Verb phrases

List ofShortenings
N noun
NP noun phrase
Adj adjective
AdjP adjectivephrase
Adv adverb
AdvP adverbphrase
V verb
VP verb phrase
P preposition
PP prepositionphrase
S sentence

Introduction
The theme ofthe present paper is investigation of verb phrases in the structure of themodern American text.
Verb phrasesare examined in the research work paper as a method included into utteranceextra linguistic context in prism of human comprehension of the surroundinglife.
Novelty of thesemester paper lies in cognitive and communicative approaches to linguisticanalysis of verb phrases aimed at acquiring the communicative competence.
The aim of the work is to describe the workings of the system of specialverb forms used in English to locate situations in time.
Object of the research is the verb within syntax and morphology.
Subject of the research is semantic relations of verb phrases in thediscourse structure.
The objective of the work is to lay the terminological and conceptualgroundwork which is necessary in providing precise definitions of the basiclinguistic terms dealing with the English verb phrases.
The methods oflinguistic analysis used in this research paper work are:
1.Componential analysis, which helps to research lexemes that have acommon range of meaning and constitutes a semantic domain of this project.
2. Discourseanalysis, that enables to reveal the hidden motivations behind a text orbehind the choice of a particular method of research to interpret that text.
3. Semanticanalysis which is used to divide all the verb phrases of the text into groups,concerning their semantic meanings.
4. Distinctiveanalysis, which purpose is to measure the preference of one verb phraseover another particular construction.
Theoreticalvalue of the paper is based on the analyzed data of 20 pages with verb phrasesused in the novel.
Practicalvalue of the work may be useful in theoretical grammar and general linguistics.
Structurallythe term paper consists of three parts. The first part is dedicated to syntaxand functions of the verbs within syntax and morphology. The second partdefines basic linguistic terms, such as ‘verb’, ‘verb phrase’, ‘categories ofthe verb’, etc. Since this study is intended as the part of a theoreticalgrammar, it seems necessary to make explicit the way in which we use suchterms. The third part presents the discourse analysis of the verb phrases inthe novel “Forsyte Saga” by John Galsworthy. Each part has conclusions thatcarry the most useful and important information concerning the theme of thepaper. In the end of the paper there are supplements providing the mostimportant notions and terms, and also a list of abbreviations that can be foundin the paper; and the list of bibliography used while making the research.

Part I. Syntax
1.1 Peculiaritiesof the English Syntax
Language plays a unique role incapturing the breadth of human diversity. We are constantly amazed by thevariety of human thought, culture, society, and literature expressed in manythousands of languages around the world. We can find out what people think onlythrough their language. We can find out what they thought in the past only ifwe read their written records. We can tell future generations about ourselvesonly if we speak or write to them. If we want other civilizations in space tolearn about us we send them messages in dozens of our planet's six thousandlanguages.
Language has often been characterized as a systematic correlation betweencertain types of gestures and meaning. For spoken language, the gestures areoral, and for signed language, they are manual.
It is not the case that every possible meaning that can be expressed iscorrelated with a unique, unanalyzable gesture, be it oral or manual. Rather,each language has a stock of meaning-bearing elements and different ways ofcombining them to express different meanings, and these ways of combining themare themselves meaningful. The two English sentences Chris gave the notebook toDana and Dana gave the notebook to Chris contain exactly the samemeaning-bearing elements, i.e. words, but they have different meanings becausethe words are combined differently in them. These different combinations fallinto the realm of syntax; the two sentences differ not in terms of the words inthem but rather in terms of their syntax. Syntax can thus be given thefollowing characterization, taken from Matthews [40, p.48]:
The term ‘syntax’ is from the Ancient Greek syntaxis, a verbal noun whichliterally means ‘arrangement’ or ‘setting out together’. Traditionally, itrefers to the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with orwithout appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaningwithin the sentence.
First and foremost, syntax deals with how sentences are constructed, andusers of human languages employ a striking variety of possible arrangements ofthe elements in sentences. One of the most obvious yet important ways in whichlanguages differ is the order of the main elements in a sentence. In English,for example, the subject comes before the verb and the direct object followsthe verb.
The connection between the words in a sentence is realized through thechanges in their forms and these changes in the form of the words to indicatetheir function in the sentence are what Matthews referred to as ‘inflections’,and the study of the formation of words and how they may change their form iscalled morphology.[40, p.53] Something which may be expressed syntactically insome languages may be ex-pressed morphologically in others. Which element issubject and which is object is signaled syntactically in the examples fromEnglish, while it is expressed morphologically in the Ukrainian examples.
Syntax and morphology make up what is traditionally referred to as‘grammar’; an alternative term for it is morphosyntax, which explicitlyrecognizes the important relationship between syntax and morphology.[40, p.56]
Syntax deals with simple sentences, like:
(1) Bosinney was waiting for the answer. [59, p.25]
(2) Mrs. Small grew nervous.[59, p.54]
But one of the most important syntactic properties of language is thatsimple sentences can be combined in various ways to form complex sentences.Syntax makes possible the formulation of expressions with complex meanings outof elements with simple meanings. One of the defining features of humanlanguage is its unlimited nature; that is, the number of meaningful expressionsthat can be produced by users of a human language is potentially infinite, andthis expressive potential comes from the combination of the basic meaningfulelements with syntactic principles.
Much of the interest in language in psychology and cognitive sciencecomes from what the study of the cognitive mechanisms underlying language useand acquisition can reveal about the human mind.
To many people the term ‘grammar’ evokes bad memories of prescriptiverules learned in school, e.g. ‘don’t split infinitives!’ Since the early partof the twentieth century, linguistics has rejected the prescriptive traditionwhich underlies school grammars and focuses instead on describing what users ofhuman language actually do, not on prescribing what they should do.
A central part of the description of what speakers do is characterizingthe grammatical (or well-formed) sentences of a language and distinguishingthem from ungrammatical or (ill-formed) sentences.[22, p.53] Grammaticalsentences are those that are in accord with the rules and principles of thesyntax of a particular language, while ungrammatical sentences violate one ormore syntactic rules or principles. For example, (1) is a grammatical sentenceof English, while Was waiting Bossiney for the answer would not be. Thissentence is ungrammatical because it violates some of the word order rules forEnglish, that is basic word order in English clauses is subject–verb–object,subject Bossiney precedes the predicate was waiting, and auxiliary verbs likewas precede the main verb, in this case waiting. It is important to note thatthese are English-specific syntactic rules.
Well-formed sentences are those that are in accord with the syntacticrules of the language; this does not entail that they always make sensesemantically. For example, the sentence the answer was waiting Bossiney isnonsensical in terms of its meaning, but it violates no syntactic rules orprinciples of English; indeed, it has exactly the same syntactic structure as(1). Hence it is grammatical (well-formed), despite being semantically odd.

