Verbs. Category of tense

Tense in English is grouped into two types -- pure tense and modal tense. Pure tense refers to expressions of present, past, and future tenses in which secondary temporal reference / In other words, pure tense refers to expressions in which the attestation is known or thought to be true. Modal tense on the other hand, refers to expressions of present, past, or future in which the certainty of the attestation is not fully certain. In English these forms are expressed with the addition of a modal, modal phrase, or modal adverb.

Only the past tenses in English are expressed by declining the verb.

Present tenses are expressed via an unmarked form similar to those of the past tenses, but with the aspectual auxiliary only declined for agreement with person and number (do/does, am/is/are, have/has) in periphrastic forms. As with past tenses inflected forms may be used for certain affirmative statements.

Pure future tenses in English are expressed in the same way as the present tenses but with the addition of a future-marking adverb or time phrase.

Modal Tenses in English are expressed using either the fully undeclined modal form, or a pure tense form with an additional modal adverb or phrase. Modal tense is most often used in English for expressing futurity.

Modal Future refers to any of eight future forms in which the attestation cannot be known to be true due to the uncertain nature of future outcomes. These forms vary by certainty and always express that level of future certainty within the scope of a supporting mood.

16) The category of ASPECT in modern EnglishAspect – a gram.category which characterizes the way in which the action expressed by the verb is carries out.n Russian – 2 aspects: imperfective (несов.), perfective (сов.)mperfective expresses an action or a state without indicating a limit beyond which this act/state can not continue - eq. я читал; Perfective denotes actions that have a limit beyond which this action can’t continue: eq. я прочитал книгу. In Russian aspect is a gram.cat. As each aspect has a certain meaning and form to express this meaning. There are certain markers of each aspect – eq. делать-сделать.As the Eng.language grammarians of the past didn’t find aspective distinction of the v., instead they spoke about 4 groups of tenses: indefinite, continuous, perfect, perfect-continuousThe majority of grammarians believe the Eng.verb has aspect. They admit that this gram.category may be expressed:

lexically aspect is expressed by the lex.character of the v. The verb falls into 2 groups:1) terminative: apply a limit beyond which the action can’t continue (to break, to open);2) non-terminative: the action may go on indefinitely (to love, to sit).

Most English verbs are polysemantic and may be terminative in one meaning and non-terminative in another. It’s never shown formally. There is no marker of belonging to this aspect. The meaning is clear from the context.

grammatically an opposition of corresponding forms (take – be taken)1) common – the form of the common aspect isn’t marked;2) continuous – is marked by the discont.morpheme be + ing .

The terms used to describe aspect are not stable (progressive - perfective; generic – temporally)

The difference bw the aspect forms isn’t temporal. The tense is the same with both forms.

The cont.aspect has a specific meaning – it’s used for incomplete actions that are in progress at the moment under consideration or at a certain period: eq He was studying at 5 o’clock.

The common aspect shows the action in a general way, may denote a complete/incomplete action but the form doesn’t state it.

Prof.Barhudarov: common aspect = non-continuous.

Common aspect may denote:

1)a momentary action (eq she dropped the plate)

2)a recurrent/repeated action (eq.I get up at 7 o’clock every day)

3)an action occupying a long period of time (eq.he lived in St.-Pb from 1940 to 1965)

4)an action of unlimited duration (eq.The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea)

