Lecture 7 - Verb categories: person, numbe

tense and aspect.

Lecture 8 - Verb categories: voice, mood an
modality.

Senior teacher: Pentina Y.O.

THE VERB CATEGORIES:
 The Category of Person
 The Category of Number
 The Category of Tense
 The Category of Voice
 The Category of Mood
B.A. Ilyish identifies six grammatical
categories in present-day English verb: tense,
aspect, mood, voice, person and number.

L. Barkhudarov, D. Steling distinguish

only the following grammatical
categories: voice, order, aspect, and
mood.
Further they note, that the finite forms of
the verb have special means expressing
person, number and tense.
B. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya B.

out of the eight grammatical categories of

the verb, some are found not only in the
finites, but in the verbids as well. Two of
them-voice (ask - be asked), order (ask -
have asked) are found in all the verbids, and
the third aspect (ask - to be asking) – only in
the infinitive. They distinguish the following
grammatical categories: voice, order, aspect,
mood, posteriority, person, number.
 The Category of Person
The category of person expresses the relation of
the action and its doer to the speaker, showing
whether the action is performed by :
 the speaker (the 1st person)
 someone addressed - the addressee (the 2nd
person)
 someone/something other than the speaker or the
person addressed (the 3rd person)
The Category of Person
 The category of person is often
grammaticalized, i.e. a special form
of the verb additionally shows which
person is meant.

 E.g.I go – we go
[He, she, it] goes – They go
The Category of Number
 The Category of number shows whether the
action is performed by one or more than one
persons or non-persons
 The Category of Number is a two-member
opposition: singular and plural.
 Number is mostly restricted to the Present tense.
E.g. John goes to college. vs. John went to
college.
In the Past Simple tense it is only the verb to be
that has the category of number. I/he/she/it was
– you/we/they were
THE VERB CATEGORIES
 The categories of person and number with
some restrictions are found in all analytical
forms containing the present simple tense of the
auxiliaries to be and to have.

 A more regular way of expressing the

categories of person and number is the use of
personal pronouns.
e.g. I stepped aside and they moved away
The Category of Tense
 The category of tense in English (as well as in
Russian) expresses the relationship between the time
of the action and the time of speaking.
 The time that follows the time of speaking is
designated as future time; the time that precedes the
time of speaking is designated as past time.
Accordingly there are 3 tenses in English:

The present tense - The future tense - The past tense

Past, present, and future are the objective time
divisions. However, it does not mean that tense
systems of different languages are identical.
Moreover, English grammar admits of two
different tense systems.
According to one interpretation, there are three
tenses in English: present, past and future,
represented by the synthetic forms (e. g. write,
\writes, wrote) or analytical forms (e. g.
will write).
This three tense system is supported by many
scholars, in particular, B. A. Ilyish.
According to the other view, there are two
grammatically relevant tenses in English: the
present tense and the past tense.
Some doubts about the existence of a future tense
in English were first expressed by H. Sweet and
O. Jespersen. They assumed that in the phrase
“shall/ will + infinitive” the verbs shall and will
still preserved some of their original modal
meaning (obligation and volition, respectively).
 Let’s Practice
Define the verbs in the following sentences
and explain their grammatical categories.

1. Go on the Internet and order a new phone.

2. Where are you going?
3. They will have gone.
4. The facts had compromised the new secretary.
5. I will help the blind across the road.
6. I will call you later; I am having dinner now.
7. I always taste food before adding salt.
8. Please answer my letter.
9. Our car was stolen yesterday.
10. We have waited for you.
The Category of Aspect
 Aspect is a grammatical category of the Verb which
expesses a difference in the way the action is shown to
proceed, that is whether the action is:
 Perfective
 Imperfective
 Iterative
 Momentary
 Inchoative
 Durative etc.
In English the grammatical category of aspect is
constituted by the opposition of the continuous aspect and
the common aspect.
The Category of Aspect
 Continuous aspect:
Is singing
Was singing
• Common aspect:
Will be singing
Sings
Has been singing
Sang
Will sing
Has sung
The Category of Voice
 The verbal category of voice shows
the direction of the process as regards
the participants of the situation
reflected in the syntactic construction.

E.g He wrote this letter yesterday. – This

letter was written yesterday
The Category of Voice
 When the subject is the agent or doer of the action,
the verb is in the active voice.
 E.g The hunter killed the bear.

 When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer

of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice.
 E.g The bear was killed by the hunter.
 In a transformation from an active-voice clause to an
equivalent passive-voice construction, the subject
and the direct object switch grammatical roles.
 Practice Time
Identify the form of the Passive Voice in the
following sentences.