1.2 Aspects of syntactic structure
In the syntactic structure of sentences, two distinct yet interrelatedaspects must be distinguished. The first one has already been mentioned: thefunction of elements as subject and direct object in a sentence. ‘Subject’ and‘direct object’ have traditionally been referred to as grammatical relations.Hence this kind of syntax will be referred to as ‘relational structure’. Itincludes more than just grammatical relations like subject and direct object;it also encompasses relationships like modifier–modified, e.g. tall building orwalk slowly (tall, slowly = modifier, building, walk = modified) andpossessor–possessed, e.g. Pat’s car (Pat’s = possessor, car = possessed).
The second aspect concerns the organization of the units which constitutesentences. A sentence does not consist simply of a string of words; that is, ina sentence like The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder.[59]The teacher reads a book in the library, it is not the case that each word isequally related to the words adjacent to it in the string. There is no directrelationship between brushed and a or between of and the; a is related to cab,which it modifies, just as the is related to shaft which it modifies. The isrelated to brushed only through the shaft being the direct object of brushed.The words are organized into units which are then organized into larger units.These units are called constituents, and the hierarchical organization of theunits in a sentence is called its constituent structure. This term will be usedto refer to this second aspect of syntactic structure.
Consider the eight words in the sentence:
(3)The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulde,[59, p.64]
What units are these words organized into? Intuitively, it seems clearthat the article the or a goes with or forms a unit with the noun following it.Is there any kind of evidence beyond a native speaker’s intuitions that this isthe case? If the article forms a unit with the noun that follows it, we wouldexpect that in an alternative form of the same sentence the two would have tobe found together and could not be split up.
Thus, these two aspects of syntactic structure are always present in asentence, and when one or the other is emphasized, the sentence is beingdescribed from one of the two perspectives. It will be seen later thatdifferent grammatical phenomena seem to be more easily analyzed from oneperspective rather than the other.
1.3 Phrases as the basic element of syntax
In the passive version of the sentence (3) The shaft was brushed againsthis shoulder by a passing cab the unit the shaft serves as subject, and theunit the passing cab is the object of the preposition by. The constituentcomposed of a noun and an article is called a noun phrase [NP], e.g. by theteacher; NPs can be very complex. Here is a list of some examples of NP:
the girl beautiful weather
this boy those sunny days
a dog stupid question
that large bicycle nice try
women the Pacific Ocean
elderly men brilliant student
David this year
Queensland judgment dayThey water rat
What structure do noun phrases have in English? Based on the noun phraseslisted above (there are more complicated ones), a noun phrase seems to consistof a determinative followed by a noun, or a determinative followed by anadjective followed by a noun, or just a noun, or an adjective followed by anoun.
We can represent these structures using what are called phrase structurerules, like:
NP → Detv N
This rule says that a noun phrase (NP) “goes to” (arrow) a determinative(Detv) followed by a noun (N). We could thus separately list the rules that wewould need to cover all the structures:
NP → Detv N
NP → Detv Adj N
NP → N
NP → Adj N
In fact, there’s a simpler way to write all of these different forms witha single rule. There is a convention in writing phrase structure rules so thatif something is in parentheses, it can either be there or not. So we couldrewrite our rules just as:
NP → (Detv) (Adj) N
This rule says that a noun phrase consists of a noun, possibly precededby a determinative.
The preposition by and the NP following it in the sentence also form aconstituent in this sentence (by a passing cab); it is called a prepositionalphrase [PP]. Some examples of the PP are:
to the shops in a weak
after the party next to the bus stop
into the large kitchen nearby
near those very large buildings under the tree
A preposition doesn’t have to be followed by anything, so we can have apreposition phrase that consists of just a preposition (John went outside ).So a preposition phrase consists at least of a preposition, possibly with anoun phrase following it. We could write this as:
PP → P (NP)
The verb plus the NP following it form a unit as well, as shown by a sentence like A cab rolled out of blackness, and into blackness disappeared[59]. The constituent composed of a verb plus following NP is called a verb phrase [VP]. As with NPs, VPs can be quite complex. In our discourse, we have various different verb phrase structures, like the ones we can see in the following sentences.
He stood quite still, listening with all his might. [59, p.34]
He ran forward and back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear.[59, p.23]
He had just put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'[59, p.23]
The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.[59, p.35]
George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage gloom on his big face.[59, p.65]
Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he had been so successful.[59, p.53]
The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence.'[59, p.55]
So our verb phrase can have just a verb, or a verb followed by a PP, or averb followed by an NP, or a verb followed by an NP and a PP, or a verbfollowed by an NP and more than one PP, or a verb followed by two NPs or a verbfollowed by two NPs and a PP, or a verb followed by two NPs and more than onePP.
While these structures are more and more complex, we can actually writethem very simply with a single phrase structure rule:VP → V (NP) (NP) (PP)*
In this rule we have explicitly written two separate NPs, rather than(NP)*, because (in general) there is a maximum of two NPs in a VP, whereas itis possible to continue adding as many PPs as you like.There are two more types of phrases, that also need tobe paid attention to: adjective phrases and adverb phrases.Adjective phrases. As well as noun phrases,there are also adjective phrases.
Why do we need them? Well, consider the following sentences.He was a very talented architect [59]As an architect he was very talented
In these two sentences, the words very happy form a phrase. So we have anadjective phrase. Just as with nouns and noun phrases, we will say thatwhenever an adjective appears it is inside an adjective phrase, although it maybe the only element in the adjective phrase. So we can write phrase structurerules showing the structure of simple adjective phrases:
AdjP → (Adv) Adj
Now that we’ve seen adjective phrases, we need to go back and modify ourrule for noun phrases. We said that an NP → (Detv) (Adj) N, but there areseveral problems with that rule. Firstly, we’ve said wherever an adjectiveappears it’s inside an AdjP, so our rule should have an Adj P in it, not justan adjective. In fact, we need an AdjP because NPs can be more complicated thanthe ones we’ve seen so far. We can say things in English like: a very talentedarchitect.
Here, clearly, we have an AdjP very talented inside the NP. But we alsoneed to expand our NP rule further, because rather than just a single AdjP, anNP can contain several AdjPs: the rather famous very talented architect.So wemust change our rule for an NP to:NP → (Detv) (AdjP)* N
The asterisk is used to indicate that there can be more than one of aconstituent.
Adverb phrase. Just as we have adjective phrases, we also haveadverb phrases, to take account of things like very quickly, rather carefullyand so on. An adverb phrase normally consists of an adverb possibly preceded bya degree adverb, e.g.:Very interesting friendly indeedreally good-looking always hungry
ratherannoying incredibly miserable
So there is a small set of very simple phrase structure rules, which canaccount for many, many English sentences. Obviously, to account for allsentences of English, we would have to develop more complex rules.
In each of these alternative forms, a combination of words from theoriginal sentence which one might intuitively put together in a single unitalso occurs together as a unit, and this can be taken as evidence that they arein fact constituents. Using square brackets to group the words in constituentstogether, the constituent structure of The shaft of a passing cab brushedagainst his shoulder may be represented as in (4) (‘S’ stands for ‘sentence’.)
(4)[S [NP The [N shaft]] [P of NP[ a [Adj passing] [N cab]]VP [V brushed][AdvP against][NP [P his] [N shoulder]]
1.4 Tests for phrases
Consider the following sentence:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte. [59]
All speakers of English would agree that in this sentence, some of thewords go together with each other more closely than others. For example, thewords the rich brown atmosphere seem to go together more closely than, sayatmosphere was peculiar. Likewise in the mansion seems to go together as a unit(often referred to as a constituent), more than the mansion of.
For our native language we could rely on intuition to decide aboutphrases. But that is not going to work if we have to describe a language whichwe don’t know very well.
What sorts of formal tests can we find to decide whether something is aphrase or not? Substitutiontest
One of the simplest tests for phrases is what is called the substitutiontest. If we can substitute a set of words with a single other word, withoutchanging the overall meaning, then we can say that those words form a phrase.
For example, looking back at the earlier sentence, we can substitutevarious of the phrases for single words:

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of aForsyte
It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that it was therich brown atmosphere.
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of aForsyte
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar there.
We can see from this that the words the rich brown atmosphere form aphrase, as do the words back rooms, the mansion and in the mansion.
Substitution also can be seen with what is called anaphora, where asingle item substitutes for an earlier mentioned item, in question and answersequences or in long sentences. For example, we could have a question andanswer sequence:
«There's no money in that,» he said. ‘Yes, he went bankrupt," replied Nicholas.[59, p.66]
 