17. THE CATEGORY OF MOODThe category of mood in the present English verb has given rise to so many discussions and has been treated in so many ways, that it seems hardly possible to arrive at any more or less acceptable conclusion. The only points in the sphere of mood which haven’t been disputed are the following: 1) there is a category of mood in Modern English ( Mood- is the grammatical category of the verb, which expresses the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality from the speaker’s point of view); 2) there are at least 2 moods in the modern English verb, one of which is the indicative. (The indicative mood is the basic mood of the verb. Morphologically it’s the most developed system including all the categories of the verb. Semantically it’s a fact mood. It serves to present an action as a fact of reality. It’s the most objective of all the moods. It conveys minimum personal attitude to the fact: Ex. Water consists of oxygen.)2 groups of Moods (generally):- the real or fact Moods- the unreal, non-fact, oblique Moods.The Indicative Mood is the only real mood in the English language. It represents an action as a real fact. The forms of the Ind. Mood are the tense-aspect forms of the verb.There are 2 non-fact Moods in English: the Imperative Mood (represents an action as a command, urging, request. It’s a direct expression of one’s will. It’s much more ‘subjective’ than the ind. Mood. It’s modal mean-g is very strong &distinct: ex. Someone make an offer and quick!) and the Subjunctive Mood (it represents an action as a non-fact, as smth imaginary, desirable, problematic, contrary to reality: ex. I wish he were here now.)The hypothetic desirable in the form of advice, request, recommendation, order and so on. There is another point of view on the imperative Mood: (we don’t mark the action as real or unreal!) – Stelling (Штелинг) considers the Imperative form Mood the grammatical idiom.The Subjunctive Mood represents an action as unreal: 2 degrees of reality: not quite real (Present, Future), quite unreal (for the Past).Some linguists think that the past indefinite and the Past Perfect used to denote an unreal action are not mood forms at all, but tense forms.The classification system of moods presented by A.I.Smirnitsky. It appears to be the most consistent because it is meaning-oriented and it also takes into consideration the difference between an analytical form and a free syntactic combination. His system of moods includes six moods: the Indicative, the Imperative, Subjunctive I, Subjunctive II, the Conditional Mood and the Suppositional mood.

18. The category of voiceThe category of voice (which is found both with finite and non-finite forms) is one of the most formal grammatical categories, because this category doesn’t refer to any fragment of reality, doesn’t reflect any fragment of reality – it’s a way of describing a certain fragment of reality. The category of voice deals with the participants of a happening (doer, action, object) and how they are represented in the sentence (subject, predicate, object). The Active Voice shows that the grammatical subject of the sentence or the subjectival is the doer of the action, denoted by the verb, the Passive Voice shows that the subject or the subjectival is an object of the action. The frequency of occurrence of the English Passive Voice is very great, greater than in Russian. One of the reasons is that the number of verbs capable of forming the Passive Voice is greater in English than in Russian. In many languages: PV – transitive verbs, in English: PV – any object verb. In some cases the lex. character of the verb the subj. of the active construction can’t be regarded as the doer of the action. These cases are: ex. He lost his father in the war.; he broke his leg. Disagreement btw the gram. form of the verb and the lex. mean-g of the verb. Due to the lex. mean-g of the V the semantics of the construction becomes passive. In fact the subj. is not the doer, but the sufferer. Some grammarians treat these constructions as active due to the gram. form.

Opposition: active – passive. Passive – marked -> pattern “be + II participle”, active –unmarked

Forms of Fut.Cont, Present Perf.Cont, Past Perf.Cont, Future Perf.Cont – no parallel forms in passive.

Any other voices??? -> doubts and controversy

- the reflexive voice (eq.He dressed himself) – the agent and the object of the action simultaneously ;

- the reciprocal voice (They greeted each other) – not 1 person; action aimed at the other member of the same group;

- the middle voice (The door opened) – the form of the v is act, but the meaning is passive.

The active voice has a number of mean-gs: active, passive, middle, reflective, reciprocal.

Pr. Ilyish “ Eng. Has several voices. The classif-n is based on mean-g only.

Pr. Barhudarov calls the active voice non-passive.

The idea of the Passive voice is expressed not only by means of “to be + P2”, but by means of “get”, “come”, “go” + P2 and “get” + passive infinitive (ingressive meaning - He got involved; He got to be respected).

The existence of various means of expressing voice distinctions makes it possible to consider voice as a functional-semantic category with the grammatical category of voice as its center and other means of expressing voice as a periphery.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 3826