CHAPTER 3. THE VERB AND ITS GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 3 page

Neutralization does not always take place, however. There are cases when duration is expressed twice, by the grammatical form of Continuous aspect and by an adverbial phrase of duration. Such a deliberate redundancy intensifies the effect of duration and creates additional connotations, expressing the speaker's attitude (usually negative) to the action described, as in: He was eating for hours (E.O'Brieri).

Neutralization does not take place when the verb is used not in its primary, but in its secondary meaning, as in: While I was seeing Carolyne, Nico was in the initial phases of his campaign (S. Turow). As we see from the sentence, the verb see realizes the meaning of 'dating smb.' and probably for this reason the speaker uses the Continuous form to avoid the ambiguity.

Though the category of aspect exists both in English and in Russian the comparative analysis of these categories appears to be rather difficult because they have different features of action at their basis. Yet as the Russian imperfective aspect points at the action in its progress (it does not have the meaning of the internal limit) and the Russian perfective - at the completion of action (the action reaches its internal limit), it is possible to compare the forms of aspect'in the two languages. This comparison shows that these forms have a different scope. The English Common aspect has a wider scope of meaning than the Russian perfective form, and the Russian Imperfective form has a wider scope of meaning than the English Continuous form.

The forms of the English Common aspect may correspond both to the perfective and imperfective forms of the Russian, e.g. He wrote a good story -oh nanucoji xopouiuu paccnas. He wrote his book for twenty years - oh nucan ceoto KHU^y deadi^amb nem. Likewise the forms of the Russian imperfective aspect correspond both to the English Continuous and Common aspects, e.g. oh nucan 3my muzy deadifamb nem - He wrote this book for twenty years. oh ne cjibiiuan nac, oh nmo-mo nucan e ceoeu mempadu - He did not hear us, he was writing something in his notebook. This absence of one-to-one correspondence should be taken into consideration in teaching English Grammar.

5. There is one more category in the English verb in which the concept of time finds its grammatical expression. It is the category of time correlation which deals not with the relation between the action and the moment of communication, but with the temporal correlation of actions. The grammatical category of time correlation is constituted by the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms. As we have already mentioned this category has been given different interpretations by different scholars. A.V.Korsakov treats perfect forms as anterior tenses [Korsakov 1969]; G.N. Vorontsova considers them within the category of aspect, thus differentiating between three aspects in English: Common, Continuous and Transmissive [BoponijoBa 1960, 202-208]. Our argument in favour of treating the opposition Perfect:'.Non-perfect as a

separate grammatical category is the same: if we consider Perfect forms as a constituent of the category of aspect then in the Perfect Continuous we have the case when a categorial form expresses two meanings of the same category which contradicts one of the main postulates of a grammatical category. For this reason we share the view of professor A.I.Smirnitsky who treats the opposition Perfect::Non-perfect as a separate grammatical category of time correlation which expresses a specific type of temporal relations correlating actions in their relation to one another on the time axis.Another, no more important argument in favour of recognizing the category of time correlation as a separate grammatical category is that it has a wider scope - the category of tense embraces only the finite forms of the verb whereas the category of time correlation embraces both the finite and the non-finite forms of the verb.

The marked member of the opposition 'Perfect :: Non-perfect' is built with the help of the discontinuous morpheme 'have —— ed' in which the second element has a lot of variants. The semantic marker, i.e. the meaning of the Perfect form, includes two interrelated components: priority (or precedence) and correlation to another action or point of time in the present, past or future. E.g. So I told Sugar-Boy how to get through town and to the Row where all my pals lived or had lived (R.P. Warren). "Another month will make seven weeks " she said bitterly. " Seven weeks from what? " "Seven weeks that I won't have seen you " (J.Galsworthy).

Like tense and aspect, this category is also basically anthropological - the presentation of an action as prior to another action reflects the speaker's/viewer's interpretation of the relations between the actions. It's not so much the structure of the real world situation itself as the speaker's personal view of this situation. Let's make this point clear. Let us compare two sentences: He came up to the window and looked out. He had come up to the window and was looking out. The order of events in the real world situation is the same. But in the first sentence the speaker presents them as following each other in succession, the way it occurred in the real world situation. The speaker scans them one after the other and presents them in the same order. In the second sentence the focus of the speaker is on the second event which was in the speaker's perceptive space and the speaker presents it as developing at a certain moment in the past whereas the first event is excluded from the speaker's perceptive space and presented as prior. The speaker may or may not have personally observed this prior event, it may be just the result of the real world knowledge (we can't look out of the window before we come up to it).