In the second sentence here, the word bankrupt has replaced no money,showing us that no money must be a phrase.
While substitution usually works on the basis of a single word, it isalso possible to substitute using the phrase do so or so do. We can see thissort of substitution in:
Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove, and so did his son’s.[59, p.45]
So the words hand trembled in our original sentence form a phrase.
Clefttest
 As well as substitution, another test we can use to see if something isa phrase is what is called the clefting. Cleft sentences have the form
It is/was/will be ____ that/who ____
The important thing for a cleft test is to take the original sentence,and try putting it into this frame, without changing it in any way except fortaking one part of it out and putting it in the first slot, and putting therest of the sentence in the second slot. For example:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of aForsyte
It was the rich brown atmosphere that was peculiar to back rooms in themansion of a Forsyte
Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.[59.p.23]
It was Old Jolyon's hand that trembled in its thin lavender glove.
When applying the cleft test, it is important not to change anythingabout the sentence, except for taking one part out and putting it between itis/was/will be and that/who.
If it is possible to cleft a sentence, then the part of the sentencewhich occurs between it is/was/will be and that/who forms a phrase. Note thatif it is possible to cleft a group of words, then that group of words forms aphrase; but just because you can’t cleft something, that doesn’t mean that itisn’t a phrase. For example, we know that in our original sentence the wordsthe rich brown atmosphere form a phrase, but we can’t cleft it:

It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that the richbrown atmosphere.Movementtests
Phrases often behave as units for various movement operations, with theentire phrase moving together. For example, we could move the phrase on thatshelf in our original sentence:
The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of aForsyte.
To back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte was peculiar the rich brownatmosphere.
A specific case of movement is the formation of a passive sentences. Aswe can see the set of words the key and the words in the lock in our sentencemust each be a phrase because each set of words moves together underpassivization:
Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock[59,p.58] (active sentence)
The key was softly turned in the lock[59] (passive sentence)
Noting the nesting of constituents within constituents in this sentence,e.g. the NP the lock is a constituent of the PP in the lock which is aconstituent of the VP turned in the lock. At the beginning of this section itwas noted that the two aspects of syntactic structure, relational structure andconstituent structure, are ‘distinct yet interrelated’, and it is possible nowto see how this is the case. For example, a VP was described as being composedof a verb and the following NP, but it could alternatively be characterized asinvolving the verb and its direct object. Similarly, a PP is composed of apreposition and its object. NPs, on the other hand, involve modifiers, andaccordingly the relation between the and lock could be described as one ofmodifier–modified.
1.5 Lexical categories
In the discussion of the constituents of sentences, reference has beenmade to nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases, and prepositions andprepositional phrases. Nouns, verbs and prepositions are traditionally referredto as ‘parts of speech’ or ‘word classes’; in contemporary linguistics they aretermed lexical categories. The most important lexical categories are noun,verb, adjective, adverb and adposition, which subsumes prepositions andpostpositions. In traditional grammar, lexical categories are given notionaldefinitions, i.e. they are characterized in terms of their semantic content[9,pp.25-67].
For example, noun is defined as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’,verb is defined as an ‘action word’, and adjective is defined as ‘a word expressinga property or attribute’. In modern linguistics, however, they are definedmorphosyntactically in terms of their grammatical properties.
Nouns may be classified in a number of ways. There is a fundamentalcontrast between nouns that refer uniquely to particular entities orindividuals and those that do not; the best example of the first kind of nounis a proper name, e.g. Sam, Elizabeth, Paris or London, and nouns of this typeare referred to as proper nouns.
Nouns which do not refer to unique individuals or entities are calledcommon nouns, e.g. dog, table, fish, car, pencil, water. One of the importantdifferences between proper and common nouns in a language like English is thatcommon nouns normally take an article, while proper nouns do not, e.g.: Theboy left versus *The Sam left (cf. *Boy left versus Sam left). Common nouns maybe divided into mass nouns and count nouns. Count nouns, as the name implies,denote countable entities, e.g. seven chairs, six pencils, three dogs, manycars. Mass nouns, on the other hand, are not readily countable in their primarysenses, e.g. *two waters, *four butters, *six snows. In order to make themcountable, it is necessary to add what is sometimes called a ‘measure word’,which delimits a specific amount of the substance, e.g. twoglasses/bottles/drops of water, four pats/sticks of butter, six shovelfuls ofsnow. Measure words can be used with count nouns only when they are plural,e.g. *six boxes of pencil versus six boxes of pencils, *two cups of peanut versusthree jars of peanuts. Pronouns are closely related to nouns, as they bothfunction as NPs. Pronouns are traditionally characterized as ‘substitutes’ fornouns or as ‘standing for’ nouns, e.g. John went to the store, and he boughtsome milk, in which he substitutes or stands for John in the second clause.This, however, is true only of third-person pronouns like he, she, it, or they;it is not true of first-person pronouns like I or second-person pronouns likeyou. First- and second-person pronouns refer to or index the speaker andaddressee in a speech event and do not replace or stand for a noun.
Verbs can likewise be categorized along a number of dimensions, such as:
person, number( in Modern English there are but few form indicating themin the synthetic forms of the verb. These are (1).the 3rd personsingular Present Indefinite Indicative; (2) the Future Indefinite tense; (3)the suppletive forms of the verb to be for different persons of singular andplural), aspect (perfect and progressive), voice (active and passive), mood(indicative, imperative and subjunctive) and tense (there are four groups oftenses: Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous; each of theseforms includes four tenses: Present, Past, Future and Futute-in-the-Past. Thusthere are 16 tenses in English.)
Conclusions to Part I
1 .Syntax is the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words,with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections ofmeaning within the sentence.
2. The main object of syntax is sentence construction.
3. One of the most obvious yet important ways in which languages differis the order of the main elements in a sentence.
4. The basic word order in English clauses is subject–verb–object,articles precede the noun they modify, and auxiliary verbs precede the mainverb. These are English-specific syntactic rules.
5. The connection between the words in a sentence is realized through thechanges in their forms and these changes in the form of the words to indicatetheir function in the sentence are called ‘inflections’, and the study of theformation of words and how they may change their form is called morphology.
6. Syntax investigates simple sentences, as well as their combinationscalled complex sentences.
7. A central part of the description of what speakers do ischaracterizing the grammatical (or well-formed) sentences of a language anddistinguishing them from ungrammatical or (ill-formed) sentences.
8. Two interrelated aspects of syntax: relational structure and constituentstructure.
9. Words organization into phrases. Types of phrases.
10. In order to check if word combination is a phrase, the tests forphrases are to be done.
11. Lexical categories. Their semantic content.

Part II. English Verb. Verb Phrases
 
2.1 Peculiarities of the Verb
The term“verb” is used in two senses:
1. theverb is one of the elements used in the clause structure, like the subject andthe object.
2. a verbis a member of a word class, like a noun, and an adjective.
The two sensesare related in this way: a verb phrase consists of one or more verbs (sense 2)e.g. linked, is making, can believe, might be leaving in the sentences below;the verb phrase operates as the verb (sense 1) in the clause, e.g.:
They linkedhands. He is making a noise.
I can believeyou. She will be leaving soon.
Verbs are the very large lexical word class in English, and weretraditionally called ‘doing’ words when taught to young children. The lexicalverb class is more inclusive than the label implies as there are verbs (forexample have, be) which do not describe doing, but being, or states, ratherthan processes and still others that describe events with no intentional actionbehind them (for example die, fall).
In order to group these words together, then, we need to identify theirformal nd functional features. The inflectional morphemes can be used to modifythe verb in English. These include the present-tense, third-person singularmorpheme, which is written as -s in most cases; the past tense morpheme,written as -ed in all regular verbs in English; and the progressive form, whichis written as -ing for all English verbs.
Many minor sentences, and many spoken ones, consist of a single word thatis not necessarily a verb:

