THEME 9. THE VERB: GENERAL

Plan

1. The verb as part of speech.

2. Criteria of identifying a verb.

3. Categorial meaning of a verb ending.

4. Word formation.

According to Y. S. Maslov, a famous Russian linguist, the verb is a part of speech that expresses the grammatical meaning of action. The grammatical meaning of action can’t be reduced to action proper, it also implies state. It also indicates that this or that thing just exists, that it belongs to a certain class of objects.

Examples: He plays the violin.

He usually walks home.

He is sleeping.

As a part of speech the verb is characterized by the following properties:

1) Its lexico-grammatical meaning of ‘action, process’.

2) Certain typical stem-building elements, such as the suffixes -ize, -en, -ify, the prefixes re, under-, over-, out-, super-, sub-, mis-, un-, the lexico-grammatical word-morphemes up, in, off, down, out, etc.

3) Its grammatical categories; out of the eight categories of the verb system three are found not only in the finites, but in the verbids as well. Two of them – voice (asks – is asked, to ask – to be asked, asking – being asked) and order (asks – has asked, to ask – to have asked, asking – having asked) – are found in all the verbids, and the third – aspect (asks – is asking, to ask – to be asking) – in the infinitive.

4) Its characteristic combinability; a verb can be associated with nouns (noun-equivalents) denoting the doer (agent) and the recipient of the action expressed by the verb; it is regularly modified by adverbs.

E.g. They continued their own occupations: a woman ironing, a girl sewing, the old lady looking at her feet, and the dog watching the cat closely.

5) Its syntactical function of the predicate (incident to the finites only).

The elements of the word-class verb as a semantic category are the individual verbs and its categorial meaning is an abstraction from the meaning of its individual elements. This categorial meaning is dimensionality in time. This meaning holds for all verbs. It can be further specified for the main verbs.

Within the group of main verbs we postulate two major sense groups according to the character of the qualitative change brought about over a certain period (quantity) of time. These two groups are called stative and dynamic.

Stative verbs are regarded as those denoting processes the constituent segments of which follow each other additively without involving a marked qualitative change of state, and the duration of which is unlimited unless otherwise qualified by contextual elements or situational factors.

Typical statives verbs are:

be (= be identical with / have a certain quality / be in a certain place, time / exist), sleep, live, love, know, possess, have=possess, sound, seem, smell, remain.

e.g. Moscow is the capital of Russia.

He has a car.

She remained in the kitchen.

Dynamic verbs are regarded as those which denote processes the constituent segments of which, while also following each other in linear sequence, involve a marked qualitative change of state (from one state to another) and the duration of which may be unlimited or limited.

Dynamic verbs are further subdivided into:

(1) action verbs

build, drink, eat, help, play, remind, read, say, throw, write.

(2) event verbs

arrive, die, disappear, fall, leave, lose.

The distinction between statives and dynamic verbs must, however, be considered as relative since – according to use – the same verb can change from one category to another. Thus “Did you remember his name?” could refer to a statives or a dynamic state-of-affairs.

Notwithstanding these restrictions the overall categorial meaning that might be deduced from all the main verbs may be called process developing in time, as in both groups it is the processual and the temporal aspects which underlie all individual verbal meanings.

Before discussing the grammatical categories one should consider some general classifications of verbs based on their formal, semantical and functional properties, viz. the division of verbs into standard and non-standard, notional and semi-notional, subjective and objective, terminative and non-terminative.

Formal or morphological classification

The vast majority of English verbs build their Past tense form and that of Past Participle by adding the grammatical suffix -ed to the stem of the verb. The form of the suffix may be /-t/, /-d/, /-id/ depending on the final sound of the stem. Such verbs are called standard or regular.

e.g. ask – asked – asked

play – played – played

plead – pleaded – pleaded

Two hundred and forty-four verbs deviate from the standard verbs and are called non-standard or irregular. They are not a uniform group. Some verbs build their Past tense form and Past Participle form by changing the root vowel (sound alternation) like the verb ‘speak’ or ‘write’; some are unchangeable (cut, put, cast); some use both vowel and consonant change and affixation (teach, buy); some use suppletion (go, be).

Semantic classification

Semantically verbs divide into notional and semi-notional. The majority of English verbs are notional, i.e. having full lexical meaning. Connected with it is their isolatability and variable combinability, e.g. write, play, go.

Semi-notional verbs have a faded lexical meaning, their meaning of ‘action’ almost obliterated. Here belong such groups of verbs as auxiliary verbs (be, have, do, shall, will, should), modal verbs (may, might, must), semi-notional verbid introducer verbs (begin, continue, start, finish, seem, happen, turn out, grow, prove) and link-verbs (be, become, remain). Semi-notional verbs are hardly isolatable. Their combinability is bilateral. They are few in number and serve to connect words in speech.