This grammatical meaning of priority is not difficult to understand when we analyze it separately from the category of tense. But in the process of using the language the grammatical categories of the verb are used simultaneously and their meanings become interwoven with one another which may complicate interpretation. The meaning of priority expressed by the perfect form is much

more obvious in the case of Past Perfect (Pre-past) or Future Perfect (Pre-future) and it is not so obvious in the case of Present Perfect which actually means Pre-present, i.e. prior to the present, or the moment of communication. But priority to the moment of communication is also expressed by the Past Indefinite form. This is why the difference between the use of Present Perfect and Past Indefinite presents difficulties for non-native speakers (one of the presentations at the TESOL convention in Long Beach, CA in 1995 had a symbolic title "Why Present Perfect makes us tense"). This difference lies not in the real world structure of events, but in the speaker's interpretation of these events. Both the Past Indefinite and the Present Perfect may denote an event which took place before the time of communication (in the ontological past), but using the Present Perfect the speaker accentuates the relevance of that past action for the present. In the case of Past Indefinite the past moment of action is cut off from the present which is often done by the indication of that past moment, e.g. / was in Paris last summer. On the contrary, in the case of Present Perfect the past is not cut off from the present (this is why the past moment is not expressed verbally) but rather continues into the present by the relevance of the past action for the present, e.g. 7 have been to Paris. I can be your guide about this •wonderful city. The difference between the use of the Past Indefinite and the Present Perfect lies not in the presence or absence of the adverbial phrases denoting a moment in the past (they are just formal signals and are the consequence rather that the cause of the difference) but in the interpretation of the past actions by the speaker. The use of the Present Perfect form reveals the relevance of the past action for the speaker's present, and in this respect G.N.Vorontsova was absolutely right, calling the perfect forms as transmissive in the sense that they relate the past and the present. Thus we may conclude that the role of the human factor in the semantics of perfect forms is obvious as they present the speaker's interpretation of the temporal relations between events.

The general paradigmatic meaning of priority and correlation to another action or point of time can be modified in various contextual conditions and presented by several syntagmatic meanings. These contextual conditions embrace both the linguistic and the extralinguistic contexts, i.e. pragmatic factors. These syntagmatic meanings are the following:

1) Result. It is found with terminative verbs and appears to be the result of the interaction between the grammatical meaning of priority and the aspective character of the verb, e.g. Summer had died, autumn was (J. Fowles). Chomsky's writings are classics in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read (S.Pinker). These cases are translated into Russian by the perfective form of the verb in the past tense (Jlemo saKOHHUJiocb. Ebina ocenb).

2) Experience. This meaning of Present Perfect is the most evident manifestation of the anthropological character of this category, the Present

Perfect form denotes a past action which has a present time relevance for the speaker, e.g. "/ realize being President of France is an ultimate aim for you. But I've been a President's wife before" (J. Suzann). This meaning corresponds to the imperfective form of the past tense in Russian (fl yotce 6bwa odnaotcdbi otcenou npesudenma). The meaning of experience is usually actualized in interrogative and negative statements, e.g. Have you ever been to Haiti? Have you ever been in love? No, I 've never been to Haiti. But I have been in love.

3) Continuation of a' past action into the present. This meaning is found with durative verbs and the formal markers of this meaning are often the prepositions 'for' and 'since' used with adverbial modifiers which show either the duration of action or the starting point of it. E.g. I feel as if I'd been here for months (J.Fowles). Such cases are translated into Russian by the present tense of the verb (y Menn manoe Hyecmeo,cnoeHO a Haxojtcycb sdecb yjfce

4) An unfulfilled action. This meaning occurs after the modal verbs be, might, should, ought and after the verbs of hope and expectation (hope, expect, mean, intend etc.) used in the past tense. The Perfect form indicates that the expected or desired action never took place. E.g. ... he ought never to have married a woman eighteen years younger than himself (J. Galsworthy).

5) Intensity, absolute completion, irrevocability of the action. This use of the perfect forms (usually Past Perfect) is especially expressive, they are used in the line of a succession of past actions but the use of the Past Perfect in the context characteristic of the Past Indefinite has an additional expressive connotation. E.g. The earth floor shook a little as they passed, and they had gone (QA, 127). They walked for a few minutes longer and then turned sharply into an open gateway. The chair was set down. She had arrived (S.Maugham).

