The category of aspect

The category of aspect shows the manner in which the action is presented. The members of the aspect opposition are the Indefinite and the Continuous forms. The Indefinite form presents an action as a mere fact. That’s why it is used to denote habitual, recurrent actions, well-known facts succession of events, etc. The Continuous form presents an action as a developing process. It is used to denote an action going on at a given moment or period of time.

Category of Correlation

Many scholars are of the opinion that the English perfect – non-perfect forms represent a special grammatical category – the category of correlation which is expressed in the system of two-member opposemes: writes – has written; wrote – had written; writing – having written; to be written – to have been written, etc. showing whether the action is viewed as prior to (perfect forms) or irrespective of other actions or situations (non-perfect forms)

The category of mood

The category of mood expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality, either presenting the process as a fact that really happened, happens or will happen or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon.

23. The Phrase

The word-group (phrase) is a grammatical unit formed by a combination of two or more notional words, which doesn’t constitute a sentence. The notional words are connected syntactically within the structure of the sentence (cold water, reads a book). They may belong to any part of speech. A word group as such has no intonation, as it is one of the most important features of the sentence. As to syntactical connection English phrases are classed as follows:

1. subordinate word-groups (fine weather, to write a letter, fond of reading)

2. co-ordinate word-groups (brother and sister, neither here nor there, king dear)

3. predicative word-groups (weather permitting, for u to go)

Coordinate phrases may be

1) syndetic and 2) asyndetic

3) copulative and 4) appositive

e.g. harsh and loud (1,3), the city of Rome (2,4), they all (2,4).

Appositive phrases may be close and loose 1) Wilson the writer; 2) Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, is dead.

Predicative word-groups

Predicative word-groups consist in two parts: a subjectival and a predicatival.

e.g He didn’t want for me [subjectival] to come [predicatival].

The relations between the subjectival and the predicatival are similar to those of the subject and the predicate. There is no correspondence in person and number between the predicatival and subjectival. Predicative word-groups like other word-groups are semantic and grammatical units; cannot function as independent sentences as they do not express communications.

The person (thing) expressed by the subject of the sentence and the subjectival are different: Val likes you to look nice. The subject ‘Val’ and the subjectival ‘you’ denote different persons.

Classification of predicative word-groups

There are bound and absolute predicative word-groups:

1) bound predicative word-groups are grammatically connected with the verb-predicate of the sentence, functioning as subject, object, predicative, adverbial, or with the noun (attribute), the subjectival is unusually having a dependent form (him, their, John’s), they are not isolated. E.g. They watched him running down the slope (object).

2) Absolute predicative word-groups are always isolated expressing an additional (parallel) quality. They are usually connected by means of intonation with the whole sentence and not only with the verb predicate, the subjectival of the absolute construction denotes a person or a thing other than the object. E.g. The situation being urgent, we had to go ahead.