No! Natalie! Me. Singing. Slowly.
It is possible to work out likely contexts in which these words willoccur as utterances in their own right. However, they must have a context in orderto have a viable meaning.
With the exception of these and other minor utterance types, clauses in Englishneed to have a verb in them. This verb may be the head of a verb phrase, but itmay stand alone as a verb phrase too. The following clauses have a single verbfunctioning in the predicator role:
Young Jolyon looked round the room. [59, p.65]
The old face looked worn and hollow again [59, p.34]
His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.[59, p.74]
Two ladies advanced. [59, p.44] The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayedemotion[59, p.52]
As a wordclass verbs can be divided into three main categories, according to theirfunction within the verb phrase: the open class of Full Verbs (or lexicalverbs), and the very small closed classes of Primary Verbs, and Modal AuxiliaryVerbs. Since the primary verbs and the modal auxiliary verbs are closedclasses, we can list them in full.
Full Verbsbelieve, follow, like, see,…
Primary Verbsbe, have, doModal Auxiliaries can, may, shall, will, must, could, would,…
If there isonly one verb in the verb phrase, it is the Main Verb. If there is more thanone verb, the final one is the main verb, and the one or more verbs that gobefore it are auxiliaries. For example transmit is the main verb in thissentence, and might and be are auxiliaries:
 … to whom he might transmit the money he saved,…[59, p.66]
Of the threeclasses of verbs, the full verbs can act only as main verbs, the modalauxiliaries can act only as auxiliary verbs, and the primary verbs can acteither as main verbs or as auxiliary verbs. Let us investigate the auxiliaryverbs closer.
Auxiliary verbs. Auxiliaries have little or no lexical meaning. They are‘helper’ verbs, in the sense that they help to form complex verb forms. Indoing so they express either a grammatical notion (like ‘passive’,‘progressive’ or ‘tense’) or one or more modal ideas. This is not to say thatauxiliaries are devoid of meaning, but their meanings are more schematic (i.e.more ‘skeletal’, more ‘abstract’, less ‘full’) than those of lexical verbs.
Within the auxiliaries we can make a distinction between two classes:grammatical auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries. The former, which are sometimesreferred to as ‘primary auxiliaries’, have a purely grammatical function:
1. the‘tense auxiliary’ have, which is used in forming perfect tense forms;
2. the‘aspect auxiliary’ be, which is used for building progressive verb orms;
3. the‘voice auxiliary’ be, which is used in the passive;
4. the‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do, which is used as a ‘dummy’ (pro-form) when a VPthat does not contain an auxiliary (e. g. love her) is used in a constructionthat requires one (e. g. I don’t love her, Do you love her?, I do love her,etc.)
Next, there are the ‘modal auxiliaries’: can, could, may, might, must,shall, should, ought to, will, and would. These auxiliaries express specialshades of meaning, such as volition, possibility, permission, necessity,intention, obligation, expectation, inference, ability, determination, etc. Themodal auxiliaries differ semantically from the first group in that they addlexical meaning rather than fulfill a grammatical function. However, they stillhave less concrete, and hence more widely applicable, meanings than mostlexical verbs. This wider applicability explains why auxiliaries form arelatively small set when compared with lexical verbs.
 Because an auxiliary does not have a full lexical meaning, it cannot be used without a main (lexical) verb, except in ‘code’, where the auxiliary is used as pro-form for an entire verb phrase (as in If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand). In other words, an auxiliary cannot be the only or last verb form in the VP (except in ‘code’). In the following example the main verbs are italicized while the auxiliaries are underlined:
[“What did he do last night?”] — “He {studied / worked / may have slept /could /had to / would}.”
Unlike lexical verbs, auxiliaries have the so-called ‘NICE-properties’.‘NICE’ is an acronym (coined by Huddleston 1976) consisting of the initialletters of the terms negation, inversion, code and emphasis. The reference isto the four cases in which the English VP requires an auxiliary. If there is noauxiliary, the ‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do has to be added. In that case we saythat the lexical verb requires ‘do-support’. In other words, the statement that‘auxiliaries have the NICE-properties’ means that they do not combine with theperiphrastic auxiliary do in clauses made negative by the use of not, inclauses involving subject-auxiliary inversion, in code and in cases ofemphasis. By contrast, clauses without an auxiliary need ‘do-support’ (i.e. theinsertion of do) in these four cases. Compare:
He went / He didn’t go / Did he go? / Yes he did / He did go.
He will go / He won’t go / Will he go? / Yes he will / He will go.
The auxiliary verbs are made up of the modals (may, must, might and soon), have (perfective) and be (progressive and passive). Here it is worthnoting some of the uses of the auxiliary function: to construct questions, toprovide emphasis and to carry negation.
Looking at questions first, the first auxiliary in a verb phrase can beput before the subject in order, to ask a question:
She will be coming. Will she be coming?
The emphatic use of the auxiliary is connected with stress and intonationpatterns, but it is again the first auxiliary that carries the extra emphasisof an emphatic version:
Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will get young Flippard.[59, p.66]
I will call for you and your young man at seven o'clock.[59, p.23]
A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre [59, p.34]
 
His drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best.[59, p.52]
The negation of English sentences is usually carried by the verb phrasein the form of a negative particle, which intervenes in the verb phrase afterthe first auxiliary and before the following auxiliary or lexical verb:
If you exceed that sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold youresponsible Jane hasn’t been hurt.[59, p.33]

He knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.[59, p.23]
The feeling of shame at what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him after all 59, p.35]
 
As these examples show, the negative particle is often attached to theauxiliary verb, though in the case of might the reduced form (mightn’t) is lesscommon now.
All three of these special uses of the auxiliary require some attentionto the first auxiliary of a verb phrase. This may be a modal auxiliary or itmay be have or be.
Whichever it is, this verb is known as the ‘operator’ because it has thespecial functions described above. In the absence of an auxiliary (that is,where there is only a lexical verb), the dummy operator – the verb do – is usedinstead:
But I suppose you feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of child?"[59, p.34]
But if you ask me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."[59, p.67]
The dummy operator, then, performs the three functions of the otherauxiliaries, but it does not carry any meaning of its own to add to the verbphrase.
Though some verbshave a status intermediate between that of main verbs and that of auxiliaryverbs. Sometimes the main verb (and perhaps the other words too) is understoodfrom the context, so that only auxiliaries are present in the verb phrase:
I can’t tell thembut you can. [i.e. ‘can tell them’]
Your parentsmay not have suspected anything but your sister may have. [i.e. ‘may havesuspected something’].
There alsomulti-word verbs, which consist of a verb and one or more other words turn on,look up, take place, take advantage, put up with,…
Let us consider at the individual forms of lexical verbs in English and howthey function. The first of the two clauses above also form complete sentences,whereas the third, fourth and fifth are only part of an utterance. Theseincomplete utterances are examples of subordinate clauses, which we shallinvestigate in a later section. We are using them here simply to demonstratethe use of particular forms of verb: non-finite forms. These forms, often knownas the -ing form, the -en form and the i- form, are also called the progressiveform, the perfective form and the infinitive form. These forms can be part offull verb phrases that function as the predicator in a complete clause. Ontheir own, however, they do not link to the subject in a clear way (for exampleby an ending that indicates a person) and they do not establish the tense ofthe verb as either present or past.
Note how they need auxiliaries to establish such aspects of the meaningof the predicator:
Who shall tell of what he was thinking? [59, p.44]
And now you have your son and June coming back you will be so happy.[59, p.24]
 
