Person and Number
The categories of person and number are closely connected with each other. Their immediate connection is conditioned by the two factors: firstly, by their situational semantics, referring the process denoted by the verb to the subject of the situation; secondly, by their direct and immediate relation to the syntactic unit expressing the subject as the functional part of the sentence.
Approached from the strictly morphemic angle, the analysis of the verbal person and number leads to the following: the category of person is essentially confined to be singular form of the verb in the present tense, indicative mood.
This statement cannot be referred to some of the “anomalous finites” (Hornby and Palmer recognize 24 anomalous finites: be, do, dare, will, shall, etc.).
The treatment of the analysed categories on a formal basis is technically sufficient (the rules of agreement subject and predicate in number are observed by well-educated English-speaking persons by all means. C.f.:
Are your father and mother at home? (on the phone)
They was, but they isn’t now.
Where is your gramma?
She is out too (‘Language Laugh-In’, p. 15)
But such analysis is lacking an explicit functional approach.
The semantic core of the substantial (or pronominal) category of person is understood nowadays in terms of deictic, or indicative signification.
The semantic core of these categories explain the cases of “agreement in sense or notional concord”. We refer to the grammatical agreement of the verb not with the categorical form of the subject expressed morphemically, but with the actual personal-numerical interpretation of the denoted referent.
Here belong, in the first place, combinations of the finite verb with collective noun:
The family are at the table (they are).
The counter case can take place when the subject is expressed by a coordinative group of nouns, the verb in the singular treats it as a singular:
My heart and sole belongs to you.
From the functional point of view the strict agreement of subject and predicate in number is often violated in dialects or illiterate speech:
I guess, he don’t feel well (Hemingway)
It’s a pity you wasn’t trained to use your reason (B. Show).
Such and similar oppositional neutralizations of the person-number indicators should be treated as mistakes at school, as makers f functional illiteracy.
The Categories of Tense, Aspect, Voice and Mood.
Tense
By tense we understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and our concept of time (lat. tempus – tense). The expression of tense (or grammatical time) is one of the typical functions of the finite verb. It is typical because the meaning of the process is the semantic structure of the verb.
Time as philosophical category should be appraised by individual in reference to the moment of his immediate perception of the outward reality. The moment of perception, or “present moment”, which is continually shifting in time, and the linguistic content of which is the “moment of speech”, serves as the demarcation line between the past and the future. All the lexical expressions of time are divided into “present-oriented” or “absolute” expressions of time and “non-present-oriented”, “non-absolute” expressions of time.
In Modern English the grammatical expression of verbal time, i.e. tense, is effected in two correlated stages. At the first stage the process receives an absolute time characteristic by means of opposing the past tense to the present tense. The marked member of this opposition is the past form. At the second stage the process receives a non-absolute relative time characteristic by means of opposing the forms of the future tense to the forms of no future making. Since the two stages of the verbal time denotation are expressed separately, it is logical to recognize in the system of the English verb not one, but two temporal categories. Both of them answer the question: “What is the timing of process?” But the first category having the past tense as its strong member, expresses a direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process, fixing it either in the past or in the present; while the second category whose strong member is the future tense gives the timing of the process a prospective evaluation, fixing it either in the future or in the present.
Future
Past Present
In accord with the oppositional marking of the two temporal categories, we shall call the first of them the category of “primary time” and the second – the category of “prospective time”.
The category of primary time provides for the absolute expression of the time of the process denoted by verb. The opposition of the tenses in this category can be rendered by the formula “the past tense – the present tense”. The fact that the present tense is the unmarked member of the opposition explains a very wide range of its meanings. (c.f.: I hear you perfectly well at this very moment. Two plus two makes four.)
Aspect
The aspective meaning of the verb reflects the realization of the process irrespective of its timing.
The aspective meaning can be built in the semantic structure of the verb (limitive (1) and unlimitive (2) verbs: (1) arrive, bring, catch, break; (2) sleep, enjoy).
