The system of English verbs

The ministryof Higher and Secondary Special Education of the republic of Uzbekistan
Gulistan StateUniversity
 
«The System ofEnglish Verbs»
Gulistan 2008

1.Theoretical background
Incontemporary semantics a broad distinction is drawn between denotation(referential) approach andlanguage-intrinsic (orlanguage-immanent) approach. This distinction follows from theopposition of two aspects of meaning: denotation andsense. As arule the analysis of denotation results in the description of specificproperties of extralinguistic objects denoted by a word (e.g. B. Pottier’sanalysis of the field siege (chaise, fauteuil, tabouret, canape, pouf – chair,armchair, stool, sofa, pouf) is known to result in the distinction of suchconcrete and unique denotational components asS1 – with back, S2– with legs, S3 – for a single person, S4 – forsitting, S5 – with arms, S6 – made from hard material).
Theprocedure proposed in the study is based on the principles of language-immanentapproach in semantics (cf. E.N. Bendix, E. Coseriu, H. Geckeler, J. Lyons,J. Apresjan, A. Ufimtseva). It is assumed that it is definition of sensein terms of a limited number of semes that can provide the description of thesemantic system of language.
Sense (beingopposed to denotation) is considered as linguistic(language-immanent) meaning expressing the most essential featuresof an object denoted by a word.
Sensecomponents, orSEMES (semantic markers in Katzian semantics; classemesin B. Pottier’s and A. Greimas’s approach) –such as abstract – concrete, definite – indefinite, etc. – reveal structuralrelations within semantic system. They are few in number and recur throughoutthe entire vocabulary. Semes are represented as binary / tertiary oppositions.For example, the seme definite – indefinite has binary structure: definite isthe positive value (variant) of the seme; indefinite is the negative value(variant).
Atpresent there is no elaborate integral method of the analysis of sensestructure of lexemes, and traditionally semantic analysis is carried out onlyon the paradigmatic level of the lexicon. In this study an attempt was made topropose the technique of the analysis of sense structure which involves thedescription of both syntagmatic relations (in particular, interrelations ofsemes and semantic concord of lexemes in the text) and paradigmatic relationsin the lexicon (the structure of semantic fields).
Thoughthe technique proposed in this study cannot claim to provide an integrateddescription of the semantic structure of natural language, it proved to beeffective in the analysis of the semantic fields of different language systems.The results of the research can be relevant to structural semantics(description of semantic relations, elaboration of formal representations(frames, thesauri)), they may be applied in lexicography, computationallinguistics and language teaching.
Theproblem of the theme is that the system of the English verb isrightly considered to be the most complex grammatical structure of thelanguage. The most troublesome problems are, indeed, concentrated in the areaof the finite verb, and include, in particular, questions tense, aspect andmodal auxiliary usage. This seems to be an aim of our work which hasalways gained the greatest interest in language learning. We can say withlittle fear of exaggeration that learning a language is to a very large degreelearning how to operate the verbal forms of that language.
InModern English, as well as in many other languages, verbal forms imply not onlysubtle shades of time distinction but serve for other purposes, too; they arealso often marked for person and number, for mood, voice and aspect.
Thegeneral categorial meaning of the verb is process presented dynamically, i.e.developing in time. This general processual meaning is embedded in thesemantics of all the verbs, including those that denote states, forms ofexistence, types of attitude, evaluations, etc., rather than actions. Edgar'sroom led out of the wall without a door. She had herself a liking for richnessand excess. It was all over the morning papers. That's what I'm afraid of. I dolove you, really I do. And this holds true not only about the finite verb, butalso about the non-finite verb. The processual semantic character of the verballexeme even in the non-finite form is proved by the fact that in all its formsit is modified by the adverb and, with the transitive verb, it takes a directobject. Mr. Brown received the visitor instantly, which was unusual. – Mr. Brown'sreceiving the visitor instantly was unusual. – It was unusual for Mr. Brown toreceive the visitor instantly. But: An instant reception of the visitor wasunusual for Mr. Brown[1].
Theprocessual categorial meaning of the notional verb determines itscharacteristic combination with a noun expressing both the doer of the action(its subject) and, in cases of the objective verb, the recipient of the action(its object); it also determines its combination with an adverb as the modifierof the action.
Fromthe point of view of their outward structure, verbs are characterised by specificforms of word-building, as well as by the formal features expressing thecorresponding grammatical categories.
Theverb stems may be simple, sound-replacive, stress-replacive, expanded,composite, and phrasal.
Theoriginal simple verb stems are not numerous, such verbs as go, take, read, etc.But conversion (zero-suffixation) as means of derivation, especially conversionof the «noun – verb» type, greatly enlarges the simple stem set of verbs, sinceit is one of the most productive ways of forming verb lexemes in modernEnglish, a cloud – to cloud, a house – to house; a man – to man; a park – topark, etc.
2. The main part2.1 Categories of verb morphology
Whatproperties of the events described in the following sentences do the morphemesin bold tell us about?
Jimmywill graduate in June.
Jimmywould graduate if he studied.
Jimmyis sleeping.
Inthe last section we saw how grammatical morphology can specify one or anotherabstract category for the things that nouns refer to. In this section, we'lllook at how grammatical morphology can do the same for verbs, focusing on oneparticular kind of verb morphology, morphemes that indicate general propertiesof the participants in the event or state that the verb designates.
Justas things divide naturally into a small number of categories on the basis ofdimensions such as number, countability, and shape, events and states alsodivide naturally into a small number of categories on the basis of severalbasic dimensions.2.1.1Time
TheGrammies realized early on that when an event occurred or a state was trueoften mattered. An utterance like Clark eat berries wasn't much use if thehearer didn't know whether Clark had already eaten the berries, was eating themat that moment, or was going to eat them at some later time. The Grammiesdeveloped two kinds of expressions to help them talk about the time of an eventor state, absolute and relative expressions. This is a distinction we've seenbefore, in the context of adjective meaning.
Absolutetime expressions label specific points in time, such as January 20, 1203, orpoints within a repeating unit of time, such as 3:00 pm (which labels a timewithin the day) and Tuesday (which labels a day within the week). The secondtype of expression may be used for repeating events or states (I get up at7:00) or for a single event or state, in which case the Hearer has to be ableto figure out which unit of time the Speaker has in mind. That is, I got up at7:00 is only meaningful if we know which day the Speaker is talking about.
Expressionslike yesterday and ago express times relative to the utterance time.
Relativetime expressions label points in time relative some other reference point. Themost obvious reference point is the utterance time, which is one of the rolesin the utterance context and is directly accessible to the Hearer. Thusreferring to time in this way is an example of a deictic use of language. Foran event or state that is going on at the time of speaking, we have a word likenow. For a past or future event or state, we can mention the length of timethat has elapsed or will elapse between the time it occurred or will occur andthe utterance time (an hour ago, in an hour), or we can simply say that ithappened before the utterance time or will happen after the utterance time (already,in the future). There are other possible reference points for relative timereference. We can say things like before that time and after the wedding.
Justas number ended up grammatical in languages such as English, we might expectreference to the time of events and states to end up grammatical too. In fact,many, if not most, modern languages have a system for this, called tense, builtinto their grammar. For example, we distinguish Clark fell asleep, Clark isfalling asleep, and Clark is going to fall asleep. Tense morphology dividesevents and states into the general grammatical categories past, present, andfuture; or a smaller set such as past and non-past; or a larger set, dependingon the language.
Aswith other grammatical morphology, tense marking is normally obligatory inlanguages that have it, even when it is redundant. Both of the followingEnglish sentences have the past morpheme, even though that morpheme isredundant in the second example because the phrase last night makes it clearthat the event happened before the utterance time.
Islept ten hours.
Islept ten hours last night.