I shall sit in the sun with a drink in my hand.[59, p.20]
Lexical verbs that do not need an auxiliary verb in order to function in mainclauses are known as finite forms. They include the present tense form, whichis normally indistinguishable from the infinitive form in terms of having nomorphological suffix (for example catch, sing), the third-person present tenseform, which normally adds an -s to base forms, and the past tense form, whichadds -ed to regular verbs.
Table 3.1 shows some examples of all the forms of English lexical verbs.
Table 3.1Citation form Break Play Sing Forget Present tense break play sing forget Present third person breaks plays sings forgets Past tense broke played sang forgot Progressive participle breaking playing singing forgetting Perfective participle broken played sung forgotten Infinitive break play sing forget The most common pattern of forms in English verbs is the onerepresented n the table by play. There are effectively only four differentforms (play, plays, playing, played), but because other common, but irregular,verbs distinguish, for example, the past tense (-ed) from the perfective form(-en), the regular verbs are also treated as though these forms were different.
The irregular forms tend to belong to common verbs derived from Old English,rather than those with Romance language influences, such as French. Becausethey are very common they have not changed to match the sheer quantity of verbswith a pattern such as play, although there is some evidence that some suchthing is happening. If you think about the way that people these days oftenmuddle sung and sang and rung and rang, it seems that the distinction betweenpast tense and perfective markers is less clear-cut than in the past. However,although the two forms might be merging in irregular verbs too, they are notmoving towards matching the regular verbs, which would result in forms such as*singed and *ringed.
The subclasses of lexical verb that can be identified tend to depend onthe context in which they occur. Whilst the traditional grammars distinguishedbetween transitive and intransitive verbs, we find it useful to distinguishfurther categories, depending on the clause structures in which they typicallyoccur.
The intransitive verb will not be found with an object, and thus willoccur n subject and predicator structures: I’m dying. The transitive verboccurs with an object in subject-predicator-object structures: She hates you.Ditransitive verbs occur with both indirect and direct objects: They gave me abeautiful present. There are also subclasses of verb that tend to occur withcompulsory adverbials: John went home and I put the cigarette back in thepacket.
Two further important subclasses of verb are intensive verbs (such as be)that occur with subject complements (She was really tired), and those whichoccur with objects and object complements: (You make me happy). The intensiveverbs have a particular semantic effect in that they invoke existence (there isa tree) and equivalence (she is my daughter). These subcategories of verb arenot watertight and some verbs can occur in a range of grammatical contexts.However it is useful to think in terms of verbs typically occurring in certainclause structures.
2.2 Verbs within Syntax and Morphology
What is the essential property that makes verbs behave differently fromnouns nd adjectives in morphology and syntax? There is actually an obviousstarting-point in the widespread recognition that verbs are the quintessentialpredicates. They are inherently unsaturated expressions that hold of somethingelse, and thus the nucleus around which sentences are typically built. Manylinguists of different schools have recognized the significance of this. Amongthe formalists, Jackendoff (1977) partially defines verbs with the feature “+subject” (although this does notdistinguish them from nouns, in his view). Among the functionalistsBuechler[16, p.54], identifies predi-cation as the pragmatic function thatprovides the external motivation for the category verb. The precise version ofthis intuition stated in (3)

(3)X is a verb if and only if X is a lexical category and X has aspecifier.
Whether an item takes a specifier or not is thus an importantcharacterizing feature for the functional categories. (3) claims that thisproperty subdivides the lexical categories too. Those lexical categories thattake a specifier are verbs; those that do not are nouns and adjectives.
The way a verb comes to have a specifier is somewhat different from theway ost functional categories do, however. Tenses and complementizers acquiretheir specifiers by movement: some constituent contained inside theircomplement moves to become the specifier of the phrase. This is not the casefor verbs. Rather, the specifier of a verb usually comes from directcombination with some other phrase that is constructed independently. InChomsky’s terms, verbs typically get specifiers from “External Merge,” whereastenses and complementizers get specifiers by “Internal Merge.” In practice,this means that verbs usually assign a thematic role to the phrase that istheir specifier. Following Chomsky’s[21, p.56-366] adaptation of Hale andKeyser (1993), there are two domains in which this happens (also Bowers [1993]and others). A verb that takes an AP or PP complement assigns a theme role toits specifier:
(5) a.Cigar made [VP him[ feel faint []] (him is theme of feel) [59]
A verb that takes an NP complement assigns an agent role to itsspecifier:
(6). It made [VP him [sick to look at them]] (him is agent of sick)
A verb can also take a VP complement, in which case it again assigns anagent ole to its specifier. The head of the lower VP almost always combineswith the head of the higher VP, deriving a surface representation with only onespelled-out verb:
Examples in which a single verb appears to take two complements arealways to be analyzed this way, as consisting of two verbal projections thattake one comple-ment each, following Levinson [36] Palmer [41], and usingChomsky’s [21] terminology, we can call the higher verbal position instructures like (5)(in lower case), and the lower position V (in upper case).Both, however, qualify as verbs, as long as they have lexical content, giventhe definition in (1)
The structures in (5) (6) also exist without an overt NP, AP, or PPcomplement o the verb:
(7) a Cigar made [him [feel – ]] [59, p.76]
      b It made [him [sick – ]] [59, p.76]So the verbs have a covert complement in these cases, sothat the theme and agent arguments are still in specifier positions. Hutchbyand Wooffitt [30] actually make a somewhat stronger claim: they say that thesephrase-structural configurations are the only ones in which NPs that bear themeand agent roles can be found. Let us consider the following:
Agent and theme roles can only be assigned to specifier positions.
This is a subpart of the Uniformity of Theta Role Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH)of Baker (1988a), which Hutchby and Wooffitt [30, p.543] seek to derive. (6) isweaker than Hutchby and Wooffitt’s view, the agent role simply is the [−−V VP] configuration, theybelieve, and the theme role is the [−−V AP/PP] configuration. (In this, they were presumablyinspired by Carter’s [19, p.45] view thatthematic roles are designated positions in a conceptual structure.) The definitionalview seems too strong, however. (6) is strong enough to have consequences:taken together with (4), it implies that simple nouns and adjectives can neverassign agent or theme thematic roles.
It is tempting to try to combine (4) and (6) and make it the definingproperty of verbs that they assign agent and theme theta-roles.3 This would bea mistake, however. First, if these particular thematic roles were built intothe definition, one would have to be sure one could distinguish them from otherthematic roles in a reliable way. This is a notoriously difficult enterprise,the thematic roles having clear central instances but fuzzy boundaries. Moreimportantly, there are a few verbs that do not assign any thematic role totheir specifier. Verbs like seem and appear are the clearest case; perhaps weather predicates areanother.
But even though these verbs have no thematic role to assign to aspecifier, they must still have a specifier, in the form of the pleonasticpronoun it:
(8)  a He made [(it) seem/appear that he was happy]
      b Sowing the clouds made [∗(it) rain /snow]
This may seem like a peculiarity of English, since many languages do notrequire an overt pronoun with these verbs. However, this is simply because manylanguages never require overt pronouns, often because the person/number/genderfeatures of the pronoun are adequately expressed in the verbal morphology, asin Spanish and Italian. Not surprisingly, the required subject of the verbshows up not as a pleonastic pronoun, but as a pleonastic subject agreement inthese languages.
Auxiliary verbs also illustrate this same point. These are verbs that donot assign any thematic roles, but express only aspectual information, such asthe progressive or the perfect:
a The box broke open
b The box has broken open.
c The box is breaking open.
The nominal the box isthematically related only to the verb break in these examples, and semantically the aspect has scope overthe entire eventuality, including the subject. Therefore, on purely semanticgrounds, one might expect the structures in (5).
(5) a has [VP the box [broken open]]
      b is [VP the box [breaking open]]
But this is not what we find on the surface. Have and is are (nonprototypical) verbs, and assuch they must have a specifier. In this case, they acquire one, not bytheta-role assignment, nor by pleonastic insertion, but by NP-movement:
(6)  a[VP the box has [VP [broken open]]
      b [VP the box is [VP t[breaking open]]
Again, this is not a peculiarity of English. The semantically plausibleAux–Subject–Verb–Object order in (6) is not found in any SVO language, based onthe data from 530 languages summarized in Julien (2000). Orders like (5) arefound in the Celtic languages, but these are crucially VSO languages, wherethere is independent evidence that all verbs (not just auxiliaries) move to theleft of their subjects.
The most challenging aspect of defending (1) is not to show that allverbs have specifiers, but to show that the other lexical categories cannothave them.
Nouns and adjectives certainly can appear without specifiers, as seen in(6)
(7) a Waterisrefreshing. (specifierless N)
     b Coldwater isrefreshing. (specifierless A)
But they can also be used predicatively, in which case they seem to takesubjects just as much as verbs do. I illustrated the subject-taking propertiesof various verbs in English by embedding them under the causative verb make, because make selects a bare VPcomplement (I assume), with no obvious functional head. Thus, in this contextwe can be relatively certain that it is the verb that requires a subject, nottense or some other functional head. But NPs and APs can also be embedded undermake, in which case they tooare preceded by a subject:
(8) a The chemist took a hydrogen and oxygen mixture and made [#(it)water].
      b Then she put the water into the refrigerator to make [(it) cold].This subtle contrast between verbs and other categorieshas no obvious connection to the superficial inflectional properties of verbs,but it does suggest that there is a structural difference between verbs andpredicate nouns/adjectives. A theory that starts with the assumption that onlyverbs take subjects directly gives us immediate leverage on this paradigm.
So we encountered the different word classes of English and looked at theinternal structure of words. In the following part we shall consider structuresthat are usually made up of more than one word, and look at how they are puttogether out of the word classes we have already examined. Here, then, we shallbe considering the ways in which words are combined to make phrases, andinvestigate the structure of clauses, sentences and utterances.
2.3 Verb phrases. Their composition and functionsAlternative definitions of ‘verb phrase’
Verb phrase is that part of the predicate constituent that does notcontain optional adverbials. (In many cases the predicate consists of a VPonly.) We will stick to this definition in this work. However, it may be usefulto know that some linguistic works use the term in a different sense.
Some use it in the sense of our ‘predicate (constituent)’, i.e. to referto the sum of all those constituents of the clause that do not belong to thesubject NP. Others use the term in a much narrower sense, to denote no morethan the main verb and any auxiliaries accompanying it. Thus seen, the VP of Hemay have been reading a book is may have been reading (rather than may havebeen reading a book). In the present work a string like may have been readingor will read will be referred to as a ‘verb form’. A verb form consists eitherof a verb (in the form of a participle or infinitive) plus one or moreauxiliaries (e. g. will see, would have seen) or of a (usually inflected) verbonly (as in They take drugs, John smokes).
The verb phrase is the pivotal phrase in English clauses. It fulfils therole of predicator in the clause and effectively introduces a process (action,event and so on). Unlike in the noun phrase, recursion is not possible in theverb phrase, and with only a small number of exceptions all verb phrases fitinto a fairly predictable and clear pattern, as described in this section. Itis important to note that some approaches, notably those deriving fromgenerative theory, use the term verb phrase to refer to the whole of thepredicate of the clause, that is, the verb and all that follows it. In theapproach used here the term is used to describe only the verbal element of theclause, functioning as the predicator. To avoid confusion it is essential whenreading other textbooks to establish which of these approaches is in use.
The first thing to note is that the simplest verb phrase will be a mainlexical verb on its own. This is true of the vast majority of English verbphrases, and also of the clauses below, where the verb phrase is underlined:
She crumpled the letter in her hand [59, p.76]
 
