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хаймович-роговская курс теор грамматики.rtf
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Verb Grammemes in Speech

§ 251. When used in speech a word has but one of its lexical meanings and all of its grammatical meanings (see § 21). Thus in the sentence He writes to me every week, the verb writes conveys only one of its lexical meanings ('communi­cates in writing'), whereas it has seven elementary grammatical meanings: 1) active voice, 2) non-perfect order, 3) non-con­tinuous aspect, 4) present tense, 5) indicative mood, 6) third person, 7) singular number.

Since each of these elementary meanings can be singled out in a certain opposeme, the entire grammatical meaning of a grammeme as a unit of language must be regarded as the sum of its elementary grammatical meanings (present tense + active voice + indicative mood, etc.).

When used in speech, however, in diverse speech situat­ ions, in various lexical and syntactical surroundings, with verbs of different lexical meanings, a grammeme l may acquire some complex meaning which cannot be directly inferred from the meanings of its constituents. In other words, the entire meaning of a grammeme in speech is often not equal to the sum of it* elementary meanings and we may speak, in some sense, of idiomatic meanings of grammemes. Hence the neces­ sity of analysing the meanings of grammemes not only as units of language, but as units of speech as well. ^

§ 252. The systems of different moods, as we know, con­tain different grammemes. We shall therefore discuss the gram­memes of the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods separately.

Within the indicative mood the meanings of 'tense', 'aspect' and 'order' are closely interlaced in speech. This is one of the reasons why linguists often do not distinguish them as separate categories of the language system. We shall study these meanings together.

1 See note, p. 66.

167

The meanings of 'voice', 'person' and 'number' rarely mix with the other meanings, so that they can be studied separately. But the more or less simple meanings of 'number' and 'person' hardly need any special analysis *.

Now a few remarks about the names of grammemes. When we speak about 'passive voice' grammemes, we do not mean that there exist in English such grammemes whose only meaning is that of 'passive voice'. We simply unite all the grammemes that contain among others the meaning of 'pas­sive voice', and exclude those that do not contain this mean­ing. When we deal with the 'present perfect continuous', we unite all the grammemes that have the meanings of 'pre­sent tense', 'perfect order' and 'continuous aspect', and exclude those that do not possess at least one of these mean­ings.

Indicative Mood Grammemes

The Present, Non-Continuous, Non-Perfect

§ 253. As a part of the verb system it may be said to pre­sent an action in the present (present tense) unspecified as to its character (non-continuous or common aspect) and correl­ation with other situations (non-perfect order).

When occurring in speech in about 70 per cent of all cases it serves to denote a habitual, recurrent act, typical of a given person or thing, its more or less constant characteristics.

E. g. We never talk about our clients. (Hgniingway).

It is used in narration describing a chain of events in the present.

E. g. I p о и г a glass of milk into a pan, add two table-spoonfuls of sugar and an egg and т i x it all well. (Daily Worker).