Duration,repetition, completion
Eventsmay be viewed «from inside», as they are going on, or «from outside», beforethey begin or after they finish.
Thereare other ways of looking at the temporal properties of an event or state thanwhen it occurred or was true. It could be viewed as ongoing or completed, forexample. Consider the difference between these two English sentences.
Clarkwas falling asleep.
Clarkhad fallen asleep.
Bothhave an unspecified time in the past as a point of reference. In sentence 3 theevent is seen as ongoing at that time, and in sentence 4 the event is seen ascompleted at that time.
TheSpeaker may also point out the repeated nature of an event or state. Considerthe difference between these English sentences.
Clarkruns in the marathon.
Clarkis running in the marathon.
Forboth of these sentences, the point of reference is the utterance time ('now').In sentence 5, the running is viewed as repeated around this reference time; insentence 6 it is ongoing at the reference time.
Thegrammatical representation of duration, completion, and repetition of eventsand states is known as aspect. As with other grammatical morphology, aspectmorphology is often obligatory. In English, for example, speakers have tocommit themselves to the choice between ongoing, repeated, or completed for anevent with present reference time. That is, it is impossible in English to talkabout Clark running the marathon, as in sentences 5 and 6, without making sucha commitment.
2.1.2 Possibility, hypothesis, desirability
Anotherset of properties that distinguishes some events and states from others isrelated to their truth: whether they are true or likely to be true, whether weare treating them as true just for the sake of argument, whether we would likethem to be true. The grammatical represention of meanings like these is calledmodality. Here are two English examples where the verb morphology reflectsthese dimensions.
IfJimmy spoke Spanish, he'd have a better chance with Lupe.
Perrysuggested that Clark spend less time on computer games.
Insentence 7, the Speaker knows that Jimmy doesn't speak Spanish; if he did orthere were at least a possibility that he does, the verb would be speaks ratherthan spoke. And in the same sentence, would ('d) indicates the conditionalnature of the state of «having a better chance»; it would be true if Jimmyspoke Spanish, but he doesn't, so it isn't. In sentence 8, spend is used ratherthan spends, indicating the tenative nature of the «spending less time»; thisis only a suggestion, not yet reality.[2]2.1.3 Participants
Eventsand states are defined in part by their participants. The choice of aparticular verb commits the Speaker not only to a category of state or eventbut to a set of semantic roles. But these semantic roles may often be filled bya variety of things. We can group events and states into a small set ofabstract categories on the basis of some general properties of theseparticipants. The next subsection focuses on verb morphology with thisfunction.2.1.4 Verb agreement
Whatmakes the following sentences ungrammatical? What kind of rule can you specifyfor the verb morpheme – s?
Clarkalways arrive late.
Clark'scolleagues likes him a lot.
Inmany languages verbs take inflectional morphemes that convey some informationabout one or more participants in the event or state that the sentence isabout. One way to think about this is in terms of the agreement between theverb and those participants on a small number of abstract properties. On theone extreme are languages like Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, which have nomorphology of this type (though sometimes the choice of a verb in Japanese isgoverned by some properties of the participants). In what follows, I'll brieflydiscuss verb agreement in four languages that have some form of it. Notice thatsince agreement morphology conveys abstract properties of participants, thatis, things, this topic overlaps with the topic of the last section.
Englishis a language with limited verb agreement morphology, the vestiges of what wasa full-blown agreement system in Old English. Consider these sentences.
Clarkplays golf.
Loisand Clark play tennis.
Iplay croquet.
Clarkplayed 18 holes yesterday.
Clarklikes team sports.
InEnglish – s is plural when it appears on nouns but singular when it appears onverbs.
Noticethat the form of the verb play differs in sentence 9 and 10. In sentence 9 thesubject of the sentence, Clark, is 3rd person (that is, including neither theSpeaker nor the Hearer) and singular, and the verb takes the suffix – s toindicate this. When the same verb is used with a subject that has any othercombination of person and number, as in sentences 10 and 11, the verb takes nosuffix. Notice also that an agreement suffix is only added to verbs in thesimple present tense, that is, the tense category used in sentences 9, 10, and11. Sentence 12 is in the simple past tense, and no distinction is made on thebasis of person and number. Finally, notice that it is the participant in thesyntactic role of subject, rather than any particular semantic role, that theverb agrees with. So in sentence 13, the verb again takes the – s even though thesubject in this case refers to an experience rather than an agent, as insentence 9.[3]
Withthe verb be, there are three forms rather than two in the simple present, andrather than suffixes, completely unrelated forms are used: am (1st personsingular), is (3rd person singular), and are (other person-numbercombinations). The verb be also has two forms in the simple past tense, was andwere.
ThusEnglish subject-verb agreement is limited both in terms of the number ofdifferent forms and the situations in which it must apply. However, it behavesjust like the other examples of grammatical morphology we've been considering.It is often redundant, but it is obligatory even when it is. So in standardEnglish dialects, at least, it is ungrammatical to say Clark like Lois, eventhough the missing – s would convey no new information.
Sodoes the – s in play in sentences 9 and 13 mean anything? Yes, it means thatthe subject of that verb is 3rd person singular. In addition, because thissuffix only occurs on verbs in the simple present tense, it also marks thattense category. Under most circumstances, this information would be obviousfrom the subject itself and from the context. But if the Hearer missed thesubject for some reason, that – s could help sort things out. Also there aregray areas where Speakers may choose to use a verb in the 3rd person singularwith a plural subject. Compare these two sentences.
Ahundred students are in this course.
Ahundred students is more than this room can hold.
Insentence 15, the subject is viewed as an individual quantity rather than acollection of individual things, so the verb is singular.
2.2 AmericanSign Language
Thegrammars of sign languages may be just as complex as those of spoken languages.
Finallylet's consider agreement morphology on verbs in a sign language. We havealready seen one example of this in the discussion of mutation morphology. ASLhas a category of verbs that sign linguists call «directional verbs». These areverbs designating transfer events, or information transfer events, or otherevents viewed as having a direction. These verbs have a basic handshake and aposition on the body, but their direction has to agree with the source and thegoal (often the recipient) of the event. The agreement is with what correspondsto person in ASL, the position in signing space of the participants. 1st and2nd person have the position of the signer and the sign interpreter, and otherparticipants are «placed» in signing space by the signer as they come up.
Forexample, to produce the sign for 'give' in ASL when the source/agent is neitherthe signer nor the sign interpreter and the recipient is the signer, the signeruses the basic handshake for 'give', moving one hand from the position of thegiver in signing space to the signer's own chest. The direction would be theopposite if the roles were reversed.
Anotherform of agreement in ASL makes use of classifiers. Classifiers in ASL take theform of particular handshakes that represent general properties of things. Forexample, an index finger pointing upward represents a standing person, a cuppedhand represents a container, and the extended thumb and first two fingerrepresents a vehicle One use of classifiers is as morphemes agreeing with thesubjects of verbs designating move events and be at states. In this case theagreement is the opposite of what happens with verbs of giving and telling. Itis the handshake that represents the agreement morpheme and the movement of thehand(s) that represents the content of the verb. For example, to sign asentence meaning 'the car is here', the signer would make the sign for 'car',then with the 'vehicle' classifier handshake sign 'be here', that is, move thehand downward in front of the body.
Howis verb agreement in ASL like the verb agreement in the spoken languages wehave considered? At least in many cases agreement in ASL is obligatory, as itis in spoken languages. It may also be redundant, as in the 'vehicle' example.
Agreementin ASL, in fact morphology in sign languages generally, is strikingly differentfrom spoken language morphology in one way. It is invariably iconic; all ofthese examples we have seen «make sense». With respect to form alone, signlanguage grammatical morphology differs in another way from most spokenlanguage grammatical morphology in that it occurs simultaneously with the rootmorpheme. Of course this derives from the potential in sign languages tomaintain a particular handshake while a movement is executed.