Give them my love.[59, p.43]
 
Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly. [59, p.33]
We have already examined theform of English verbs, so the above should be as examples of the past tense,the present third person singular and the present second person singularrespectively. As English has no future tense and things such as voice (activeand passive), perfective and progressive are not built into its morphology(unlike, for example, French and Spanish), there is a range of auxiliary verbsinstead. These precede the main lexical verb and introduce all of thevariations of meaning that some other languages include in the form of the verbitself.
The full form of the verb phrase is as shown in Table 4.1, though as we shallsee it is rare for all of these potential places to be filled at once.
Table 4.1Modal auxiliary Perfective auxiliary Continuous auxiliary Passive Main verb might have been being followed
We shall consider each of the four auxiliary positions in turn. The modalauxiliaries in English are a subclass with at least the following members:
may, might, will, would, shall, should, can, could, ought (to)
There are other potential members of the modal class, including need and dare,but these are increasingly falling out of usage as modal verbs. Modality is animportant semantic contribution to the interpretation of any text, and it isnot found in modal verbs alone but here we shall mainly consider the structureof the English verb phrase, rather than detailed variations in meaning andusage. In general, then, modal verbs are responsible for bringing in thespeaker’s own opinion about the substance of the clause being uttered, by indicatingeither how true or how desirable or acceptable he or she considers thecircumstance being described. The likelihood or truth of an utterance is calledepistemic modality, and its desirability is known as deontic or boulomaicmodality. These two aspects of modal meaning can be represented by the samemodal verb, with the semantics and context enabling the hearer to distinguishbetween them.

He should have written to her, because and she had promised to answer. (she knows that he has plenty of time).[59, p.23]
He should have written to her, because and she had promised to answer.(It’s not polite, because she is still waiting).[59, p.65]
The first example shows the use of should as an epistemic modal, with thespeaker indicating some doubt about the truth of the statement. The secondexample demonstrates the deontic use of modals, whereby the speaker indicateswhat she or he thinks is the proper thing to happen. The modal verbs have noformal variation in morphology, and therefore they are always the same,irrespective of the person (first, second, third) or number (singular orplural) of the subject they follow:
I should go.
You should eat.
He/she/it should play.
We should sing.
They should leave.
More important, perhaps, is the fact that the modal verbs do not occur ontheir own, hence the inclusion of a range of lexical verbs in the examplesgiven above. It is only when the lexical verb is completely predictable thatthe modal can stand in for the whole verb phrase. The following exchangeprovides an example:
A: Might they bring a present with them?
B: They might.
When a modal auxiliary is included in the verb phrase the subsequent verbform must be the infinitive form of the verb – one of the non-finite forms ofthe verb. In the above examples the lexical verbs follow the modal ininfinitive forms – go, eat, play, sing, leave – but because the infinitive formis the same as other forms for many verbs, it is only clear that these areinfinitives when the subsequent verb is one with a distinctive infinitive, suchas the verb be: You should be… .
Later we shall look at more complex cases, where some of the otherauxiliary positions are also filled in. For now the significant points toremember are that modals do not change their own morphology but do influencethe form of any subsequent verb, so that it is obliged to be an infinitive.
The second auxiliary position is the perfective auxiliary. This functionis fulfilled by the auxiliary verb have which looks identical in all its formsto the lexical verb have, but must be kept separate for analytical purposes.The lexical verb have has a clear meaning or ‘semantic content’, approximating tothe notion of ownership, though this is sometimes more metaphorical thanliteral (for example I have a longing for a cool drink). The perfectiveauxiliary, by contrast, brings the idea of completion to the meaning of theverb phrase:
She has broken the glass.
I had cooked the dinner.
The perfective auxiliary, unlike the modal verbs, will agree with itssubject as long as it is the first verb in the verb phrase. It can also takethe present (has) or past (had) tense form, and this choice will differentiatebetween actions or processes completed in the immediate past and thosecompleted at an earlier moment.
The other important feature of the perfective is its effect on thesubsequent verb, whether that is another auxiliary or a main (lexical) verb.Those verbs which follow the perfective auxiliary have to take the -en form,which is another of the non-finite forms of the verb.
She has taken the dog. They had sold their house.
The -en form of many verbs is either irregular (for example sold ) orsimilar in form to the past tense -ed form (asked). Nevertheless, whenever theperfective auxiliary is followed by a verb for which a distinctive -en form ispossible, this is the form that is used (for instance taken).
The next auxiliary position in the English verb phrase is the progressiveauxiliary verb, be. Like the perfective it has the same range of forms as avery common lexical verb, but they should be considered as different verbs. Thelexical meaning of be is hard to capture, but it can be summed up as to do withexistence and equivalence:
Why is it necessary at all? Mother doesn't want to marry again.[59, p.27]
 
That's only to show you how impossible your father is![59, p.29]
The auxiliary verb, be, however, conveys the idea that the process being describedby the utterance is in some sense continuous – either in the past or in thepresent:
Warmson is smiling faintly--in his opinion Val is a young limb.[59, p.30]
James' voice was sounding from the other end.[59, p.42]

