It is pretty dark. / The children were prettily dressed.

Sometimes adverbs with the suffix -ly are used metaphorically. Compare:

He sold his life dearly. / You bought those things very dear.

He is a highly educated man. / The airplane flew high above the city.

He loudly praised her work. / Do I speak loud enough?

He denied it flatly. / He fell flat to the ground.

The verb

The English verb presents a system of finite and non-finite forms / verbals (Infinitive, gerund, two participles: present and past) , which are also called verbals.

The grammatical meaning – to denote a process (actional verbs: to do, to make, to read, to speak) and state (statal verbs: to be, to exist, to lie, to consist)

The morphological forms – are presented by the categories of person, number, tense, aspect, correlation, voice, mood.

The syntactic function – the verbal predicate.

The category of number shows whether the action is performed by one or more persons or non-persons.

The category is neither universal nor homogeneous. It is restricted only to the following oppositions:

active voice

speak – speaks

am speaking - are speaking - is speaking

have spoken – has spoken / have been speaking - has been speaking

were speaking – was speaking

passive voice

am spoken – is spoken – are spoken

was spoken – were spoken

am being spoken –is being spoken – are being spoken

was being spoken – were being spoken

have been spoken – has been spoken

The category of person expresses the relation of the doer of the action and the speaker. It is restricted only to the following oppositions

Speak – speaks

Am –is – are

Was – were

Has – have

Shall – will

The category of tense expresses the relationship between the time of the action and the time of speaking. It is a threefold opposition, denoting present, past and future. So there are three tenses in English which find their formal manifestation usually in the auxiliary verbs ( am, is, are, do, does did, was, were, will, shall, have, has, had) or in some cases in the root of the verb (speaks, speak, spoke).

There is also a verbal form there in English which is very often called a tense: the so-called future-in-the-past. This is an artificial grammatical form used for some special purposes in grammar: to observe the rules of the sequence of tenses when transferring direct speech into indirect.

Each tense is represented by four verb forms involving such categories as aspect and correlation. Thus we have four present forms, four past forms and four future forms. Accordingly there are four future-in-the-past forms that correspond to the future forms.

The category of aspect shows the way or manner in which an action is performed. In English this category is constituted by the opposition of the continuous aspect and common (non-continuous ) aspect. In Russian the category of aspect is based on a quite different ground, it is constituted by the opposition of perfective – imperfective aspect (совершенный вид: что сделать? – несовершенный вид: что делать): сесть – сидеть, прочесть – читать, встать, стоять.

Just like all the other English grammatical categories, the category of aspect also has some restrictions as to the use of the continuous forms for some groups of verbs. The most common of them are:

• Statal verbs: to be, to have, to become, to remain, to belong to, to consist of, to contain, to possess, to own, to exist and others;

Note: She is being foolish (acting in a foolish way). I’m having dinner.

• Verbs expressing sensory perception: to hear, to see, to feel, to smell, to taste, to look (tired);

Note: The blind man is feeling his way with a stick. I’m not feeling very well today. She is seeing a doctor tomorrow. Why is she smelling her tea? (Do you smell smoke? The flowers smell sweet) Look! The cook is tasting the soup. (The milk tastes sour.)

• Verbs expressing emotional states: to like, to love, to hate, to envy, to fear, to care, to hope, to prefer, to want, to wish;

• Verbs expressing mental states: to believe, to forget, to remember, to understand, to think, to suppose, to consider, to expect, to mean, to know, to doubt, to find, to suggest.

The category of correlation shows time relation between an action and a certain time plane: present, past or future. In other words it shows how the action time is related to a moment in the present, past or future. This category is constituted by the opposition of the perfect to the non-perfect forms.

All the three categories are reflected in every verb form and in its name. Compare:

Present simple = present, common, non-perfect (works)

Past simple = past, common, non-perfect (worked)

Future simple = future, common, non-perfect (will work)

Present continuous = present, continuous, non-perfect (is working)

Present perfect = present, non-continuous, perfect (has worked)

Present perfect continuous = present, continuous, perfect ( has been working)

The category of voice (залога: действительный, страдательный ) denotes the relationship between the action and the person or non-person presented by the subject. There are two voices in English: active voice ( the subject denotes the doer of the action) and passive ( the action is directed towards the subject). He wrote a letter in haste. The letter was written in haste. The letter was posted by his son.

It is very important not to mix up the forms of the passive voice and the forms of the compound nominal predicates with predicative expressed by the past participle. Comare:

He is used to our climate. / This pen is always used by me.

It was very hot in the room because all the windows were closed. / The door was closed at 7 o’clock by the hall-porter.

The book is not illustrated. / The book was illustrated by a well-known artist.

The children were neatly dressed. / The children were dressed and taken for a walk.

Sorry, I am mistaken. / I am always mistaken for my sister.

I am very much obliged to you.

I can tell you that I was surprised.

His ankle is sprained, he can hardly walk.

The castle is situated on the slope of a hill.

The number of copies is limited.

The category of mood expresses the attitude of the speaker towards the content of the utterance.

There are three moods in English: the indicative (изъявительное наклонение), the imperative (повелительное) and the subjunctive ( сослагательное).

The indicative mood indicates that what is said must be regarded as a fact, as something which occurred or is occurring at the moment of speaking or will occur in the future.

All the analysed before tense forms are the forms of the indicative mood.

The imperative mood expresses a command or a request, a warning, a threat, and so on for somebody to perform or not to perform an action. It has no tense category: the action always refers to the future. The imperative mood lacks also the categories of aspect, correlation and voice distinctions. The forms of the imperative mood are expressed by the infinitive without the particle ‘to’(bare infinitive): Leave the door open! Don’t be late!

The subjunctive mood expresses unreal or hypothetical actions or states. The latter can be looked on as desired,, necessary, possible, supposed, imaginary, or contradicting reality.

I wish it were spring all the year round.

It is impossible that he should have said such a thing.

If it were not so cold I should go out for a walk . / If it hadn’t been so cold yesterday, I should have gone out for a walk. (But it was very cold yesterday and I stayed at home yesterday the whole day.)

It is necessary that you should go there.

The examples contain all the grammatical forms of the subjunctive mood the English verb can take to express the category of mood: were (past simple), had been (past perfect), should go (auxiliary verb should + indefinite Infinitive), should have gone (auxiliary should + perfect infinitive).

In Russian the grammatical indicator of the category is the particle ‘бы’ and past verb forms:

Мне бы хотелось, чтобы весь год была весна.

Невероятно, чтобы он такое сказал.

Если бы не было так холодно, я бы вышла бы на прогулку. ….