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The English verbs. Subclasses of verbs in English.

The verb is the only part of speech which has a unique feature called valency. Valency is the ability of the verb tj determine the number and the character of other parts of the sentence. The nature of the verb is actually responsible for the rest of the sentence, i.e. what nouns and other parts of speech will accompany it and how they will be semantically specified. The sentence is actually built around the verb on the basis of its valency. In general verbs carry a great deal of information: they describe actions, events and states and place them in time , they tell us whether these actions are real or unreal, whether they have been completed or are still going on, they allow us to perform various speech acts.Thus we may conclude that the verb plays the most important role in constituting the structure of the sentence, it presents the pivot, or the semantic-syntactic centre of the sentence.

The verb is a complicated and capacious part of speech. Its complicated character is manifested in the fact that it has the largest number of grammatical categories. To produce an utterance the speaker has to make a number of grammatical choices: to choose the appropriate form of the tense, aspect, time correlation, number, person, voice and mood.The class of verbs gets enriched by means of affixation, conversion and compounding.

Verbs are classified in grammar according to three main aspects: form, function and grammatical semantics. According to their formal properties English verbs are divided into two classes: regular and irregular. The class of irregular verbs in English is not very large. There are about 180 irregular verbs, but they are the verbs most frequently used because they name everyday routines and activities.

According to their function verbs are subdivided into notional and functional. In between these two subclasses there are the so-called semi-notional verbs. Here belong modal (can, may, must, should, ought), modalized (seem, appear happen, chance turn out prove), aspective verbs (begin, continue, stop). Unlike notional verbs which have a full nominative value, semi-notional verbs possess a partial nominative value. They do not name actions as notional verbs do but just add rather modal or aspective characteristics to the notional verbs they accompany.

Functional verbs are further subdivided into auxiliaries, links, substitutes and intensifiers. Each of these classes of functional verbs presents a limited number of units.

According to their grammatical semantics verbs are divided into dynamic and static , transitive and intransitive, durative and terminative. These semantic characteristics are related to the grammatical categories of aspect, time correlation and voice. As many verbs in English are polysemantic these features refer not to the whole of the verbal lexeme, but to its concrete meanings. A verb may be transitive in one of its meaning and intransitive in the other.

Similary a verb may be terminative in one meaning and durative in another. A verb may also be static in one of its meanings and dynamic in another. This is best observed in the class of verbs denoting mental activity.