Limits of the Compound Verbal Predicate

Now we come to the second question, about the limits of the compound verbal predicate. It arises from the fact that a rather considerable number of verbs can be followed by an infinitive, some of them with, others without the particle to. Among such verbs are: shall, will, should, would, can, may, must (without to); ought, wish, want, desire, hate, fear, begin, start, continue, omit, forget, remember, etc. (with to).

The relation between these phrases and parts of the sentence is of course not the same in all cases. We can at once eliminate the phrases "shall, should, will, would + infinitive", which constitute tease or mood forms of the verb. Thus, the phrase shall write is a form of the verb write (as it does not differ from the forms write, writes, wrote in its lexical meaning) and, consequently, it is a simple verbal predicate. The phrases with the verbs can, may, must, ought (in the latter case with to) constitute a compound verbal predicate (this is almost universally recognised). But the phrases with the verbs wish, want, desire, hate, fear, begin, start, continue, etc. give rise to doubts and controversies. On the whole, there are two views expressed in this matter. According to one of them, all such phrases are also a compound predicate: the finite verb (wish, begin, etc.) does not denote any action of its own, it merely denotes the subject's attitude to the action expressed by the following infinitive (in the case of wish, fear, etc.), or a phase in the development of that action, namely, its beginning, continuation, etc. (in the case of begin, continue, etc.); consequently, it is argued, the phrase as a whole constitutes the predicate of the sentence: it is a compound verbal predicate, just as in the case of can, may, or ought. This argument, as will be easily seen, is based on purely semantic reasons: its decisive point is, that the finite verb does not denote any special action and only denotes the subject's attitude to it, or a phase of the action itself. But this is irrelevant from the grammatical viewpoint. What is more, this line of reasoning is dangerous: if we were to follow it to its logical consequences we should have to include into the predicate riot only such phrases as stopped laughing, avoided meeting, and a number of other phrases including the gerund, but also such phrases as began his work, continued his speech, liked his job, and a number of other phrases containing a noun. Indeed, from the semantic viewpoint, on which the argument for began to work being the predicate is based, there is no difference between began to work and began his work.

Therefore, approaching phenomena from a grammatical viewpoint, which is the essential one here, we start from the assumption that in the phrase began his work the group his work is a separate (secondary) part of the sentence (an object).¹ This shows that the verb begin can be followed by a noun functioning as an object (the same of course applies to a number of other verbs). Since the verb begin can take an object there appears to be no reason to deny that an infinitive following this verb is an object as well. We might give here a table based on what is called transformation:

began to work — began his work

continued to work — continued his work

liked to sing — liked songs

etc.

¹ We are not discussing here the syntactic position of the word his (the attribute). For this problem, see p. 229 ff.

On the other hand, no table of this kind is possible with such verbs as can, may, must, ought: they cannot under any circumstances be followed by a noun, and this is an important difference on which syntactic analysis should be based.

Another question of a similar kind arises with reference to sentences containing idioms of the pattern "verb + noun", e.g. make a mistake, make one's appearance, have a look, have a smoke, take a glance, etc. Here two different approaches are possible, and the approach chosen will predetermine all conclusions to be arrived at in considering concrete examples.

One approach would be to say that if a phrase is a phraseological unit, that is, if its meaning is not equal to the sum of the meanings of its components, it cannot be divided into two parts of the sentence, and has to be taken as one part, namely, the predicate.

The other approach would be to say that such phraseological phenomena belong to the sphere of lexicology alone and are irrelevant for grammar, that is, for sentence analysis.

The choice between the two approaches entirely depends on the view one takes of grammar, its place in linguistics, and its relation to lexicology. It does not seem possible to prove that one of the approaches is right and the other wrong.

One of the arguments in favour of the view that phraseological units should be treated as one part of the sentence, is this. If the phrase "verb + noun" is not a phraseological unit, a separate question can be put to the noun, that is, a question to which the noun supplies an answer. For instance, if we take the sentence He makes toys the question would be, What does he make? and the answer would be supplied by the word toys, which, accordingly, is a separate part of the sentence, namely, an object. If, on the other hand, we take the sentence, He makes mistakes, it would not be possible to ask the question, What does he make? and to give mistakes as an answer to it. Consequently, according to this view, we cannot say that mistakes is a separate part of the sentence, and we must conclude that the phrase makes mistakes as a whole is the predicate.

However, this sort of argument is riot binding. The method of asking questions, though widely used in school language teaching, is not a scientifically valid method of syntactic study. In a number of cases the choice of the question is arbitrary, and there are even cases when no question at all can be asked.

Thus, the decision between the two alternatives presented above rests with the scholar. This is, and most probably will always be, a matter of opinion rather than of proved knowledge.

Before we go further in this matter, let us consider another case also belonging here, namely phrases of the type come in, bring up, put down, etc., which we discussed in Chapter XVII, when studying parts of speech. Should these phrases be taken as the predicate, or should the predicate be limited to the verb alone (come, bring, put, etc.)? This again is a matter of opinion. The phrase come in, for instance, can equally well be analysed as the predicate of the sentence, and as a combination of the predicate and a secondary part. On the other hand, the phrase bring up (as in the sentence, They brought up three children) would be taken to be the predicate, rather than a combination of the predicate with a secondary part, and this of course is due to the meaning of the phrase, which certainly is not equal to the sum of meanings of the verb bring and the adverb up. This semantic consideration is in favour of taking the whole phrase to be one part of the sentence (its predicate). But again, this argument is not binding. Whether such semantic considerations should or should not be taken into account in syntactic analysis is a matter of opinion. It is possible to argue that considerations of this kind should not weigh when we are engaged in syntactic studies. On the whole, we will adhere to the view that such considerations should be taken into account, and accordingly we will consider the phrases bring up, set in, etc., as the predicate of the sentence.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1074