The NICE Properties of Auxiliaries

The so-called NICE properties of auxiliaries serve to distinguish them from main verbs. NICE is an acronym for:

Main verbs do not exhibit these properties. For instance, when we form a question using a main verb, we cannot invert:

[John sings] in the choir ~*[Sings John] in the choir?

Instead, we have to use the auxiliary verb do:

[John sings] in the choir ~[Does John sing] in the choir?

Semi-auxiliaries

Among the auxiliary verbs, we distinguish a large number of multi-word verbs, which are called SEMI-AUXILIARIES. These are two-or three-word combinations, and they include the following:

Like other auxiliaries, the semi-auxiliaries occur before main verbs:

The film is about to start

I'm going to interview the Lord Mayor

I have to leave early today

You are supposed to sign both forms

I used to live in that house

Some of these combinations may, of course, occur in other contexts in which they are not semi-auxiliaries. For example:

I'm going to London

Here, the combination is not a semi-auxiliary, since it does not occur with a main verb. In this sentence, going is a main verb. Notice that it could be replaced by another main verb such as travel (I'm travelling to London). The word 'm is the contracted form of am, the progressive auxiliary, and to, as we'll see later, is a preposition.

Tense and Aspect

TENSE refers to the absolute location of an event or action in time, either the present or the past. It is marked by an inflection of the verb:

David walks to school (present tense)
David walked to school (past tense)

Reference to other times -- the future, for instance -- can be made in a number of ways, by using the modal auxiliary will, or the semi-auxiliary be going to:

David will walk to school tomorrow
David is going to walk to school tomorrow.

Since the expression of future time does not involve any inflecton of the verb, we do not refer to a "future tense". Strictly speaking, there are only two tenses in English: present and past.

ASPECT refers to how an event or action is to be viewed with respect to time, rather than to its actual location in time. We can illustrate this using the following examples:

[1] David fell in love on his eighteenth birthday
[2] David has fallen in love
[3] David is falling in love

In [1], the verb fell tells us that David fell in love in the past, and specifically on his eighteenth birthday. This is a simple past tense verb.

In [2] also, the action took place in the past, but it is implied that it took place quite recently. Furthermore, it is implied that is still relevant at the time of speaking -- David has fallen in love, and that's why he's behaving strangely. It is worth noting that we cannot say *David has fallen in love on his eighteenth birthday. The auxiliary has here encodes what is known as PERFECTIVE ASPECT, and the auxiliary itself is known as the PERFECTIVE AUXILIARY.

In [3], the action of falling in love is still in progress -- David is falling in love at the time of speaking. For this reason, we call it PROGRESSIVE ASPECT, and the auxiliary is called the PROGRESSIVE AUXILIARY.

Aspect always includes tense. In [2] and [3] above, the aspectual auxiliaries are in the present tense, but they could also be in the past tense:

David had fallen in love -- Perfective Aspect, Past Tense
David was falling in love -- Progressive Aspect, Past Tense

The perfective auxiliary is always followed by a main verb in the -ed form, while the progressive auxiliary is followed by a main verb in the -ing form. We exemplify these points in the table below:

While aspect always includes tense, tense can occur without aspect (David falls in love, David fell in love).

Voice

There are two voices in English, the active voice and the passive voice:

Passive constructions are formed using the PASSIVE AUXILIARY be, and the main verb has an -ed inflection. In active constructions, there is no passive auxiliary, though other auxiliaries may occur:

Paul is congratulating David
Paul will congratulate David
Paul has congratulated David

All of these examples are active constructions, since they contain no passive auxiliary. Notice that in the first example (Paul is congratulating David), the auxiliary is the progressive auxiliary, not the passive auxiliary. We know this because the main verb congratulate has an -ing inflection, not an -ed inflection.

In the passive construction in [2], we refer to Paul as the AGENT. This is the one who performs the action of congratulating David. Sometimes no agent is specified:

David was congratulated

We refer to this as an AGENTLESS PASSIVE

Adjectives

Adjectives can be identified using a number of formal criteria. However, we may begin by saying that they typically describe an attribute of a noun:

cold weather
large windows
violent storms

Some adjectives can be identified by their endings. Typical adjective endings include:

However, a large number of very common adjectives cannot be identified in this way. They do not have typical adjectival form:

As this list shows, adjectives are formally very diverse. However, they have a number of characteristics which we can use to identify them.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 764