writes that the category of person in verbs is represented by the 1st, 2nd and 3d person, and it expresses the relation between the speaker, the person or people addressed, and other people and things. The 1st person expresses the speaker or a group of which the speaker makes a part. The 2nd person expresses the person or people spoken to, and the 3rd person implies that person or thing (or those people or things) who/which are neither the speaker nor the person(s) spoken to.
The category of person is practically represented by the two-member opposition: speak – speaks, am - is. The person opposition is neutralized when associated with “plural” meaning. Nevertheless A.I. Smirnitsky thinks that owing to the presence of the plural personal pronouns (we, you, they) personal distinctions are felt in the plural of the verb as well. B.S. Khaimovich & B.I. Rogovskaya criticize this view. They hold that if the verb itself does not show any person distinctions we are bound to admit that in modern English the verb in the plural has no person.
The category of number shows whether the action is associated with one doer or with more than one. Accordingly it denotes something fundamentally different from what is indicated by the number of nouns. We see here not the “oneness” or “more than oneness” of actions, but the connection with the single or plural doer. As M. Bryant puts is, “He eats three times a day” does not indicate a single eating but a single eater.
The category of number is represented in its purity in the opposition of the forms was ÷ were and accordingly in all analytical forms containing was ÷ were (was writing ÷ were writing, was written ÷ were written).
In such forms as I am – you are, he is – they are, I am – we are - the number is blended with person. Likewise in such forms as speaks ÷ speak (He speaks – They speak) we actually have the 3d person singular as opposed to the non-3d person singular. That proves the fact that the categories of person and number are closely connected with each other.
It should be mentioned that some verbs do not distinguish number at all because of their peculiar historical development: I (we) can, he (they) must, etc. These are mainly modal verbs.
In general the category of number is but scantily represented in Modern English.