Onepoint of this section has been to show how much languages can vary in terms ofwhat information gets represented on their verbs. It is on verbs that we seehow different languages can get. Within our set of languages, we have seen arange of possibilities, but we still are not close to the extreme of someAmerican Indian and Eskimo languages, like Inuktitut, where verbs frequentlyinclude more than ten morphemes. However, those words usually include morphemesthat go beyond the functions we've discussed in this chapter. Such languagesexcel at creating new words from a small number of roots and extensiveproductive morphology. How this sort of process works is the topic of the nextchapter. 2.3 The category of voice
InEnglish as in many other languages, the passive voice is the form of atransitive verb whose grammatical subject serves as the patient, receiving theaction of the verb. The passive voice is typically contrasted with the activevoice, which is the form of a transitive verb whose subject serves as theagent, performing the action of the verb. The subject of a verb in the passivevoice corresponds to the object of the same verb in the active voice. English'spassive voice is periphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form.Rather, it is formed using a form of the auxiliary verb be together with averb's past participle.
Canonicalpassives
Passiveconstructions have a range of meanings and uses. The canonical use to map aclause with a direct object to a corresponding clause where the direct objecthas become the subject. For example:
Johnthrew the ball.[4]
Here,threw is a transitive verb with John as its subject and the ball as its directobject. If we recast the verb in the passive voice (was thrown), then the ballbecomes the subject (it is promoted to the subject position) and Johndisappears:
Theball was thrown.
Theoriginal subject can typically be re-inserted using the preposition by:
Theball was thrown by John.
Promotionof other objects
Onenon-canonical use of English's passive is to promote an object other than adirect object. It is usually possible in English to promote indirect objects aswell. For example:
Johngave Mary a book. → Mary was given a book.
Inthe active form, gave is the verb; John is its subject, Mary its indirectobject, and a book its direct object; in the passive form, the indirect objecthas been promoted and the direct object has been left in place. (In thisrespect, English resembles dechticaetiative languages.)
Itis also possible, in some cases, to promote the object of a preposition:
Theytalked about the problem. → The problem was talked about.
Inthe passive form here, the preposition is «stranded»; that is, it is notfollowed by an object. (See Preposition stranding.) Indeed, in some sense itdoesn't have an object, since «the problem» is actually the subject of thesentence.Promotion of content clauses
Itis possible to promote a content clause that serves as a direct object. In thiscase, however, it typically does not change its position in the sentence, andan expletive it takes the normal subject position:
Theysay that he left. → It is said that he left.
Stativepassives
Thepassives described so far have all been eventive (or dynamic) passives. Thereexist also stative (or static, or resultative) passives; rather than describingan action, they describe the result of an action. English does not usuallydistinguish between the two. For example:
Thedoor was locked.
Thissentence has two meanings, roughly the following:
[Someone]locked the door.
Thedoor was in the locked state. (Presumably, someone had locked it.)
Theformer meaning represents the canonical, eventive passive; the latter, thestative passive. (The terms eventive and stative/resultative refer to thetendencies of these forms to describe events and resultant states,respectively. The terms can be misleading, however, as the canonical passive ofa stative verb is not a stative passive, even though it describes a state.)
Someverbs do not form stative passives. In some cases, this is because distinctadjectives exist for this purpose, such as with the verb open:
Thedoor was opened. → [Someone] opened the door.
Thedoor was open. → The door was in the open state.Adjectival passives
Adjectivalpassives are not true passives; they occur when a participial adjective (anadjective derived from a participle) is used predicatively For example:
Shewas relieved to find her car undamaged.[5]
Here,relieved is an ordinary adjective, though it derives from the past participleof relieve In some cases, the line between an adjectival passive and a stativepassive may be unclear.
Passiveswithout active counterparts
Ina few cases, passive constructions retain all the sense of the passive voice,but do not have immediate active counterparts. For example:
Hewas rumored to be a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored him to be a warveteran.
(Theasterisk here denotes an ungrammatical construction.) Similarly:
Itwas rumored that he was a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored that he was awar veteran.
Inboth of these examples, the active counterpart was once possible, but hasfallen out of use.Double passives
Itis possible for a verb in the passive voice – especially an object-raising verb– to take an infinitive complement that is also in the passive voice:
Theproject is expected to be completed in the next year.
Commonly,either or both verbs may be moved into the active voice:
[Someone]expects the project to be completed in the next year.
[Someone]is expected to complete the project in the next year.
[Someone]expects [someone] to complete the project in the next year.
Insome cases, a similar construction may occur with a verb that is notobject-raising in the active voice:
Theproject will be attempted to be completed in the next year. ← *[Someone]will attempt the project to be completed in the next year. ← [Someone]will attempt to complete the project in the next year.
(Thequestion mark here denotes a questionably-grammatical construction.) In thisexample, the object of the infinitive has been promoted to the subject of themain verb, and both the infinitive and the main verb have been moved to thepassive voice. The American Heritage Book of English Usage declares thisunacceptable but it is nonetheless attested in a variety of contextsOther passive constructions
Pastparticiple alone
Apast participle alone usually carries passive force; the form of be cantherefore be omitted in certain circumstances, such as newspaper headlines andreduced relative clauses:
Couplefound slain; Murder-suicide suspected.
Theproblem, unless dealt with, will only get worse.
Aperson struck by lightning has a high chance of survival.
Withget as the auxiliary
Whilethe ordinary passive construction uses the auxiliary be, the same effect cansometimes be achieved using get in its place: Jamie got hit with the ball.
Thisuse of get is fairly restricted. First of all, it is fairly colloquial; be isused in news reports, formal writing, and so on. Second of all, it typicallyonly forms eventive passives of eventive verbs. Third of all, it is most often(but not necessarily) used with semantically negative verbs; for example, thephrase get shot is much more common than the phrase get praised.Ergative verbs
Anergative verb is a verb that may be either transitive or intransitive, andwhose subject when it is intransitive plays the same semantic role as itsdirect object when it is transitive. For example, fly is an ergative verb, suchthat the following sentences are roughly synonymous:
Theairplane flew.
Theairplane was flown.
[Someone]flew the airplane.
Onemajor difference is that the intransitive construction does not permit an agentto be mentioned, and indeed can imply that no agent is present, that thesubject is performing the action on itself. For this reason, the intransitiveconstruction of an ergative verb is often said to be in a middle voice, betweenactive and passive, or in a mediopassive voice, between active and passive butcloser to passive.
Reflexiveverbs
Areflexive verb is a transitive verb one of whose objects is a reflexive pronoun(myself, yourself, etc.) referring back to its subject. In some languages,reflexive verbs are a special class of verbs with special semantics and syntax,but in English, they typically represent ordinary uses of transitive verbs. Forexample, with the verb see:
Hesees her as a writer.
Shesees herself as a writer.
Nonetheless,sometimes English reflexive verbs have a passive sense, expressing an agentlessaction. Consider the verb solve, as in the following sentences:
Hesolved the problem.
Theproblem solved itself.
Onecould not say that the problem truly solved anything; rather, what is meant isthat the problem was solved without anyone solving it.
Gerundsand nominalization
Gerundsand nominalized verbs (nouns derived from verbs and referring to the actions orstates expressed by them), unlike finite verbs, do not require explicitsubjects. This allows an object to be expressed while omitting a subject. Forexample:
Theproof of the pudding is in the eating.
Generatingelectricity typically requires a magnet and a solenoid.Usage and style
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ManyEnglish educators and usage guides, such as The Elements of Style, discouragethe use or overuse of the passive voice, seeing it as unnecessarily verbose(when the agent is included in a by phrase), or as obscure and vague (when itis not). This perception is exacerbated by the occasional intentional use ofthe passive voice to avoid assigning blame, such as by replacing «I mademistakes» with «Mistakes were made.»