In the first of these examples the verb phrase, was making, tells thehearer that the process is ongoing since the auxiliary is in the present tense.In the second example the process is in the past because the auxiliary is inthe past, but there is a focus on the duration of the process that is lackingin a past tense or perfective version:
James' voice has sounded from the other end.[59, p.67]
These three versions all place the action in the past, and none of themevokes the length of time during which the prayer was being said, unlike theprogressive version.
The final auxiliary to discuss is the passive auxiliary, which also takesthe form of the verb be. Again this needs to be distinguished from the lexicalverb be, and from the progressive auxiliary, which is formally identical to it.In fact the only way that we can tell the difference is by what follows it. Inthe case of the passive auxiliary, the subsequent verb has to be in the -enform rather than the -ing form, which follows the progressive.
Madame Lamotte was wearing black with touches of lilac colour (progressive).[59, p.11]
And suddenly he was certain as he was caught on the idea that there was no sentiment in either of them. (passive).[59, p.56]
The significant contribution of the passive voice to meaning is that itchanges the relationship between the subject and the predicator. In all active(nonpassive) verb phrases, in some sense the subject is the doer of the process(even if the verb is a fairly inactive one, such as notice or fall). Withpassive verb phrases the subject is the goal of the process, and suffers theconsequence of the process described, rather than being the initiator. This canbe seen in the examples above, where Jessica is doing the throwing in the firstsentence but is affected by it in the second. The passive auxiliary, like theperfective and the continuous, carries person/ number agreement and tense if itis the first auxiliary in the verb phrase:
Soames could not tell whether he was surprised of that knowledge or no.[59, p.56]
The fine reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.[59, p.75]
When the passive auxiliary is no longer the first auxiliary in the verbphrase the usual restrictions apply. Thus after a modal auxiliary its form willbe an infinitive, after a perfective it will be -en and after a continuous itwill have the -ing form.
We are now in a position to summarise theEnglish verb phrase structure and the formal restrictions that the auxiliariesplace on the subsequent verb.Summary of English verbphrase structuresModal Perfective Progressive Passive Main (lexical) might have seen has been trying is being turned should be buying can be bought have been being considered will have been being thought
2.4 The Structure of Verb Phrases. TheirGrammatical Categories.
The Verb Phrases exist of two types: finiteVP and nonfinite VP. A finite VP is a verb phrase in which the first or onlyword is a finite verb, the rest of the verb phrase consisting of nonfiniteverbs. Finite VPs can be distinguished as follows:
a) Finite verb phrases canoccur as the VP of independent clauses.
b)  Finite verb phraseshave tense contrast, i.e. the distinction between present and past tenses:
Dear June is so original [59, p.87]
James sat down, all knees, elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.[59, p.66]
c)There is person concord and number concordbetween the subject of a clause and the finite verb phrase. Concord isparticularly clear with the present tense of be:
I am He/She/It is
 } here } here
 You are We/They are
But with most full verbs overt concord isrestricted to a contrast between the 3rd person singular present andother persons of plural number.
He/She/Jim reads
} the paper every morning.
I/We/You/They read
With modal auxiliaries there is no overtconcord at all:
I/You/She/ We/They can play the cello.
d) Finite verb phraseshave mood, which indicates the factual, or counterfactual status ofpredication. In contrast to the “unmarked” Indicative Mood, we distinguish the“marked” moods Imperative (used to express commands and other directive speechacts), and Subjunctive (used to express a wish, recommendation, etc.)
A clause with a finite verb phrase as itsVerb element is called a “finite verb clause” or, just a “finite clause”.Similarly, a clause with a nonfinite verb phrase as its Verb element is calleda “nonfinite (verb) clause”.
The infinitive ((to)call), the –ingparticiple (calling), the –ed participle (called) are the nonfinite forms ofthe verb. Hence any phrase in which one of these verb forms is the first oronly word (disregarding the infinitive marker to) is a nonfinite verb phrase.Such phrases do not normally occur as the verb phrase of an independent clause.Compare:
The past subjunctive (or were-subjunctive)survives only in were as a past form of be. It is distinguishable from the pastindicative of be only in the 1st and 3rd personssingular:
If she was leaving, you would have heardabout it. [indicative]
If she were leaving, you would have heardabout it.[subjunctive]
The indicative was is more common in lessformal style.
Uses of the subjunctive. We distinguish twomain uses of the present subjunctive:
a) the MandativeSubjunctive is used in a that-clause after an expression of such notions asdemand, recommendation, proposal, intention (e.g. We insist, prefer, request;It is necessary, desirable, imperative; the decision, requirement, resolution).
b)  The Formulaic (oroptative) Subjunctive is used in certain set expressions:
God save the Queen Heaven forbid that…

Long live the King Be that as it may…
Come what may Suffice it to say that…
The past subjunctive is hypothetical inmeaning. It is used in conditional and concessive clauses and in subordinateclauses after wish and suppose:
If I were a rich man, I would…
I wish the journey were over.
Just suppose everyone were to act like you.
Subjunctive were is often replaced ininformal style by indicative was.
Voice. Active and Passive. The distinction between active andpassive applies only to sentences where the verb is transitive. The differencebetween the active voice and the passive voice involves both the verb phraseand the clause as a whole. In the verb phrase, the passive adds a form of theauxiliary be followed by the –ed participle of the main verb. For example:
Kisses is kissed
Has kissed has been kissed
May be kissing may be being kissed
At the clause level, changing from activeto passive has the following results:
a) the active subject, ifretained, becomes the passive agent.
b) the active objectbecomes the passive subject.
c)  the preposition by isinserted before the agent.
Aspect. Aspect is a grammatical category that reflects theway in which the action of a verb is viewed with respect on time. We recognizetwo aspects in English, the perfect and the progressive, which may combine in acomplex verb phrase, and are marked for present or past tense:
Present perfect  - has examined
Past perfect  - had examined
Present progressive  - is examining
Past progressive  - was examining
Present perfect progressive  - has beenexamining
Past perfect progressive  - had beenexamining
Conclusions to Part II
1. Verbs are the verylarge lexical word class in English. Verb is a part of speech which denotes anaction.
2. The verb has thefollowing grammatical categories: person, number, tense, aspect, voice andmood. These categories can be expressed by means of affixes, inner flexion andby form words.
3.  As a word class verbscan be divided into three main categories, according to their function withinthe verb phrase: the open class of Full Verbs (or lexical verbs), and the verysmall closed classes of Primary Verbs, and Modal Auxiliary Verbs.
4. The verb has finite andnonfinite forms (called verbals). There are three verbals in English: theparticiple, the gerund and the infinitive.
5. The subclasses of lexical verb that canbe identified tend to depend on the context in which they occur. Whilst thetraditional grammars distinguished between transitive and intransitive verbs.
6. Verbs are the nucleus around which sentencesare typically built.
7. Whether an item takes a specifier or not is an importantcharacterizing feature for the functional categories. Those lexical categoriesthat take a specifier are verbs; those that do not are nouns and adjectives.
8. Verb phrase is the part of the predicate constituent that does notcontain optional adverbials.
9. The simplest verb phrase will be a main lexical verb on its own. Theother  constituents of the verb phrase will be modal auxiliary, perfectauxiliary,  progressive auxiliary, and passive verb.
10. The Verb Phrases exist of two types: finite VP and nonfinite VP. Theyhave the grammatical categories of the verb itself.

Part III. Discourse Analysis of Verb Phrases in JohnGalsworthy’s
FORSYTE SAGA. Part I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY (pp.1-10)In his novel “FORSYTE SAGA” John Galsworthy preferably usesperfective and lexical verb phrases.The following table shows the prevailing quantity oflexical verb phrases, that mainly denote human feelings, emotions, thoughts,decisions. And the other major group of verb phrases the author uses is theperfective verb phrases. Galsworthy uses them in order to show, how hispersonages’ intentions are put into life, what means do they use, and what kindof results they bring out. Rarely he uses modal verbs, passive voice, andprogressive verbs.Summary of verb phrase structures Type of VP Example Sum % Modal
She ought to be very happy.
This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die.
How impossible and wrong would it have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterize, the great upper middle-class, to feel otherwise than uneasy! 11 16 Perfective
A very sweet look had come into the old lady's face, she kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
 
It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps known any other.
 
Still, he had forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing and kissing him. 20 22 Progressive
Old Jolyon's coachman, was driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, and remarked to the butler…..
 
