The essence of the Perfect forms.

The gramm. category of phase or time-correlation built on opposition of perf. and non-perf. forms.

Non-Perfect – unmarked member. Perfect – marked (strong) member, is built with aux. “to have” and the Past Part. of the verb. the meaning: it expresses priority to a certain moment & correlates the action with that moment => the name of the category – time-correlation.

The problem of the perfect forms is most controversial: To what gram. category do perf. forms belong? There are 4 different ways of interpreting the Perf.:

1) Perfect form as tense:(works by Henry Sweet, Curme, Ганшина, Василевская)

The perf. denotes a secondary temporal characteristic of an action; it doesn’t refer an action to a certain point of time but expresses priority to the present, past or future. Non-perfect forms- primary tenses; perfect forms – secondary tenses. Primary tenses refer an action to a certain point of time in the past or in the future, or they refer actions t the moment of speaking. Secondary tenses don’t refer actions to the moments of time, but they express priority to the moments of time in the past/future, or denote actions prior to the moment of speaking.

Thus, the pres. perf. may be regarded as a form which denotes an action that occurs before the moment of speaking.

The past perf. expresses an action which took place before a certain moment.

The future perf. – an action that will take place before the certain moment of speaking.

2) Perfect form as aspect form: (Prof. Ильиш: past & future perfect forms should be regarded as relative tenses, because they express priority, but the pres. perfect should be treated as a form of special aspect (the resultative aspect).

Prof. Вoронцова also treats perfect forms within the framework (основа) of aspect (transmissive aspect forms – вид преемственности). Since the pres. perf. shows the action in the past connected with the present, then the most important feature of this form to show continuity (преемственность) between past & present.

3) Perfect form as a representative of a certain category:(Prof. Смирницкий speaks about the category of time correlation).It’s represented by the opposition of perf. and non-perf. forms.Perf. forms have noting to do with the notion of tense. Obviously the difference between “took” & “had taken” is not temporal, since both forms denote past actions.

From the view point of a special categorical meaning , the difference between perf. & non-perf. forms is that non-perf. forms denote actions taking place at a certain moment or period of time, while perf. forms denote actions prior to certain moments or periods of time. From this point of view the opposition represents the grammatical meaning of priority found in perf. forms & non-priority found in non-perf. forms.

This theory was favourably accepted by grammarians, but some of them said that there’s a weak point in it. The past perf. & the future perf. on the one hand, and the pres. perf. on the other. The meanings are not the same. The past & future perf. forms denote priority, but the meaning of the pres. pref. is not limited to priority, there’s always some connection with the present.

The pronoun.

Pronouns are words which point to objects without naming them.

Morphological composition. They may be of different structure: simple(I, you, he), compound(myself, themselves), and composite(each other, one another).

Subclasses of pronouns and their functions. Semantically all pronouns fall into the following subclasses:

Personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, indicating persons (I, you, he, we, they) or non-persons (it, they) from the point of view of their relations to the speaker. Thus I (me) indicates the speaker himself, we (us) indicates the speaker together with some other person or persons. Personal pronouns have the category of person, number, case (nominative and objective), and gender, the latter is to be found in the 3rd person only: masculine and feminine is he - him, she - her; neuter case-forms it - it coincide.

Possessive pronouns indicate possession by persons (my, mine, your, yours, their, theirs) or non-persons (its, their, theirs). They comprise two sets of forms: the conjoint forms - my, your, his, her, our, their, which always combine with nouns and premodify them as attributes and the absolute forms - mine, yours, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs, which do not combine with nouns, but function as their substitutes.

Reflexive pronouns indicate identity between the person or non-person they denote and that denoted by the subject of the sentence. They are: myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselve.

Reciprocal pronouns indicate a mutual relationship between two or more than two persons, or occasionally non-persons (each other, one another) who are at the same time the doer and the object of the same action.

Demonstrative pronouns point to persons or non-persons or their properties: this (these), that (those), such.

Indefinite pronouns indicate persons or non-persons or else their properties in a general way without defining the class of objects they belong to, class or properties they possess. They are: some, any, somebody, anybody, someone, anyone, something, anything, one.

Negative pronouns as the term implies render the general meaning of the sentence negative. They are: no, none, nothing, nobody, no one, neither.

Detaching pronouns indicate the detachment of some object from other objects of the same class. There are only two pronouns of this subclass - other, another.

Universal pronouns indicate all objects (persons and non-persons) as one whole or any representative of the group separately. They are: all, both, each, every, everything, everybody, everyone, either.

Interrogative pronouns indicate persons or non-persons or tlieir properties as unknown to the speaker and requiring to be named in the answer. who, whose, what, which, who­ever, whatever, whichever.

Conjunctive pronouns (whom, whose, what, which, whoever, whatever, whichever) are identical with the interrogative pronouns as to their morphological, referential and syntactical characteristics. They refer to persons and non-persons. The difference between the two subclasses lies in that the conjunctive pronouns, along with their syntactical function in the clause, connect subordinate clauses to the main clause. They are used to connect subject, predicative, and some adverbial clauses, or rather to indicate the subordinate status of these clauses, as the sentence may begin with the clause they introduce.

Relative pronouns refer to persons and non-persons and open attributive clauses which modify words denoting these persons or non-persons. They are who, whose, which, that.

Statives.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 2145