Nonetheless,the passive voice is frequently used for a number of other reasons:
Certainverbs frequently appear in the passive – for example, be born, be smitten, andbe had are all more common in certain senses than their active counterparts – thoughin many cases these might be better analyzed as adjectival passives (see above)than as true passives.
Thepassive voice serves to emphasize the patient; if the agent is comparativelyunimportant to the point, or if the agent is obvious from context, then thepassive voice might serve a rhetorical purpose.
Sincein English, the subject nearly always comes before the object in a sentence,using the passive voice (i.e., promoting the patient from object to subject)moves the patient earlier in the sentence. If the patient has been mentioned ina previous sentence, this can serve as a marker of the connection between thetwo sentences.
Scientificwriting has traditionally used the passive voice rather than mentioning aresearcher in every sentence; this may be changing, however.
Injournalistic writing and law, two areas where it can be essential to state onlyestablished facts, use of the passive voice allows uncertain agents to beomitted; again, however, use of the active voice is on the rise, with othermechanisms being used to avoid insupportable claims. 
2.4 The category of mood
Inlinguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood (or mode),which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. Manylanguages express distinctions of mood through morphology, by changing(inflecting) the form of the verb.
Becausemodern English does not have all of the moods described below, and has a verysimplified system of verb inflection as well, it is not straightforward toexplain the moods in English. (The English moods are indicative, subjunctive,and imperative). Note, too, that the exact sense of each mood differs fromlanguage to language.
Grammaticalmood per se is not the same thing as grammatical tense or grammatical aspect,although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages,including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as thesame word patterns are used to express more than one of these concepts at thesame time.
Currentlyidentified moods include conditional, imperative, indicative, injunctive,negative, optative, potential, subjunctive, and more. Infinitive is a categoryapart from all these finite forms, and so are gerunds and participles. SomeUralic Samoyedic languages have over ten moods; Nenets has as many as sixteen.The original Indo-European inventory of moods was indicative, subjunctive,optative, and imperative. Not every Indo-European language has each of thesemoods, but the most conservative ones such as Avestan, Ancient Greek, andSanskrit have them all.
Itshould be noted that not all of the moods listed below are clearly conceptuallydistinct. Individual terminology varies from language to language, and thecoverage of (e.g.) the «conditional» mood in one language may largely overlapwith that of the «hypothetical» or «potential» mood in another. Even when twodifferent moods exist in the same language, their respective usages may blur,or may be defined by syntactic rather than semantic criteria. For example, thesubjunctive and optative moods in Ancient Greek alternate syntactically in manysubordinate clauses, depending on the tense of the main verb. The usage of theindicative, subjunctive and jussive moods in Classical Arabic is almostcompletely controlled by syntactic context; the only possible alternation inthe same context is between indicative and jussive following the negativeparticle lā.
Classification
Realis
Realismoods are a category of grammatical moods which indicate that something isactually the case, or actually not the case. The most common realis mood is theindicative mood or the declarative mood.
Declarative
Thedeclarative mood indicates that the statement is true, without anyqualifications being made. It is in many languages equivalent to the indicativemood, although sometimes distinctions between them are drawn. It is closelyrelated with the inferential mood (see below).
Generic
Thegeneric mood is used to make generalizations about a particular class ofthings, e.g. in «Rabbits are fast», one is speaking about rabbits in general,rather than about particular fast rabbits. English has no means ofmorphologically distinguishing generic mood from indicative mood, however thedistinction can easily be understood in context by surrounding words. Compare,for example: rabbits are fast, versus, the rabbits are fast. Use of the definitearticle the implies specific, particular rabbits, whereas omitting it impliesthe generic mood simply by default.[6]
AncientGreek had a species of generic mood, the so-called gnomic utterance, marked bythe aorist indicative (normally reserved for statements about the past). It wasused especially to express philosophical truths about the world.
Indicative(evidential)
Theindicative mood is used for factual statements and positive beliefs. Allintentions that a particular language does not categorize as another mood areclassified as indicative. In English, questions are considered indicative. Itis the most commonly used mood and is found in all languages. Example: «Paul isreading a book» or «John reads books».
Negative
Thenegative mood expresses a negated action. In many languages, this is not adistinct mood; negation is expressed by adding a particle:
Beforethe verb phrase, as in Spanish No está en casa;
Orafter it, as in archaic and dialectal English Thou remembrest not or Dutch Ikzie hem niet, or in modern English, I think not;
Orboth, as in French Je ne sais pas or Afrikaans Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie.
StandardEnglish usually adds the auxiliary verb do, and then adds not after it: «I didnot go there». In these instances, «do» is known as a dummy auxiliary, becauseof its zero semantic content.
InIndo-European languages, it is not customary to speak of a negative mood, sincein these languages negation is originally a grammatical particle that can beapplied to a verb in any of these moods. Nevertheless, in some, like Welsh,verbs have special inflections to be used in negative clauses.
Inother language families, the negative may count as a separate mood. An exampleis Japanese, which conjugates verbs in the negative after adding the suffix – nai(indicating negation), e.g. tabeta («ate») and tabenakatta («did not eat»).
Itcould be argued that Modern English has joined the ranks of these languages,since negation in the indicative mood requires the use of an auxiliary verb anda distinct syntax in most cases. Contrast, for instance, «He sings» → «Hedoesn't sing» (where the auxiliary to do has to be supplied, inflected to does,and the clitic form of not suffixed to derive the negative from «He sings»)with Il chante → Il ne chante pas; French adds the (discontinuous)negative particle ne… pas, without changing the form of the verb.
Irrealis
Irrealismoods are the set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situationor action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking.
Cohortative
Thecohortative mood (alternatively, hortatory) is used to express plea,insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command,purpose or consequence. It does not exist in English, but phrases such as «letus» are often used to denote it. In Latin, it is interchangeable with thejussive.
Conditional
Theconditional mood is used to speak of an event whose realization is dependent ona certain condition, particularly, but not exclusively, in conditionalsentences. In Modern English, it is a periphrastic construction, with the formwould + infinitive, e.g. I would buy. In other languages, such as Spanish orFrench, verbs have a specific conditional inflection. Thus, the conditionalversion of «John eats if he is hungry» is:
Johnwould eat if he were hungry, in English;
Jeanmangerait s'il avait faim, in French;
Juancomería si tuviera hambre, in Spanish.
Inthe Romance languages, the conditional form is used primarily in the apodosis(main clause) of conditional clauses, and also in a few set phrases where itexpresses courtesy or doubt. The main verb in the protasis (dependent clause)is either in the subjunctive or in the indicative mood.
Thisis not a universal trait; in Finnish, for example, the conditional mood is usedboth in the apodosis and the protasis. An example is the sentence «I would buya house if I earned a lot of money», where in Finnish both clauses have theconditional marker – isi–: Ostaisin talon, jos ansaitsisin paljon rahaa.
InEnglish, too, the would + infinitive construct can be employed in main clauses,with a subjunctive sense: «If you would only tell me what's troubling you, Imight be able to help».
Imperative
Theimperative mood expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. In manycircumstances, using the imperative mood may sound blunt or even rude, so it isoften used with care. Example: «Paul, do your homework now». An imperative isused to tell someone to do something without argument.
Manylanguages, including English, use the bare verb stem to form the imperative.Other languages, such as Seri, however, use special imperative forms.
InEnglish, second-person is implied by the imperative except when first-personplural is specified, as in «Let's go» («Let us go»).
Interrogative
Theinterrogative mood is used for asking questions. Most languages do not have aspecial mood for asking questions, but Welsh and Nenets do.
Jussive
Thejussive mood is similar to the cohortative mood, in that it expresses plea,insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command,purpose or consequence. In some languages, the two are distinguished in thatcohortative occurs in the first person and the jussive in the second or third.