At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the piece of china.. 6 12 Passive
Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked, flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann.
 
Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were fastened on it. 9 15 Lexical
Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other.
When Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had nothing by this time!" 33 35
The verb phrase can have just averb, or a verb followed by a noun phrase, or a verb followed by an adjectivephrase, or a verb followed by an adverb phrase, or a verb followed by apreposition phrase, or a verb followed by preposition phrase+ verb phrase, or averb followed by two or more different phrases.Verb phrase followed by other phrases Example  Sum % VP having just a verb
“What are you givin?”
If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not....
 
Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen.  17  9 VP followed by a NP
He was an architect, not in itself a sufficient reason for wearing such a hat.
Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms against a common peril.
There was warmth, but little colour, in her cheeks.  37  20 VP followed by an AdjP
If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking, it was more necessary to give him nice things.
 
Her large, dark eyes were soft.  21  11 VP followed by AN AdvP
In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper.
His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen in the Lion-house at the Zoo.
 And every now and then a Forsyte would come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.  27  14 VP followed by PP
Had she not said to Mrs. Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed—that feathers were vulgar?
Like cattle when a dog comes into the
field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the invader to death.
 
How impossible and wrong would it
have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterize, the great upper middle-class, to feel otherwise than uneasy!
 
A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family had once compared to heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a shadowy smile.  34  17 VP followed by a PP+VP He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.  11  6 VP followed by two or more phrases.
The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them.
The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door.
 
He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.  42  23
Conclusions to Part III
1. Wehave made a discourse analysis of the verb phrases in Forsyte Saga by JohnGalsworthy. As we may conclude the author frequently uses verb phrases.
2. Accordingto the data from the tables we come to a conclusion that Galsworthy mainlydescribes people’s acts, deeds and the results of these acts. This is why theauthor preferably uses the verb phrases of movement.
3. Galsworthyalso uses simple lexical verbs to show feeling, emotions, thoughts of hisheroes.

Conclusions
1. Syntax is the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words,with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections ofmeaning within the sentence.
2. The mainobject of syntax is sentence construction.
3. One of the most obvious yet important ways in which languages differis the order of the main elements in a sentence.
4. The basic word order in English clauses is subject–verb–object,articles precede the noun they modify, and auxiliary verbs precede the mainverb. These are English-specific syntactic rules.
5. The connection between the words in a sentence is realized through thechanges in their forms and these changes in the form of the words to indicatetheir function in the sentence are called ‘inflections’, and the study of theformation of words and how they may change their form is called morphology.
6. Syntax investigates simple sentences, as well as their combinationscalled complex sentences.
7. A central part of the description of what speakers do is characterizingthe  grammatical (or well-formed) sentences of a language and distinguishingthem from ungrammatical or (ill-formed) sentences.
8. Two interrelated aspects of syntax: relational structure andconstituent structure.
9. Words organization into phrases. Types of phrases.
10. In order to check if word combination is a phrase, the tests forphrases are to be done.
11. Verbs are the very large lexical wordclass in English. Verb is a part of speech which denotes an action.
12.Verb has the following grammatical categories:person, number, tense, aspect, voice and mood. These categories can beexpressed by means of affixes, inner flexion and by form words.
13. As a word class verbs can be dividedinto three main categories, according to their function within the verb phrase:the open class of Full Verbs (or lexical verbs), and the very small closedclasses of Primary Verbs, and Modal Auxiliary Verbs.
14.The verb has finite and nonfinite forms(called verbals). There are three  verbals in English: the participle, thegerund and the infinitive.
15.The subclasses of lexical verb that canbe identified tend to depend on the  context in which they occur. Whilst thetraditional grammars distinguished between transitive and intransitive verbs.
16. Verbs are the nucleus around whichsentences are typically built.
17.Whether an item takes a specifier or not is an importantcharacterizing feature for the functional categories. Those lexical categoriesthat take a  specifier are verbs; those that do not are nouns and adjectives.
18.Verb phrase is the part of the predicate constituent that does notcontain optional adverbials.
19. The simplest verb phrase will be a main lexical verb on its own. Theother constituents of the verb phrase will be modal auxiliary, perfectauxiliary, progressive auxiliary, and passive verb.
20. The Verb Phrases exist of two types: finite VP and nonfinite VP. Theyhave the grammatical categories of the verb itself.
21. We have made a discourse analysis of the verb phrases in Forsyte Sagaby John Galsworthy. As we may conclude the author frequently uses verb phrases.
22. Accordingto the data from the tables we come to a conclusion that Galsworthy mainlydescribes people’s acts, deeds and the results of these acts. This is why theauthor preferably uses the verb phrases of movement. Out of about 80  sentencesexamined on pp.1-10 35% contain simple lexical verb phrases, 22% — perfectiveverb phrases, 16% — with mostly modal verbs, in 15% of the sentences arepreferably used passive VP and only in 6% of all sentences Galsworthy usesprogressive verb phrases.
23. To makehis language rich and colorful John Galsworthy uses verb phrases in combinationwith another word phrases. According to our research verb phrases are mainlyproceeded by two or more different word combinations – 23% out of 226 sentencesinvestigated, including 20% of the noun phrases. Verb phrases are also followedby preposition phrases – 17%, adverb phrases – 14%, adjective phrases – 11%.The minority of the word combinations following verb phrases is after verbphrases containing just a verb itself – 9%, and phrases including prepositionphrase and verb phrase again.

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59.Illustrative material J.Galsworthy “ Forsyte Saga ”

Glossary of LinguisticTerms
Adjective – isa word expressing a quality of a substance.
Adverb – is apart of speech which expresses some circumstances that attend an action orstate, or points out some characteristic features of an action or a quality.
Article – is astructural part of speech used with nouns.
Aspect — is agrammatical category that reflects the way in which the action of a verb isviewed with respect on time.
Auxiliaryverbs – verbs that have little or no lexical meaning. verbs, they help to formcomplex verb forms.
Cleft test — taking the original sentence, and putting it into theframe like: It is/was/will be ____ that/who ____, without changing it in anyway except for taking one part of it out and putting it in the first slot, andputting the rest of the sentence in the second slot.
Constituentstructure — the hierarchical organization of the units into a sentence.
Finite forms — lexical verbs that do not need an auxiliary verb in order to function in mainclauses.
Intransitiveverb — occurs with both indirect and direct objects.
Modal verbs express the attitude of the speaker to the reality,possibility or probability of the action he speaks about.
Morphology — the study of the formation of words and how they may changetheir form.
Movement test – a specific case of movement and the formation of apassive sentence.
Nonfiniteforms – verbs that do not express person, number or mood and cannot be used asthe predicate of a sentence.
Noun – is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word.
Noun phrase — the constituent composed of a noun and an article.
Object – is asecondary part of the sentence which completes or restricts the meaning of theverb or sometimes an adjective, a word denoting state, or a noun.
Predicate – isthe second principal part of the sentence which expresses an action, state, orquality of the person or thing, denoted by the subject.
Preposition –is a part of speech which denotes the relations between the objects andphenomena.
Pronoun – is apart of speech which points out objects and their qualities without namingthem.
Relationalstructure – kind of syntax investigating grammatical relations like subject anddirect object; encompassing relationships like modifier–modifiedpossessor–possessed .
Sentence – isa unit of speech whose grammatical structure conforms to the laws of thelanguage and which serves as the chief means of conveying a thought.
Subject – isthe principal part of two-member sentence which is grammatically independent ofthe other parts of the sentence and on which the second principal part (thepredicate) is grammatically dependent, i.e. in most case sit agrees with thesubject in number and person.
Substitution test — substitution of a set of words with a single otherword, without changing the overall meaning, in order to check if the words forma phrase.
Syntax — thebranch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or withoutappropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within thesentence
Transitive verb- occurs with an object in subject-predicator-object structures
Verb – is a part of speech which denotes an action.
Verb phrase — that part of the predicate constituent that does not contain optionaladverbials.