Due to their paradigmatic meaning of priority to another action the Perfect forms carry out an important text-forming function. They form a retrospective plane of the narration, thus creating the depth in the narration and helping the readers to better understand the motives of the characters' actions, to reconstruct the events and various causative-consecutive relations between them. Let's turn to the following extract from the novel "The Quiet American'¹'' by G. Greene. The novel has a very peculiar temporal structure. The chronology of events is broken - the novel begins with the end and then the writer reconstructs the natural order of the events described thus giving the readers the chance to trace the causes that brought the central protagonist to the decision he made.

/ turned to go indoors when I saw a girl waiting for me in the next doorway. I couldn 't see her face, only the white silk trousers and the long flowered robe, but I knew her for all that. She had so often waited for me to come home at just this place and hour (p. 23).

As we can see from this extract, the means of creating a retrospective plane in the narration are often used not isolatedly, but in the combination with one another. The first signal of retrospection in this extract is the definite article (the white silk dress and the long flowered robe). The verb know which has the meaning of recognize in this context is another signal of retrospection. The use of Past Perfect in the next sentence confirms the reader's supposition that Fowler had known the girl before. The adverb so adds a very personal attitude to this line of retrospection which is further revealed in the next sentence which presents a universal statement: "Phuong, " I said - which means Phoenix, but nothing nowadays is fabulous and nothing rises from its ashes (idem.).

The two main forms of the narration - Past Indefinite and Past Perfect usually go hand in hand in the narration. The Past Indefinite carries out the function of the text progression, it presents the events in the chronological order. The Past Perfect forms break the chronological order of events, they create 'a flashback' in the text. The event presented by the Past Perfect form often helps to understand the reasons for the characters' actions, thus not only temporal,' but also cause-and-consequence relations can be traced between the sentences with the verb in the Past Indefinite and sentences written in the Past Perfect forms. E.g. Soon it was as if I had imagined everything. I lay awake for at least another hour. Nothing more happened; and no hypothesis made sense. I had entered the domain (J.Fowles). As it was justly pointed out by D. Shteling, the Perfect forms play an important role in the actualization of the text cohesion [lUxejiHHr 1996, 165].

The weak member of the opposition has, like all weak members, a wide and general meaning which is best defined negatively as 'non-perfect'. The opposition may be neutralized when the meaning of priority is expressed by other elements of context, such as prepositions and conjunctions with the meaning of priority (on, upon, after) and verbs of retrospective semantics (remember, recall, forget etc.). E.g. On returning home he went straight to his room. After she said it she left the chaplain's house and never came back. I can't recall ever mentioning this name in our conversations.

Priority does not find a grammatical expression in Russian and there is no analogous grammatical category. In the process of translation from English into Russian the meaning of priority is usually expressed lexically or contextually. E.g. The coat was long and old and had been grey. - IJajibmo 6bino djiunnbiM, cmapbiM, u Kozda-mo oho dbijio cepbiM.

Since there is no direct correspondence between English and Russian the Perfect forms need special attention in the process of teaching English Grammar.

5. The grammatical category of mood has the reputation of being one of the most controversial categories. The never ending debates of linguists about

the essence of this category and its scope lead some of the linguists to the conclusion that it is "hardly possible to arrive at any more or less convincing and universally accepted conclusion concerning it" [Ilyish 1971, 99].

Mood is traditionally defined as a grammatical category which expresses the relation of the action to reality as stated by the speaker.As follows from the definition mood seems to be the only morphological category which includes the category of the speaker in its definition. It means that it is one of the most speaker-oriented categories. The forms of the moods serve the needs of the speaker to present the action as real, unreal (contradicting the state of things in reality) or hypothetical. The category of mood presents the interpretation of the action by the speaker from the point of view of its relation to reality.

