Verb: (general characteristics (categorical meaning , formal markers, syntactic functions ) , the categories of tense, aspect, voice, mood.
- The verb as a notional part of speech has the categorial meaning of dynamic process, or process developing in time.
- Formally, the verb is characterized by a set of specific word-building affixes, e.g.: to activate, to widen, to classify, to synchronize, to overestimate, to reread, etc.; there are some other means of building verbs, among them sound-replacive and stress-shifting models, e.g.: blood – to bleed, import – to im port. The processual semantics of the verb determines its combinability with nouns, and with adverbs. In certain contexts, some verbs can be combined with adjectives (in compound nominal predicates).The verb is usually characterized as the most complex part of speech, because it has more word-changing categories than any other notional part of speech. It is changed according to the categories of person and number, tense, aspect, voice and mood. Besides, each verb has a specific set of non-finite forms (the infinitive, the gerund, participle), otherwise called “verbals”, or “verbids”, opposed to the finite forms of the verb; their opposition is treated as “the category of “finitude”.
- The verbal category of tense in the most general sense expresses the time characteristics of the process denoted by the verb. The tense category in English differs a lot from the verbal categories of tense in other languages, for example, in Ukrainian. The tense category in Ukrainian renders absolutive time semantics; the three Ukrainian verbal tense forms present the events as developing in time in a linear way from the past to the future, cf.: Він працював учора ; Він працює сьогодні ; Він працюватиме завтра . In English there are four verbal tense forms: the present (work), the past (worked), the future (shall/will work), and the future-in-the-past (should/would work). The two future tense forms of the verb express the future in two separate ways: as an after-event in relation to the present, e.g.: He will work tomorrow (not right now), and as an after-event in relation to the past, e.g.: He said he would work the next day.
- there is not just one verbal category of tense in English but two interconnected tense categories, one of them rendering absolutive time semantics by way of retrospect (past vs. present) and the other rendering relative time semantics by way of prospect (after-action vs. non-after-action). The first verbal tense category, which can be called “primary time”, “absolutive time”, or “retrospective time”, is expressed by the opposition of the past and the present forms. The suffix “-ed” of the regular verbs is the formal feature which marks the past as the strong member of the opposition. The present, like any other weak member of an opposition, has a much wider range of meanings than its strong counterpart. The second verbal tense category, which may be called “prospective”, or “relative”, is formed by the opposition of the future and the non-future separately in relation to the present or to the past. The strong member of the opposition is the future, marked by the auxiliary verbs shall/will (the future in relation to the present) or should/would (the future in relation to the past).
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- The general meaning of the category of aspect is the inherent mode of realization of the process. Aspect can be expressed both by lexical and grammatical means. This is one more grammatical domain in which English differs from Ukrainian: in Ukrainian, aspect is rendered by lexical means only, through the subdivision of verbs into perfective and imperfective, робити - зробити. In Ukrainian the aspective classification of verbs is constant and very strict. In English, the aspective meaning is manifested in the lexical subdivision of verbs into limitive and unlimitive, e.g.: to go – to come, to sit – sit down, etc. One of the most controversial points in considering the category of aspect is exactly the same logical contradiction that we had to deal with when studying the category of time: the category cannot be expressed twice in one and the same grammatical form, and the members of one paradigm should be mutually exclusive, but there is a double aspective verbal form known as the perfect continuous form. This contradiction can be solved in exactly the same way as with the tense category: the category of aspect, like the category of tense, is not a unique grammatical category in English, but a system of two categories. The first category is realized through the paradigmatic opposition of the continuous (progressive) forms and the non-continuous (indefinite/simple) forms of the verb. This category can be called the category of development. The strong, marked member of the opposition, the continuous, is formed by means of the auxiliary verb to be and participle I of the notional verb, e.g.: I am working. The weak, unfeatured member of the opposition, the indefinite, stresses the fact of the performance of the action. The second aspective category is formed by the opposition of the perfect and the non-perfect forms of the verb; this category can be called the category of retrospective coordination. The strong member of the opposition, the perfect, is formed with the help of the auxiliary verb to have and participle II of the notional verb: I have done this work.
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- The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process which regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic structure of the sentence. Voice is a very specific verbal category: it does not reflect the actual properties of the process denoted, but the speaker’s estimation of it.
The category of voice is expressed by the opposition of the passive and active forms of the verb; the active form of the verb is the unmarked, weak member of the opposition, and the passive is the strong member marked by the combination of the auxiliary verb to be (or the verbs to get, to become in colloquial speech) and participle II of the notional verb. It denotes the action received or a state experienced by the referent of the subject of the syntactic construction; in other words, the syntactic subject of the sentence denotes the patient, the receiver of the action in the situation described, while the syntactic object, if any, denotes the doer, or the agent of the action,
- The category of mood expresses the character of connections between the process denoted by the verb and actual reality, in other words, it shows whether the action is real or unreal. This category is realized through the opposition of the direct (indicative) mood forms of the verb and the oblique mood forms: the indicative mood shows that the process is real, i.e. that it took place in the past, takes place in the present, or will take place in the future, e.g.: She helped me; She helps me; She will help me; the oblique mood shows that the process is unreal, imaginary (hypothetical, possible or impossible, desired, etc.), e.g.: If only she helped me! In this respect the category of mood resembles the category of voice:it shows the speaker’s subjective interpretation of the event as either actual or imaginary.
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The list of the oblique mood types presents a great problem due to its meaningful comlexity in contrast to the lack of English word inflexion: the oblique mood has no morphological forms of its own; most of its forms are homonymous with the forms of the indicative.
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