Sometimesthis is called a «desiderative mood», since it indicates desires. Occasionallydistinctions are made between different optative moods, e.g. a mood to expresshopes as opposed to a mood to express desires. (Desires are what we want to bethe case; hope generally implies an optimism toward the chances of a desire'sfulfillment. If someone desires something but is pessimistic about its chancesof occurring, then one desires it but does not hope for it.)
Subjunctive
Thesubjunctive mood, sometimes called conjunctive mood, has several uses independent clauses. Examples include discussing hypothetical or unlikely events,expressing opinions or emotions, or making polite requests (the exact scope islanguage-specific). A subjunctive mood exists in English, but native Englishspeakers need not use it. Example: «I suggested that Paul read some books»,Paul is not in fact reading a book. Contrast this with the sentence «Paul readsbooks», where the verb «to read» is in the present tense, indicative mood.Another way, especially in British English, of expressing this might be «Isuggested that Paul should read some books», derived from «Paul should readsome books.»
Otheruses of the subjunctive in English, as in «And if he be not able to bring alamb, then he shall bring for his trespass…» (KJV Leviticus 5:7) havedefinitely become archaic. Statements such as «I will ensure that he leaveimmediately» often sound archaic or overly formal, and have been almostcompletely supplanted by constructions with the indicative, like «I will ensurethat he leaves immediately».
Thesubjunctive mood figures prominently in the grammar of Persian and the Romancelanguages, which require this mood for certain types of dependent clauses. Thispoint commonly causes difficulty for English speakers learning these languages.
Incertain other languages, the dubitative or the conditional moods may beemployed instead of the subjunctive in referring to doubtful or unlikely events(see the main article).
2.5The category of tense
Grammaticaltense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by asentence occurs. In English, this is a property of a verb form, and expressesonly time-related information.
Tense,along with mood, voice and person, are four ways in which verb forms arefrequently characterized, in languages where those categories apply. There arelanguages (mostly isolating languages, like Chinese) where tense is notexpressed anywhere in the verb or any auxiliaries, but only as adverbs of time,when needed for comprehension; in the same condition, grammatical tense incertain languages can be expressed optionally (such as Vietnamese), for example,«sinh» meaning «birth» and «sanh» meaning «birthed»; and there are alsolanguages (such as Russian) where verbs indicate aspect in addition to orinstead of tense.
Theexact number of tenses in a language is often a matter of some debate, sincemany languages include the state of certainty of the information, the frequencyof the event, whether it is ongoing or finished, and even whether theinformation was directly experienced or gleaned from hearsay, as moods ortenses of a verb. Some grammarians consider these to be separate tenses, andsome do not.
Tensescannot be easily mapped from one language into another. While all languageshave a «default» tense with a name usually translated as «present tense» (or «simplepresent»), the actual meaning of this tense may vary considerably.
Englishtenses
Viewedin the strictest linguistic sense, English has only two tenses: nonpast tenseand past tense, which are shown with the verb endings – Ø and – ed.
Thefollowing chart shows how T/M/A (tense/modal/aspect) is expressed in English:
Tense          Modal         Aspect        Verb 
Perfect        Progressive
– Ø(nonpast)
– ed(past)  Ø (none)
will(future)          Ø (none)
have– en (perfect)        Ø (none)
be– ing (progressive)    do
Sincewill is a modal auxiliary, it cannot co-occur with other modals like can, may,and must. Only aspects can be used in infinitives. Some linguists consider willa future marker and give English two more tenses, future tense andfuture-in-past tense, which are shown by will and would respectively. Also, innonlinguistic language study, aspects and mode are viewed as tenses.
Tense,aspect, and mood
Thedistinction between grammatical tense, aspect, and mood is fuzzy and at timescontroversial. The English continuous temporal constructions express an aspectas well as a tense, and some therefore consider that aspect to be separate fromtense in English. In Spanish the traditional verb tenses are also combinationsof aspectual and temporal information.
Goingeven further, there's an ongoing dispute among modern English grammarians (seeEnglish grammar) regarding whether tense can only refer to inflected forms. InGermanic languages there are very few tenses (often only two) formed strictlyby inflection, and one school contends that all complex or periphrastictime-formations are aspects rather than tenses.
Theabbreviation TAM, T/A/M or TMA is sometimes found when dealing with verbalmorphemes that combine tense, aspect and mood information.
Insome languages, tense and other TAM information may be marked on a noun, ratherthan a verb. This is called nominal TAM.
Classificationof tenses
Tensescan be broadly classified as:
Absolute:indicates time in relationship to the time of the utterance (i.e. «now»). Forexample, «I am sitting down», the tense is indicated in relation to the presentmoment.
Relative:in relationship to some other time, other than the time of utterance, e.g. «Whilestrolling through the shops, she saw a nice dress in the window». Here, the «saw»is relative to the time of the «strolling». The relationship between the timeof «strolling» and the time of utterance is not clearly specified.
Absolute-relative:indicates time in relationship to some other event, whose time in turn isrelative to the time of utterance. (Thus, in absolute-relative tense, the timeof the verb is indirectly related to the time of the utterance; in absolutetense, it is directly related; in relative tense, its relationship to the timeof utterance is left unspecified.) For example, «When I walked through thepark, I saw a bird.» Here, «saw» is present relative to the «walked», and «walked»is past relative to the time of the utterance, thus «saw» is inabsolute-relative tense.
Movingon from this, tenses can be quite finely distinguished from one another,although no language will express simply all of these distinctions. As we willsee, some of these tenses in fact involve elements of modality (e.g. predictiveand not-yet tenses), but they are difficult to classify clearly as eithertenses or moods.
Manylanguages define tense not just in terms of past/future/present, but also interms of how far into the past or future they are. Thus they introduce conceptsof closeness or remoteness, or tenses that are relevant to the measurement oftime into days (hodiernal or hesternal tenses).
Somelanguages also distinguish not just between past, present, and future, but alsononpast, nonpresent, nonfuture. Each of these latter tenses incorporates two ofthe former, without specifying which.
Sometenses:
Absolutetenses
Futuretenses. Some languages have different future tenses to indicate how far intothe future we are talking about. Some of these include:
Closefuture tense: in the near future, soon
Hodiernalfuture tense: sometime today
Post-hodiernalfuture tense: sometime after today
Remotefuture tense: in the more distant future
Predictivefuture tense: a future tense which expresses a prediction rather than anintention, i.e. «I predict he will lose the election, although I want him towin». As such, it is really more of a mood than a tense. (Its tenseness ratherthan modality lies in the fact that you can predict the future, but not thepast.)
Nonfuturetense: refers to either the present or the past, but does not clearly specifywhich. Contrasts with future.
Nonpasttense: refers to either the present or the future, but does not clearly specifywhich. Contrasts with past.
Not-yettense: has not happened in present or past (nonfuture), but often with theimplication that it is expected to happen in the future. (As such, is both atense and a modality). In English, it is expressed with «not yet», hence itsname.
Pasttenses. Some languages have different past tenses to indicate how far into thepast we are talking about.
Hesternalpast tense: yesterday or early, but not remote
Hodiernalpast tense: sometime earlier today
Immediatepast tense: very recent past tense, e.g. in the last minute or two
Recentpast tense: in the last few days/weeks/months (exact definition varies)
Remotepast tense: more than a few days/weeks/months ago (exact definition varies)
Nonrecentpast tense: not recent past tense, contrasting with recent past tense
Nonremotepast tense: not remote past tense, contrasting with remote past tense
Prehesternalpast tense: before hesternal past tense
Prehodiernalpast tense: before hodiernal past tense
Preterit:past tense not marked for aspect or modality
Presenttense
Stilltense: indicates a situation held to be the case, at or immediately before theutterance
Absolute-relativetenses
futureperfect tense: will have completed by some time in the future, will occurbefore some time in the future
Future-in-futuretense: at some time in the future, will still be in the future
Future-in-pasttense: at some time in the future, will be in the past
Future-perfect-in-pasttense: will be completed by some time which is in the future of some time inthe past, eg., Sally went to work; by the time she should be home, the burglarywould have been completed.