The subclasses of verbs are not indifferent to the choice of the aspective grammatical forms of the verb, though in English the aspective division of verbs into perfective and imperfective is not very strict, while in Russian it is very strict, although in Russian the category of aspect is derivative (делал – сделал).
We have recognized in the verbal system of English two temporal categories (plus one “minor” of futurity) and two aspective categories (the aspective category of development and the aspective category of retrospective coordination).
The aspective category of development is constituted by the opposition of the continuous forms of the verb to the non-continuous, or indefinite forms of the verb. The continuous form is the strong member of the opposition.
The category of coordination is constituted by the opposition of the perfect forms of the verb to the non-perfect, or imperfect forms, weak members of the opposition.
The functional meaning of this category has been interpreted in different ways. Thus, such scholars as H. Sweet, G. Curme, Irtenyeva, Ganshina, Vasilevskaya express “tense view” on it. According to them perfect denotes a secondary temporal characteristic of the action, i.e. denotes actions preceding other action in present, past, future.
The second grammatical interpretation of perfect is “aspective view” (M. Deutschbein, A. West, G.N. Vorontsova), which emphasizes the aspective character of the action, its result.
For the purposes of tuition the two views should be combined, as it seems. It was done in the works of prof. Smirnitsky, who demonstrated “time correlation view”.
Pr. Blokh recognizes the outstanding significance of this point of view, but nevertheless he himself and his disciples regard aspect as a strict category, “semantically intermediate between aspective and temporal” (p. 172).
Voice
The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic construction. The voice of the English verb is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form of the verb. The sign marking the passive form is the combination of the auxiliary be with the past participle.
In colloquial speech the role of the passive auxiliary can occasionally be performed by the verbs get and become: The young teacher became admired by all.
The category of voice has a much broader representation in the system of the English verb than in the system of the Russian verb, since in English not only transitive, but also intransitive objective verbs, including prepositional ones, can be used in the passive (The dress has never been tried on).
Passive voice is often regarded as the transformation of Active voice, which is not always true. C.f.: Champagne was served at feasts.
The big problem in connection with the voice identification I English is the problem of “medial” voices, that is functioning of the voice forms in other than the passive or active meaning. C.f.: I’ll shave and wash come to breakfast (myself); I’m afraid Mary hasn’t dressed up yet (herself).
Such voice can be called “reflective” (возвратный), but language material is not such abundant as to regard it as independent voice in English.
Mood
The category of mood, undoubtedly, is the most controversial. B.A. Ilyish states: “The category of mood in the present English verb has given rise to so many discussions, and has been treated in so many different ways, that it seems hardly possible to arrive to any more or less convincing and universally acceptable conclusion concerning it” (P. 99).
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, i.e. subject of hypothesis, speculation, desire.
The forms of indicative moods are opposed to oblique moods. But what is the formal sign of such opposition? The answer to this question can be obtained as a result of observation of the relevant data in the light of the two correlated presentations of the category, namely, a formal presentation and a functional presentation.
The formal description of the category has its source in the traditional school grammar, where we traditionally distinguish three moods: indicative, imperative and subjunctive. The picture is not so clear in theoretical grammar. Thus, imperative mood is not universally recognized, since its paradigm is defective: there is no interrogative form, states A.I. Smirnitsky. This mood is closely connected with modality of will and nowadays should be treated semantically: command :: request (“Heal, Teach, Learn” – motto of Birmingham Hospital).
Subjunctive mood. Some scholars distinguish 16 forms. There is common sense in Conditional Mood (И.Б. Хлебникова), or Thought-Mood (H. Sweet) and Subjunctive I and II (Quirk et all). Though prof. Ilyish is quite right stating the fact of homonymy of Subjunctive Mood forms to the correlated tenses of Indicative Mood. C.f.: If I were you I would not go there. If he had entered the institute, he would not have left the town.
So we see that there are no regular paradigms for Oblique Moods, which give us the right to consider them strong members of opposition in the category of Mood. Irregularity of the forms of Oblique Moods is caused by historical facts: old synthetic forms were changed by analytic forms. Upon the whole, the picture is so complicated that it needs further investigation necessary for improving of tuition methods.