THE VERB CATEGORIES

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Хижнякова Анна, 3 курс, гр.2ПА

THE VERB CATEGORIES :

The Category of Person The Category of Number The Category of Tense The Category of Voice The Category of Mood

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 However, the future tense is often taken out from the

grammatical opposition since it is considered a word group rather then an analytical form of the verb.

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.

The Category of Aspect

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

Will be singing

Has been singing• Common aspect:

Sings

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.

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 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 the Imperative Mood the Subjunctive Mood