Pastperfect tense: at some time in the past, was already in the past
Relativetenses
Relativefuture tense: is in the future of some unspecified time
Relativenonfuture tense: is in the past or present of some unspecified time
Relativenonpast tense: is in the present or future of some unspecified time
Relativepast tense: is in the past of some unspecified time
Relativepresent tense: is in the present of some unspecified time
 
2.6Palmer’s and mind’s discussion on English modality
Historicallyin language descriptions, the grammatical terms «modality» and «mood» havelacked truly definitive categories of meaning. For that reason, linguisticdictionaries have often treated them as synonyms, cross referencing theirentries and in some cases, describing how different theories or authors haveused the terms.
Inthis book, Palmer treats «modality» as a valid cross-language grammaticalcategory that, along with tense and aspect, is notionally concerned with theevent or situation that is reported by an utterance. However, he says thatunlike tense and aspect which are categories associated with the nature of theevent itself, modality is concerned with the status of the proposition thatdescribes the event.
Palmerthen goes on to define two basic distinctions in how languages deal with thecategory of modality: modal systems and mood. He believes that many languagesmay be characterized by one or the other. He also claims that typology relatedto modality cannot be undertaken on purely formal grounds because of the complexityof cross-linguistic differences in the grammatical means used to express whathe terms «notional» categories. This claim is substantiated by the greatvariety of forms and structures evident in the data from 122 languages that heuses to illustrate the expression of modality.
Palmerdistinguishes two sorts of modality: propositional modality and event modality.These notional systems express the following categories:
Propositionalmodality
Epistemic– speakers express their judgment about the factual status of the proposition
Speculative:expresses uncertainty
Deductive:expresses inferences from observable data
Assumptive:expresses inferences from what is generally known
Evidential:speakers give evidence for the factual status of the proposition
Reported– evidence gathered from others
Sensory:evidence gathered through sense perception, e.g., seen, heard
Eventmodality
Deontic:speakers express conditioning factors that are external to the relevantindividual
Permissive:permission is given on the basis of some authority, e.g. rules, law, or thespeaker
Obligative:an obligation is laid on the addressee(s), also on the basis of some authority
Commissive:a speaker commits himself to do something; the expression may be a promise or athreat
Dynamic:speakers express conditioning factors that are internal to the relevantindividual
Abilitive:expresses the ability to do something
Volitive:expresses the willingness to do something
Thesenotional categories are discussed and illustrated throughout the book.
Theillustrative data reveal many of the formal means for expressing the notionalcategories in a variety of languages. According to Palmer, three grammaticalcategories predominate in the expression of the notional categories: (1)affixation of verbs, (2) modal verbs, and (3) particles. Many of the languagesfrom which Palmer chose data use more than one grammatical category to expressthe notions.
Thisis probably not unusual. In fact, the two Austronesian languages with which Iam most familiar spread the notions across all three grammatical categories,and the lexical and morphosyntactic patterns are completely unlike Englishpatterns, although the similarity of notions is fairly obvious. I would expectto see a closer correlation of the grammatical means of expessing modalityamong related languages.
Palmerdiscusses the use of modal verbs and their association with possibility andnecessity in chapter 4. He draws together issues involving epistemic modality,i.e., a speaker’s attitude to the truth value or factual status of aproposition in contrast to deontic and dynamic modality that refer tounactualized events. Although notionally there is a difference, Palmer explainsthat in English and many other languages, the same modal verbs are used forboth types. He gives three English sentences as examples:
(1)    He may come tomorrow.
(2)    The book should be on the shelf.
(3)    He must be in his office.
Hestates that each of the modal verbs in the sentences can express eitherepistemic or deontic modality. However, he goes on to say in a later sectionthat there are some formal differences: deontic must and may can be negatedwhereas epistemic must and may cannot be; if may and must are followed by havein a clause, they always express epistemic modality, never deontic; anotherformal difference between may and must is that deontic may is replaceable bycan and would still express deontic modality, but if replaced by can’t it wouldthen likely express epistemic modality, i.e., a truth value. This type ofillustration and explanation is used throughout the book.
Palmerdiscusses the links between mood and modal systems with particular respect tolanguages that express mood formally, or in combination with modal notions.Although Palmer suggests that there is basically no typological differencebetween indicative/subjunctive and realis/irrealis since both are instances ofmood, he does state that there are considerable differences between thefunctions of what have been labeled «subjunctive» and «irrealis» For thatreason he deals with them in three separate chapters.
AlthoughPalmer’s notional categories make sense, I found that it was difficult toprocess the grammatical patterns in the language data used to illustrate thecategories. Part of my difficulty may be attributed to the fact that I believemodality needs to be studied in the context of use, i.e., natural texts, notisolated sentences; and also, I believe, that a thorough study of allgrammatical expressions of modality and mood must be done within a singlelanguage before the results are compared and contrasted cross-linguistically.Perhaps the authors of the papers and grammars that Palmer used had done justthat, but the contexts were lost through the excerpting of sentences toillustrate his notional categories.
Inspite of this criticism, I found Palmer’s categories, his compilation of datafrom many different languages, and explanations of terminological usage veryhelpful in my own work, as well as thought provoking. I wholeheartedlyrecommend the book for your reference shelf, particularly if you are a linguistor translator who needs to do an in-depth study of modality in a singlelanguage or a cross-language comparison of modality.
Inhis preface, the author explains that this volume is a complement to an earlier
volume,titled An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb: Modal Verbs, published in 1995by the same publisher. The present volume clearly aims to provide an inventory ofthe various verb combinations within the English verb phrase. This is done onthe basis of the study of a large amount of corpus data. I am not so surewhether the term grammar in the title is entirely justified, for even thoughinformation about distribution and frequency of occurrence of the variouspatterns is provided, the book hardly ever goes beyond providing this kind ofinformation. The author writes in his introduction that «all instances of verbsand verb phrases can be explained as cases of rule-governed grammatical behavior,»but what these rules are is not explained anywhere. I will come back to thisbelow.
Thebook definitely has a number of strong points, but it also has quite a number ofserious shortcomings. Let me first discuss the general contents of the book. Itis divided into seven chapters: «Introduction» «General Categories» «Verb Forms».
«VerbPhrases» «Finite Verb Phrases» «Non-finite Verb Phrases» and «Time Orientation».
Inthe introduction, the author explains the inductive approach he has followed.
Basically,there are three steps: from language to verb patterns and their contexts, fromdatabase creation (i.e., storing the verb patterns identified) to linguisticanalysis of verb patterns, and from the results of these analyses to a grammarof the English verb. He also states (6) that the grammar is based on authenticEnglish and that there has been no borrowing from previous grammars. This isprobably also why there is no reference section. They are useful for a quickfirst impression. In the prototypes, the author claims, the users of the bookwill find the most frequent patterns they are likely to encounter «in texts orin contact with speakers of the language» (12). The details, finally, giveinformation on form (full vs. contracted forms, which the author persistentlycalls «elided» forms), meaning, and context. In the latter, contextualinformation is given on affirmative and negative contexts, declarative andinterrogative contexts, combination with subjects, combination with verbs, andother syntactic information.
