I. Modal-predicative structures.

Analyse modal-predicative structures in bold type fromExtract IV from S.W.Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge”:

The scene had affected Isabel too much for her to be able to tell it to me without getting somewhat emotional, and when she finished she looked at me pitifully.

"Do you think I did right?"

"I think you did the only thing you could do, but what's more I think you've been wonderfully kind, generous and understanding."

"I love him and I want him to be happy. And you know, in a way I'm not sorry he should go. I want him to be out of this hostile atmosphere, and that not only for his sake, but for mine too. I can't blame people when they say he'll never amount to anything; I hate them for it, and yet all the time deep down in me I have an awful fear that they're right. But don't say I'm understanding. I don't begin to understand what he's after."

"Perhaps you understand with your heart rather than with your reason," I smiled. "Why don't you marry him right away and go off to Paris with him?' The shadow of a smile came into her eyes.

"There's nothing I'd like to do more. But I couldn't. And you know, though I hate to acknowledge it, I do really think he's better off without me. If Dr. Nelson is right and he's suffering from delayed shock surely new surroundings and new interests will cure him, and when he's got his balance again he'll come back to Chicago and go into business like everybody else. I wouldn't wantto marry an idler."

Isabel had been brought up in a certain way and she accepted the principles that had been instilled into her. She did not think of money, because she had never known what it was not to have all she needed, but she was instinctively aware of its importance. It meant power, influence and social consequence. It was the natural and obvious thing that a man should earn it. That was his plain life's work.

"It doesn't surprise me that you don't understand Larry," I said, "because I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand himself. If he's reticent about his aims it may be that it's because they're obscure to him. Mind you, I hardly know him and this is only guesswork: isn't it possible that he's looking for something, but what it is he doesn't know, and perhaps he isn't even sure it's there?

Perhaps whatever it is that happened to him during the

war has left him with a restlessness that won't let him be.

Don't you think he may be pursuing an ideal that is

hidden in a cloud of unknowing—like an astronomer looking

for a star that only a mathematical calculation tells

him exists?"

"I feel that something's troubling him."

"His soul? It may be that he's a little frightened of

himself. It may be that he has no confidence in the

authenticity of the vision that he dimly perceives in his

mind's eye."

"He gives me such an odd impression sometimes; he gives me the impression of a sleepy-walker who's suddenly wakened in a strange place and can't think where he is. He was so normal before the war. One of the nice things about him was his enormous zest for life. He was so

scatter-brained and gay, it was wonderful to be with him; he was so sweet and ridiculous. What can have happened to change him so much?"

"I wouldn't know. Sometimes a very small thing will have an effect on you out of all proportion to the event. It depends on the circumstances and your mood at the time. I remember going to mass on All Saints' Day, which the French called the Day of the Dead, in a village church that the Germans had knocked about a bit on their first advance into France. It was filled with soldiers and with women in black. In the graveyard were rows of little wooden crosses and as the sad, solemn service went on, and women wept and men too, I had a feeling that perhaps

those men who lay under the little crosses were better off than we who lived. I told a friend what I felt and he asked me what I meant. I couldn't explain and I saw that he thought me a perfect damned fool. And I remember after a battle seeing a pile of dead French soldiers heaped upon

one another. They looked like the marionettes in a bankrupt puppet show that had been cast pell-mell into a dusty corner because they were of no use any more. I thought then just what Larry said to you; the dead look so awfully dead."

1 do not want the reader to think I am making a mystery of whatever it was that happened to Larry during the war that so profoundly affected him, a mystery that I shall discloseat a convenient moment. I don't think he ever told anybody. He did, however, many years later tell a woman, laughter he'd say just the right thing to make you feel all right again."

II Multi-word verbs: research

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 790