Syntactical classification

The inner qualities of the verb as part of speech are manifested in its combinability with other linguistic units. As a matter of fact, the finite verb, being the centre of predication, organizes all the other sentence constituents. The combining power of the verb in relation to other words in syntactically subordinate positions is called its valency.

As R. Quirk puts it, the term ‘valency’ (or ‘valence’) is sometimes used, instead of complementation, for the way in which a verb determines the kinds and number of elements that can accompany it in the clause. Valency, however, includes the subject of the clause, which is excluded from complementation.

The syntactic valency can be obligatory and optional.

The obligatory valency is to be realized for the sake of the grammatical completion: e.g. in the sentence He saw a house in the sands the subject ‘he’ and the direct object ‘a house’ are obligatory parts of the sentence, and, from the point of view of sentence structure, they are obligatory valency partners of the verb (M. Y. Bloch). This sentence is syntactically complete. In case one eliminates its subject or object, the remaining part of the construction will be structurally incomplete.

The optional valency may or may not be realized depending on the concrete information to be conveyed by the sentence. Most of the adverbial modifiers are optional parts of the sentence, so in terms of valency we say that the adverbial valency of the verb is mostly optional.

Link verbs, like the notional verbs, though some of them are only semi-notional, such as seem, appear, should also be characterized from the point of general valency: e.g. Even minor problems seem important; Oliver remained silent; We became good friends at once; Are you Ok?

The obligatory adjuncts of the verb (with the exception of the subject) may be called its ‘ complements ’; the optional adjuncts are its ‘ supplements ’. Thus, according to their power to take complements, the notional verbs should be classified as ‘complementive’ or ‘uncomplementive’.

Subjective and objective verbs

Depending upon their combinability with words denoting the subjects and the objects they name the verbs are divided into subjective and objective.

Objective verbs are associated with two nouns or their equivalents denoting the subject and the object of the action named by the verb: e.g. She kissed him fairly.

Subjective (or non-objective) verbs are associated with nouns or their equivalents denoting the subject of the action: e.g. The sun set early.

Objective verbs that are connected with their objects directly are called transitive: e.g. bury, deny, distract.

All the other verbs both subjective and objective are usually intransitive: e.g. arrive, come, digress.

But many can be both: e.g. I was cooking (breakfast). He lodged in Cambridge. / He lodged a complaint.

Even verbs that seem to be strongly transitive, e.g. He made a cake (a mistake / a good job of it), can have intransitive uses: e.g. He made towards the door, and similarly an intransitive verb, such as live, can be used transitively: e.g. She lived a good life. So for many verbs it is more accurate to talk of transitive and intransitive use.

Transitive verbs can also be divided into 3 main groups:

- monotransitive – taking one object: e.g. I’ve bought a book. (SVO)

- complex transitive – taking an object plus a complement or an adverbial: e.g. I found the story unreadable. I put the book down. (SVOA)

- ditransitive – e.g. I’ve bought myself a new bag. (SVOO)

Verbs can also be classified according to the aspective nature of their lexical meaning into terminative and non-terminative.

Terminative verbs denote actions which have a certain limit beyond which the action cannot go. The actions denoted by non-terminative verbs have no inherent limits.

Terminative verbs are: begin, start, burst, jump, drop, terminate, finish, solve, resolve, prolong, continue, last, live, exist, arrive, come. Non-terminative: move, sleep, work, behave.

Besides these two sets of verbs there are so-called mixed verbs or verbs of double aspective nature. They are capable of expressing either a terminative or non-terminative meaning depending on the context.

E.g. Mary and Robert walked through the park. (non-terminative)

The party walked the whole way bareheaded. (terminative)

So the variants of the same lexeme may belong to different subclasses.

References:

1. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка: Учеб. пособие. / Л.С. Бархударов. – М.: Высш. шк., 1975. – С. 97-100.

2. Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: Учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 4-е изд., испр. / М.Я. Блох. – М.: Высш. шк., 2003. – С. 95-112.

3. Жигадло В.Н., Иванова И.П., Иофик Л.Л. Современный английский язык. Теоретический курс грамматики: Учебн. / В.Н. Жигадло, И.П. Иванова, Л.Л. Иофик. – М.: ИЛИЯ, 1956. – С. 80-90.

4. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка (Теоретический курс): Учеб. пособие. / Б.А. Ильиш. – М.-Л.: Просвещение, 1965. – С. 150-151.

5. Хаймович Б.С., Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка: Учеб. пособие. / Б.С. Хаймович, Б.И. Роговская. – М.: Высш. шк., 1967. – С. 116-125.

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