Someof this information is certainly useful, but a lot of it is repetitive andcould well have been stated generally. For instance, in the contexts of nearlyall the patterns, it is said that affirmative contexts are far more frequentthan negative contexts and that declarative contexts are far more frequent thaninterrogative contexts, the percentages being roughly 90 for affirmative and 10for negative and another 90 for declarative and 10 for interrogative, give ortake a point or two. This information could have been formulated once, under ageneral heading, after which contexts with a clearly deviant distributionalpattern could have been appropriately highlighted and commented on, as in thecase of be allowed to, which occurs in a negative context in 23 percent of allcases (400). Incidentally, the author apparently only considers the occurrenceof the word not (or n’t) to be an indication of a negative context, for on thesame page he quotes the sentence nobody should be allowed to forget it as anexample of an affirmative context (400). This, and the lack of comment, makesthe book really little more than a mere listing of examples of the variouspatterns distinguished.
«GeneralCategories,» briefly discusses the concept of time, temporal orientation, andtemporal reference. Temporal orientation can be past, present, or future, whiletime reference can be preceding, simultaneous, following, or neutral.
Thus,the sentences below (listed on page 19) all have past time orientation but havepreceding, simultaneous, following, and neutral reference, respectively, thereference indicated by the highlighted verb phrases.
Lee,I noticed, had asked for a Coca-Cola
Butwhat he saw was an ageing Australian woman
Shewas glad that he would be with her
Hewon because he’s forty years younger than you
Onlytime orientation, however, is indicated for the various verb phrase patterns distinguished«because of the intricacies of time reference» (19). It makes sense to make aninventory of the time orientation of the verb phrase patterns because after allthis orientation is somehow expressed by the tense of the verb phrase (althoughthis does not apply to nonfinite verb phrases). It makes equal sense to make aninventory of real and nonreal states or events referred to by the verb phrasepatterns because, again, this is indicated by the tense or modality expressedby the verb phrase. I find it less natural to make an inventory of restrictiveor nonrestrictive meaning expressed particularly by nonfinite verb phrases(21), for this distinction is not inherent in the verb phrase itself. Moreover,it can only refer to a relatively small subset of nonfinite clauses–namely,those with an attributive function.
Thefinal category that Mindt distinguishes as relevant to the description of the verbphrases is the nature of the subject with which they are associated. Mind distinguishesbetween intentional and nonintentional subjects (22), but he does not reallyexplain the difference at all convincingly. He merely provides a few examplesof each, giving the reader the impression that the distinction more or lesscoincides with human and nonhuman subjects, for he then says, «Because of therelation between verb phrase and intentional and non-intentional subjects, thedistinction between intentional and non-intentional has to be made no matterwhether the subject is acting intentionally or not» (22). Thus, in mostpatients are taught to do this, we have an intentional subject, whereas in moretechniques are taught, we have a nonintentional subject. It would seem to methat Mindt has thought of a category, then found that it is not useful at allin many cases but has decided to hang onto it in spite of this.
«VerbForms» is a very straightforward chapter spelling out the details of verbforms, verb morphology, inflection, spelling rules, and patterns of irregular verbs.This chapter concludes with a learning list of irregular verbs, based on therank list compiled, one assumes, on the basis of the corpora listed in theappendix.
Fortunately,there is also an alphabetical list of irregular verbs.
«VerbPhrases,» discusses verb phrase types. Mindt uses a three dimensional graphicrepresentation of verbal elements that can occur in a verb phrase and the orderin which they occur. This model was introduced in An Empirical Grammar of theEnglish Verb: Modal Verbs (Mindt 1995). The model enables Mindt to account fora great variety of verb phrase patterns, in which all kinds of combinations ofmodals, auxiliaries, so-called catenative verbs, and main verbs can be combinedin specific ways. The main problem with this chapter (as with the followingtwo) is the justification of (or rather the failure to justify) the existenceof the category of catenative verbs. The catenative verbs are said to be agroup of «chaining» verbs (which is exactly what the term catenative means)whose function is apparently to link elements in a verb phrase together.Catenative verbs do not share any characteristics with modal verbs and very fewwith primary auxiliaries. Examples of catenative verbs are seem or begin. Whilethere are admittedly very good reasons for wishing to distinguish a categorysuch as catenative verbs, Mindt fails to present any convincing arguments forthis. Moreover, he includes verbs in this category that should not be includedby any standard, such as want, avoid, mean, enjoy, or be important. Worst ofall, in his illustrations of how so-called catenative verb phrases aredistinguished from «noncatenative» verb phrases, he seems to ignore elements ofwell-established modern descriptive grammars of English.
Forinstance, in the sentence we want you to come with us (112), the main clause issaid to be we want you and the subclause to come with us, and you is said to bethe object of the main clause and the «semantic subject» of the subclause. Thisappears to take us right back to Zandvoortian times and to ignore the fact thatthere are very simple constituency tests that would tell you that in this case,for instance, it does not make sense to ask who do we want? but it would makesense to ask what do we want? – thus ruling out you as an object of themain clause.
Inthe sentence he wanted to talk to Armstrong (111), wanted to talk is a catenativeverb phrase, with wanted a catenative verb, but in the sentence quoted above(we want you to come with us), want and to come are separate verb phrases, withboth want and come as main verbs. Mindt argues (471) that the distinction of thecategory of catenative verbs reduces the number of nonfinite verb phrases,implying that this makes the description of sentences more straightforward. Iam not convinced that that is true. Moreover, an important generalization ismissed – namely, that verbs such as want are simply complemented by infinitiveclauses, with or without a subject of their own.
Anotherexample of a catenative verb occurs in the sentence the authorities failed torespond speedily (111). Again, no argumentation is provided. Mindt could haveargued that failed cannot be assigned main verb status (e.g., because failedbasically means no more than did not) and therefore should be looked on as acatenative verb, making up a single verb phrase with the following main verb respond.
Inthe book, we can only guess what traditional descriptions and which previous grammarshe means. But what he claims is not quite true, of course, for Quirk et al.(1972) do distinguish a separate category of semi-auxiliary verbs, including verbssuch as seem and happen (in Quirk et al. 1985, these verbs are also termed catenativeverbs, by the way).
Ifind the discussion of catenative verbs particularly problematic because Mindt doesnot provide any proper syntactic arguments, a state of affairs that leads himto include an excessive number of verbs in this category. For instance, theverb want is included (see the example above) on the strength of the argumentthat catenative verbs «allow overlap of two meanings within one verb phrase.This overlap cannot be achieved by modals alone, because a verb phrase cannotcontain more than one modal verb. Thus, Mindt claims, possibility/highprobability can be expressed by might, as in fever might kill him.Volition/intention can be achieved by will, as in I will not be a soldier. Ifwe want to combine these two, Mindt argues, we cannot simply combine might withwill, but instead we can combine might with the catenative want to expressvolition/intention, as in they might want to kill us. The flaw in thisargument, I think, is that want does not simply express volition/intention butdesire, which is not the same thing.
Mindtoverlooks the rather basic fact that propositional content is expressed by thelexical verb in a clause and that all subordinate verbs in the verb phrase donot add any propositional content, but only such things as modality, aspect,and so on.
Thiscan easily be tested by comparing active and passive counterparts, which shouldexpress the same proposition. For instance, on the basis of the sentence pair Harrykissed Jane/Jane was kissed by Harry, we can equate the following pairs:
Harryhas kissed Jane = Jane has been kissed by Harry
Harrywill kiss Jane = Jane will be kissed by Harry
Harrymay have kissed Jane = Jane may have been kissed by Harry
Harryappeared to kiss Jane = Jane appeared to be kissed by Harry but not thefollowing:
Harrywanted to kiss Jane ≠ Jane wanted to be kissed by Harry which shows thatwant adds propositional content to these sentences and should therefore belooked on as a lexical, rather than a catenative, verb.
Mindtalso distinguishes a group of catenative verbs followed by present participles,suchas continue, start, keep, and so on (321 ff.). Here too, a number of verbs areincluded that clearly do not belong there, such as consider, enjoy, avoid,mean.
