4. Grammatical categories denoting time and character of action. Person and number. The categories of tense and aspect of the verb. Non-finite forms of the verb.

Grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized gr.meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of gr. features.

The categories of person and number must be considered in close connection with each other. The category of person is expressed in pronouns and verbs. The category of person in verbs is represented by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, and it expresses the relation between the speaker, the person or persons addressed, and other persons and things. The 1st person, of course, expresses the speaker or a group of which the speaker makes a part; the 2nd person, the person or persons spoken to, and the 3rd, that person or thing which are neither the speaker nor the person(s) spoken to. The category of number expresses the quantity of the subjects (one or more than one). Is organically connected with functional nature of the noun: it directly exposes the number of the referent substance. The category of number in the verb gives meaningful characteristics to the denoted process (the girl is smiling- the girls are smiling).

The category of tense – a verbal category, which reflects objective category of time and expresses on this background the relations b/n the time of the action and the time of the utterance. In Engl. 3 tenses (past, pr., fut.). Doubts about the existence of a future tense (Jespersen): Engl. has no way of expressing “pure futurity”. A pr. tense may be used when the action belongs to the fut. (pr. cont.:- she is going). Each of them may appear in the common and in the continuous aspect. Thus we get six tense-aspect forms. Besides, there are 2 more: the fut-in-the-past and the fut-cont-in-the-past. These forms are used chiefly in subordinate clauses depending on a main clause having its predicative verb in one of the past tenses.

There are two sets of forms in the Modern English verb which are contrasted with each other on the principle of use or non-use of the pattern "be + first participle»: writes — is writing — was writing. The difference between sets of forms is: an action going on continuously during a given period of time, and an action not thus limited and not described by the very form of the verb as proceeding in such a manner. Not every verb is commonly used in the form "be + first participle". Thus we will use the terms continuous aspect and common aspect to denote the two aspects of the Modern English verb. Forms of the continuous aspect are occasionally used with the adverbs always, continually, etc., when the action is meant to be unlimited by time.

English has three kinds of non-finite forms of the verb (verbals): gerund, infinitive, participle. It is clear that none of the verbals has any category of person or mood. The English verbals have no category of number, but have the categories of aspect, tense, correlation, and voice: the infinitive has the category of aspect, there is a distinction between the common and the continuous aspect. To speak-to be speaking, to have spoken- to have been speaking. The gerund and participle have no such distinction but sometimes a cont. participle is found(being dancing). Like the finite forms of the verb, the verbals have a distinction between active and passive: (to) read— (to) be read

5. Syntactic relations of words. Phrases. Types of syntactic relations within a phrase: agreement, government, enclosure. Types of phrases. Sentence. Aspects of the sentence: syntactic, semantic, communicative. Functional sentence perspective.

Within the domain of syntax two levels should be distinguished: that of phrases and that of sentences. Phrase - every combination of two or more words which is a grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of some word. The constituent elements of a phrase may belong to any part of speech. The difference between a phrase and a sentence is a fundamental one. A phrase is a means of naming some phenomena or processes, just as a word is. Each component of a phrase can undergo grammatical changes in accordance with grammatical categories represented in it, without destroying the identity of the phrase. A phrase has no intonation, just as a word has none. Intonation is one of the most important features of a sentence, which distinguish it from a phrase.

Types of phrases: "noun + noun" is the most usual. It must be divided into two subtypes:-N. in common case + N.; and – N. in genitive case + N. The first component may be a proper name. "adjective + noun". "verb + noun" may correspond to two different types of relation between an action and a thing. Among the other types of phrases are: "verb + adv.", "adv.+ adj.", "adv. + adv.", "n. + prep. + n.", "adj. + prep. + n.", etc. Types of syntactic relations within a phrase: agreement, government, enclosure.

A sentence – a unit with every word having it’s definite form. A change of a form of 1 or more word would produce a new sentence. It has intonation. Grammar has to study the aspect which spring from the gr. peculiarities of the words and of the syntactical function of a phrase. Lexicology has to deal with the lexical meaning of words and their semantic grouping.

The problem of dividing a sentence into two sections, one of them containing that which is the starting point of the statement, and the other the new information for whose sake the sentence has been written. This has been termed functional perspective. One-member sentences cannot be divided up in this way. The pair of terms best suited for this purpose would seem to be "theme" and "rheme". In Modern English there are several ways of showing that a word or phrase corresponds either to the rheme or to the theme. The rheme is pointed out with the help of the constructions it is ... that (it is ... who/which), particles (only, even, etc.) accompanying the word or phrase in question. Another means of indicating the rheme of a sentence may sometimes be the indefinite article. The theme need not necessarily be something known in advance. There are sentences in which the theme, too, is something mentioned for the first time and yet it is not the centre of the predication.

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