Scholars differ greatly in the understanding of this category, its scope and, consequently, in the number of grammatical forms of the mood they find in English. This number- varies from two (e.g. in L.S.Barkhudarov's interpretation) to sixteeen (e.g. in M.Deutchbein's interpretation). Such a divergence of opinions lies in the complexity of the category itself and also in two other phenomena. The first is the problem of drawing a borderline between polysemy and homonymy. Both as we have already stated permeate the structure of the English language at all levels and sometimes the borderline between them is hard to draw. Let us turn to the analysis of two sentences: He stopped doing it and / wish he stopped doing it. What are the relations between stopped¹ and stopped:*? Do we have one polysemantic form which is used to express an action, presented by the speaker as real in the first sentence and an action presented as unreal in the second? Or do we have two morphological homonyms here? L.S. Barkhudarov treats such cases as morphological polysemy of the Past Indefinite Indicative on the ground that the forms do not differ in any of the verbs and consequently he finds only two moods in English: the Indicative and the Imperative moods [Bapxy^apoB 1975, 130-132]. His analysis is based on the formal approach and he does not take into consideration the semantic fact that the meanings of real and unreal actions are mutually exclusive and such meanings do- not usually coexist within one and the same polysemantic unit. Besides there is no absolute homonymy of forms: the forms of the verb 'to be' differ in the Indicative and Subjunctive moods (He was here (Indicative) and / wish he were here (Subjunctive II). This single marker is sufficient to speak in favour of homonymy rather than polysemy of forms in this case. Similarly, the English verb has only one morphological marker of person and number - the suffix -(e)s but it is sufficient to recognize the existence of the grammatical categories of number and case in the English verb.

M.Joos also considers that the case of unreality and the past tense are essentially the same, considering the past as a 'remote' tense , remote in either time or unreality [Joos 1964, 121]. F.R.Palmer argues against this opinion pointing out the clear semantic difference between the past time and unreality and says that "unless some answer can be given to the question why they are associated in a single form, nothing is gained by the use of a single label" [Palmer 1987, 45]. We believe that the answer lies in the meaning of remoteness which is characteristic both of the Past tense of the Indicative mood and the Subjunctive. In the Past tense it is remoteness from the moment of speech, i.e. from the present and in the case of the Subjunctive it is remoteness from reality. It is the meaning of remoteness, which probably made it possible for the past tense of the Indicative mood to be used for expressing unreal actions. But having originated from the past forms of the Indicative mood the forms of the English Subjunctive II are now homonymous to them because of the clear semantic difference, just in the same way as the forms of the Future tense, which originated from the combinations of the modal verbs shall/mil with the Infinitive, are now homonymous to them. A cross-linguistic parallel may be also appropriate here - in the Russian language the Subjunctive mood is also homonymous to the forms of the past tense and differs only by the particle "6w " ( fl 6bi nouieji, ecnu 6bi moz).

The other reason for the controversy of opinions about the scope of the category of mood is the fact that the grammatical category of the mood is a component of the functional-semantic category of modality - a complex and heterogeneous category, which includes other means of expressing various modal meanings. One of the regular means of expressing a whole range of modal meanings are modal verbs which express such meanings as ability, possibility, potentiality, necessity, obligation, supposition etc. Some authors include the combinations of modal verbs with Infinitive into the system of grammatical moods and in this case the number of moods grows considerably. Thus, the system of moods presented by Max Deutchbein includes 4 moods: Cogitativus, Optativus, Yoluntativus and Expectativus with 4 submoods in each. His 'submoods' include the combinations of may+ Inf (may go) which he calls The Permissive Mood, can +Inf. which is called The Potential Mood [Deutchbein 1926, p. 112]. As we can see, the problem here is the differentiation between the morphological category of the mood and other means of expressing modality. If we include all the modal verbs with Infinitives into the grammatical category of mood the number of moods may exceed sixteen.

There is no space and no need to enumerate all the possible classifications of moods. In our interpretation and classification of moods we shall follow 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. Since the forms of mood differ semantically in the way

they present the action (as real, unreal or hypothetical) it is possible to place the forms of moods in accordance with this scale.

The position of the Imperative mood on the one hand and Subjunctive I and Suppositional on the other show that they occupy different points on the reality/ unreality scale: the Imperative Mood is closer to the Indicative whereas Subjunctive I and Suppositional - to unreality.

Let us analyze the system of English moods briefly. The opposition constituting the category of mood in English can be characterized as privative polynominal - each form has a formal and a semantic marker of its own. The Indicative mood presents the action as real from the speaker's point of view (whether the action really corresponds to the state of things in reality is another matter). It is the most frequently used type of mood and it has the greatest number of forms. The forms of the Indicative mood are used in two communicative types of sentences: declarative and interrogative. The borderline between the Indicative mood and other moods is not absolutely rigid. We have already seen that the forms of the Future tense contain the meaning of prediction which brings them close to the Suppositional mood which specializes in the expression of hypothetical actions. The comparison of such sentences as "If he turns up tell him to -wait for me" and "Should he turn up tell him to wait for me" shows that both the verbal forms present the action as hypothetical but differ in the degree of certainty which is higher in the case of Present Indefinite Indicative.