Again,Mindt does not use a rather simple constituency test to make the distinction.
Itwould be simple enough to compare he kept going for ten hours to he enjoyedpossessing his knowledge on his own by applying a pronominalization test, whichwould show that it is impossible to paraphrase the former sentence above by hekept it but perfectly possible to paraphrase the latter by he enjoyed it, thusgiving separate constituency status to the bit that follows enjoy but not tothe bit following keep.
Finally,there is a category of catenative adjective constructions, such as be able toand be likely to (404) (incidentally, these are called semi-auxiliaries inQuirk et al. 1985). Regrettably, Mindt erroneously includes a number of casesof extraposed subject clauses here, such as it is necessary to go back in timeand it could be important to record facts, where the supposed catenative verbsare be necessary to and be important to. This kind of error should not haveoccurred in a book like this. on nonfinite verb phrases, a three-waydistinction is made between verbal to-infinitives, verbal to-infinitivespreceded by be, and gerundial to infinitives.
Thisamounts basically to the clause functions of adverbials, subject complements,and subjects of NP modifiers, respectively. However, in the first group, wefind the example it’s impossible to be accurate about these things (472 – highlightingMindt’s). One wonders why be possible to is listed earlier, as a catenativeadjective construction while be impossible to is apparently something else. Ofcourse, this is again a case of an extraposed subject clause and shouldtherefore, if anything, have been listed as a gerundial to-infinitive.
Mindtdiscusses the patternVERBPHRASE + DIRECT OBJECT + TO-INFINITIVE. This makes onethink of Zandvoort’s (1945) Accusative with Infinitive constructions. Again,Mindt is not very careful here, for here he lists verbs suchas want, ask, tell,allow, expect, persuade, cause. These are precisely the verbs that grammariansand generative linguists alike have used over the years to demonstratedifferent types of verb complementation, based on the differences in syntacticbehavior of the complements of these verbs.
Theconcept of meaning, like other concepts, is not explained but ratherexemplified.
Thisleads to distinctions that are fairly arbitrary, such as the distinction of thetwo meanings of the catenative constructionHAVE (TO) (298), which is said to expresseither necessity or obligation. The following examples are given, without anyfurther comment:
Necessity:I have to speak to you about Pepita’s education among other things you’ll haveto stand up for yourself Obligation: the man had to retire at sixty one of uswill have to go in the end This leaves one wondering what the distinction isbased on. Is it based on the possibility of paraphrasing the former two by itis/was necessary that… and the latter by there is/was an obligation/order…? Ido not know, and frankly, the examples do not even convincingly point in thisdirection.
Inthe discussion of the prototypes of the progressive (254 ff.), Mindtdistinguishes four types, expressing incompletion, temporariness,iteration/habit, and highlighting/prominence, respectively. He then goes on todescribe each of these prototypes in more detail. Curiously, hardly any of theprototypes are found to be pure types: they nearly always combine with elementsof other prototypes. So what is meant by the «prototypes» is probably aspectsof meaning. Incidentally, in the discussion of incompletion, it is said that in30 percent of the cases, it is combined with temporariness (257)[7].In the discussion of temporariness (258), it is said that in 50 percent of thecases, it combines with incompletion. It is hard to compare these figures to eachother since no absolute figures are provided. Also, Mindt does not indicatewhether there is possibly a difference between the combination temporariness +incompletion and incompletion + temporariness. However, what is clear fromthese examples is that the really typical progressive form combines the aspectsof incompletion and temporariness. But this conclusion is not in the book.
Allin all, there are too many of these infelicities in this book. What exactly isa verb phrase is not clarified. The book would have been so much more valuableif the classifications had been shown to have been made on the basis ofsyntactic arguments.
Itwould undoubtedly also have meant that certain erroneous classifications wouldhave been avoided. As it is, the book can be no more than an inventory ofexamples of English verbal patterns, which may be used as a resource for coursebook designer.
Insyntax, a verb is a word belonging to the part of speech that usually denotesan action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state ofbeing (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in formaccording to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood andvoice. It may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of itsarguments (subject, object, etc.).
Thenumber of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence. Verbscan be classified according to their valency:
Intransitive(valency = 1): the verb only has a subject. For example: «he runs», «it falls».
Transitive(valency = 2): the verb has a subject and a direct object. For example: «sheeats fish», «we hunt deer».
Ditransitive(valency = 3): the verb has a subject, a direct object and an indirect orsecondary object. For example: «I gave her a book,» «She sent me flowers.»
Itis possible to have verbs with zero valency. Weather verbs are often impersonal(subjectless) in null-subject languages like Spanish, where the verb lluevemeans «It rains The Tlingit language features a four way classification ofverbs based on their valency. The intransitive and transitive are typical, butthe impersonal and objective are somewhat different from the norm. In theobjective the verb takes an object but no subject, the nonreferent subject insome uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar tothe English weather verb (see below). Impersonal verbs take neither subject norobject, as with other null subject languages, but again the verb may showincorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases.Tlingit lacks a ditransitive, so the indirect object is described by aseparate, extraposed clause. [citation needed].
Englishverbs are often flexible with regard to valency. A transitive verb can oftendrop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can be addedan object and become transitive. Compare:
Iturned. (intransitive)
Iturned the car. (transitive)
Inthe first example, the verb turn has no grammatical object. (In this case,there may be an object understood – the subject (I/myself). The verb is thenpossibly reflexive, rather than intransitive); in the second the subject andobject are distinct. The verb has a different valency, but the form remainsexactly the same.


Conclusion
Inmany languages other than English, such valiancy changes aren't possible likethis; the verb must instead be inflected for voice in order to change thevalency. [citation needed]
Acopula is a word that is used to describe its subject, [dubious – see talkpage] or to equate or liken the subject with its predicate. [dubious – see talkpage] In many languages, copulas are a special kind of verb, sometimes calledcopulative verbs or linking verbs.
Becausecopulas do not describe actions being performed, they are usually analysedoutside the transitive/intransitive distinction. [citation needed] The mostbasic copula in English is to be; there are others (remain, seem, grow, become,etc.). [citation needed]
Somelanguages (the Semitic and Slavic families, Chinese, Sanskrit, and others) canomit the simple copula equivalent of «to be», especially in the present tense.In these languages a noun and adjective pair (or two nouns) can constitute acomplete sentence. This construction is called zero copula.
Mostlanguages have a number of verbal nouns that describe the action of the verb.In Indo-European languages, there are several kinds of verbal nouns, includinggerunds, infinitives, and supines. English has gerunds, such as seeing, andinfinitives such as to see; they both can function as nouns; seeing is believingis roughly equivalent in meaning with to see is to believe. These terms aresometimes applied to verbal nouns of non-Indo-European languages.
Inthe Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally calledparticiples. English has an active participle, also called a presentparticiple; and a passive participle, also called a past participle. The activeparticiple of give is giving, and the passive participle is given. The activeparticiple describes nouns that perform the action given in the verb, e.g. agiving person. [dubious – see talk page] The passive participle describes nounsthat have been the object of the action of the verb, e.g. given money Otherlanguages apply tense and aspect to participles, and possess a larger number ofthem with more distinct shades of meaning. [citation needed]
Inlanguages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primaryargument (what we tend to call the subject) in person, number and/or gender.English only shows distinctive agreement in the third person singular, presenttense form of verbs (which is marked by adding «– s»); the rest of the personsare not distinguished in the verb.
Spanishinflects verbs for tense/mood/aspect and they agree in person and number (butnot gender) with the subject. Japanese, in turn, inflects verbs for many morecategories, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject. Basque,Georgian, and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement: the verbagrees with the subject, the direct object and even the secondary object ifpresent.


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