 1. My new dress has been ruined.

 2. The door had been locked.
 3. Dinner was being served.
 4. The Pyramids were built by the ancient Egyptians.
 5. The prisoner is being taken to prison now.
 6. Lunch should have been served.
 7. Oranges are grown in California.
 8. I was offered a very interesting job.
 9. These documents will be shown to the journalists.
 10. Dinner will have been served by the time he gets
home.
The Category of Mood
The category of Mood is
the most controversial
category of the verb.
Mood is distinct from
grammatical tense or
grammatical aspect.
The grammatical category of mood makes
up a part of a general linguistic category of
modality.

 Verbal mood is regarded as primary

modality, while such lexical groups as
modal verbs (e. g. can, must should)
and modal words (e. g. perhaps,
probably) as well as the prosodic
feature of intonation are considered to
be the means of secondary modality.
the Indicative Mood
the Imperative Mood
the Subjunctive Mood

 The category of Mood expresses the

character of connection between the
process denoted by the verb and the
actual reality, either presenting the
process as a fact that really happened,
happens or will happen, or treating it as
an imaginary phenomenon.
The indicative mood is the use of verb forms to show tha
a sentence is a statement. It indicates something that is
assumed to be true such as facts, opinions, or fact-
checking questions.

Examples:
 It's way too hot in here (opinion)
 He bought her flowers for their anniversary (fact)
 It was so cute (opinion)
 You finish school next year, yes? (fact-checking
question)
 Maya wants to come with us to the farm
later (fact)
The Imperative mood in English is
represented by the base form of the verb,
or the bare infinitive, e. g. Come!
 There are also lexico-grammatical forms of the
imperative with the verb let, e. g.: Let the children
do it; Let’s go and have some coffee.
 The Imperative mood forms are limited in their
use to one type of sentences, namely, imperative
sentences. Most British and American scholars
do not recognize the verbal category of the
imperative mood, they prefer to speak about the
imperative sentences as a special type of
utterances.
The subjunctive mood

has its own problems. It can be expressed

by both synthetic forms (infinitive, were,
the past indefinite) and analytical forms
(should/would + infinitive). The latter are
not recognized by many British and
American scholars because they are
homonymous to the word-combinations of
modal verbs with the infinitive.
 Let’s practice
Identify the Tense, Aspect, Mood and Voice in the
following sentences

1.The woman trying on the red shoes is an actress.

2. We were brought a lot of presents.
3. I wish I were sixteen again.
4. Turn off this terrible music.
5. He had been staying in the hotel for a week when his
friends arrived.
6. Give me the book behind you!
7. Trained dogs are used by the police to find drugs.
8. An electrician is repairing our water heater.
9. She lives in Paris.
10. Do be quiet!
Other Categories of Verbs
 The Infinitive is the most generalized, the most
abstract form of the verb, serving as the verbal
name of a process; it is used as the derivation
base for all the other verbal forms. It has voice
and aspect forms, e.g.: to write, to be writing, to
have written, to be written, to have been written.
e.g.: He wanted to write a letter to her; of an
attribute, e.g.: It was the main thing to do; of an
adverbial modifier, e.g.: He stood on a chair in
order to reach for the top shelf.
Read the given sentences and find
the gerund

 It‟s no use crying over spilt milk

 The only remedy for such
headache is going to bed
 I love reading
 He had a gift of listening
The Gerund is another verbid that serves as the verbal
name of a process and combines verbal features with those
of a noun; the gerund, like the infinitive, can be
characterized as a phenomenon of hybrid processual-
substantive nature, intermediary between the verb and the
noun.
 It is even closer to the noun, because
besides performing the substantive
functions in a sentence like the infinitive, it
can also be modified by an attribute and
can be used with a preposition, which the
infinitive can‘t do, e.g.: Thank you for
listening to me; Your careful listening to me
is very much appreciated.
Participle I (present participle) is fully
homonymous with the gerund: it is also
an ing-form.
But its semantics is different: it denotes processual
quality, combining verbal features with such of the
adjective and the adverb; participle I can be
characterized as a phenomenon of processual-
qualifying nature. The verb-type combinability of
participle I is revealed in its combinations with nouns
denoting the subject and the object of the action,
e.g.: her entering the room, with modifying adverbs
and with auxiliary verbs in the analytical forms of the
verb;
Participle II, like participle I, denotes processual
quality and can be characterized as a phenomenon
of hybrid processual qualifying nature.

It has only one form, traditionally treated as the verbal

―third form, used to build the analytical forms of the
passive and the perfect of finites, e.g.: is taken; has
taken.
The categorial meanings of the perfect and the passive
are implicitly conveyed by participle II in its free use, for
example, when it functions as a predicative or an
attribute, e.g.: He answered through a firmly locked
door (participle II as an attribute); The room was big
and brightly lit (participle II as a predicative).
 Practice Time
Translate into English using the correct
forms of participles

Данный, решившийся, играющий, рисующий,

добываемый, лежащий, сделанный,
отвечавший, разбитый, увидя, хохочущий,
значащий, чистящий, оторванный, посеянный,
увлеченный, уставший, построивший,
отправившийся, обученный, сломанный,
сломавший, сломан, насвистывая,
испугавшись.