The Imperative mood is used to express inducement to action, which means that the speaker considers the action as desirable. Yet the action is not yet real because inducement refers to the future even if this future is just a blink away from the present moment. The use of the Imperative mood is restricted to only one communicative type of sentences - imperative sentences. This restriction gave grounds for some scholars to suppose that it is a syntactic rather than a morphological phenomenon - they speak about the imperative communicative type of the sentence [HpxeHbeBa 1956, 112-113].

The forms of the Imperative mood do not vary as much as the forms of the Indicative - the usual form of the Imperative coincides with the forms of the Simple Infinitive without 'to', the negative forms are built with the help of the auxiliary do. Occasionally we come across the forms of the Continuous Imperative like "Don't be talking*." and also the Perfect Imperative, e.g. "Have done with it\". The reference to the future in the Perfect Imperative does not disappear, however. The perfect forms express not a prior action (otherwise why induce the hearer to do something?) but rather the impatience of the speaker to have this action done.

The forms of the Imperative mood are occasionally transposed into the sphere of the Indicative mood. E.g. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone (M. Atwood). As we can see, the Imperative mood in this sentence loses the meaning of inducement and expresses the meaning of condition which is verified by the possibility to transform the sentence, cf. If you laugh the world laughs with you... (compare also with the Russian: Foeopu, umo xoueuib, x me6e ecepaeno ne noeepto).

The traditional Oblique moods embrace four moods: Subjunctive II and Conditional which present the action as contradicting reality and Subjunctive I and the Suppositional which present the action as hypothetical, desirable or possible. The forms of Subjunctive II are homonymous to the Past forms of the verb. The non-perfect forms are used to denote an action which contradicts the state of things in the present ( / wish the boat had a different name), and perfect forms denote an action which is contrary to the state of things in the past (/ wish I had given the boat a different name). This use of the time correlation forms to express purely temporal meanings manifests the interaction between the grammatical categories of tense and time correlation. Subjunctive II is used in the following types of sentences:

- in simple sentences to express an unreal wish or desire: If only he were free! "(J. Galsworthy);

- in subject clauses after the principal clause of 'it's time' type, e.g. It's time I turned over a new leaf (D. du Maurier). The presentation of the action as contradicting the real state of things becomes especially vivid when we compare the use of Subjunctive II and the Infinitive after the 'it's time' clause. Followed by the Infinitive the sentence expresses a desirable action which probably has more chances to be fulfilled whereas the Subjunctive is used when the desired action cannot be fulfilled for some reasons;

- in predicative clauses introduced by the conjunctions as if, as though, e.g. You look as if you had a toothache (O. Wilde). The role of the conjunctions as if, as though in such sentences is very great, they serve as signals of turning from the real state of things to unreal. This is the only type of predicative clauses which introduce actions presented by the speaker as unreal. The semantics of these conjunctions adds the meaning of comparison to such sentences and they should be distinguished from adverbial clauses of comparison,which are introduced by the same conjunctions but differ by the type of predicates in the principal clause. E.g. He looked as if he were angry — a predicative clause; He looked at me as if he wanted to say something - an adverbial clause.

- in object clauses after the verb wish in the principal clause, e.g. / wish I had your talent (I. Shaw).- Such sentences express a wish contrary to reality, something that cannot be realized. This contradiction to the real state of things becomes especially explicit in the process of translating the '-wish' sentences into Russian where this idea is expressed not by the form of the Subjunctive mood, but by negation, e.g. }Kajib, nmo y menx Hem Bawezo majianma. In some contexts the meaning of unreality after the verb wish becomes somewhat weakened, especially in the cases when the subordinate clause contains the modal verb will in the form of Subjunctive II. Such sentences usually express a tentative request, e.g. "/ wish you'dpoint her out to me" "There, over there" (W. Wool/);

- in adverbial clauses of comparison, concession and condition, e.g. Then she buried her face in her hands, as if some inexorable mechanism had started (J. Fowles).

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 2595