Descriptive grammar

Descriptive grammar

Verbal categories

November 12th, 2008

Structure of the talk

Structure of the talk



Verbal categories:



Tense



Aspect



Mood



Voice



Determining word classes

Tense

Tense



Tense – linguistic indication of the
time of an action.



Tense indicates the time of an
event in relation to the moment of
speaking.



past – present – future

Tenses in the world’s languages

Tenses in the world’s languages



Most languages distinguish between past and non-

past tense (I leave tomorrow)



English – 12 grammatical tenses



Polish, Russian – 3 tenses



Spanish – 8 tenses



Hopi – no grammatical tenses



ChiBemba:



remote past (before yesterday) and remote future



removed past (yesterday) and removed future



near past (earlier today) and near future



immediate past (just happened) and immediate future

Expressing time in

Expressing time in

language

language



Time can be expressed via inflection

(e.g. worked) or periphrasis (e.g. will

work)



The distinction between past and

present is expressed inflectionally (walk

vs. walked), whereas the future is

expressed paraphristically (e.g. will

walk)



Additionally, dverbs are used to express

time, e.g. yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Present tense in English

Present tense in English



The present tense expresses:

-

Habits (She smokes.)

-

States (I have lots of work to do.)

-

Generic statements (Tigers are dangerous.)

-

Timeless statements (The sun sets in the west.)

-

Gnomic (proverbial) statements (Haste makes waste.)

-

Future statements (We leave tomorrow.)

-

Instantaneous commentary (He pulls a rabit out of the

hat.)

-

Plot summary (Hamlet dies at the end of the play.)

-

Narration in the present - the historical present (Then

he says.)

-

Information present (I hear/see that John has been

fired.)

Past tense in English

Past tense in English



Denotes an event or state that is distinct

from the present moment (Handel lived in

England for a few years.)



Is the tense of narration (At that time they

lived in a small town in the centre of Brasil.)



Denotes past habit when an adverbial is

used (I drove to work last year, I used to

drive to work)



Is used nontemporally for politeness (I was

hoping you would help.)

Future tense in English

Future tense in English



The future tense is expressed

noninflectionally by a variety of periphrases:



will/shall + infinitive: I will help you.



The simple present: The party begins at 4:00.



The present progressive: We’re having

guests for dinner.



Be going to, be about to: We are about to

leave.



Shall/will + the progressive: I will be moving

next week.

The category of aspect

The category of aspect



Aspect – the view taken of an
event, which can be seen either as
complete (perfective aspect) or as
incomplete and ongoing
(imperfective aspect).



The past simple is perfective in
aspect!!!

The progressive aspect

The progressive aspect



The progressive (imperfective) can
denote the following situations:



a continuous activity: She’s
swimming.



a repeated activity: He is bouncing
the ball.



a process leading up to an endpoint:
The child is finishing the puzzle.

The perfective aspect

The perfective aspect



The perfect presents the current
relevance of a past event.



A past event can be relevant
either by its continuation into the
present or by its results in the
present (continuative and
resultative, respectively)

Examples

Examples



Continuative

1.

I have lived here since childhood.

2.

The child has coughed all night.

3.

She has sung in the choir for ten years.



Resultative

1.

She has recovered from the flu.

2.

I have read the novel.

3.

I have lost the car key.

Mood

Mood



Mood expresses the speaker’s

attitude towards what they are

talking about.



The indicative – expresses a fact, a

simple verb form is used.



The subjunctive – expresses a

nonfact, inflection is used to indicate

it – were is used for all persons and

numbers of the present tense

Remnant subjunctives

Remnant subjunctives



Remnant subjunctives in dependent
clauses are restricted to several contexts:



that clauses following verbs such as
insist, suggest, recomend, e.g. I suggest
that he leave.



if clauses: If we were rich, If only she had
more time, as if he were the boss



clauses following wish, e.g. I wish I were
younger,

The imperative

The imperative



The imperative expresses direct commands
and is a subclass of the subjunctive.



It is subjectless



The imperative can be addressed to:

1.

The second person you, e.g. Be quiet!

2.

The first person plural, e.g. Let’s buy it.

Let’s go to the beach vs. Let us go to the

beach.

The category of voice

The category of voice



Voice is an indication of whether the subject

is performing action of the verb (active voice)

or whether the subject is being affected by

the action (passive voice)



be + past participle



get + past participle



The middle voice – the action of the verb

reflects back upon the subject (usually

expressed with a reflexive pronoun)



Notional passive – a sentense active in form

but passive in meaning, e.g. The shirt irons

well.

Word classes

Word classes



Lexical (content) words vs. function

(grammatical words)



Lexical words:

1.

Carry the communicative force of an utterance

2.

Are open or productive classes

3.

Are variable in form (can be inflected)

4.

Their distribution is not definable by the

grammar

5.

Content words fall into the major parts of

speech

Word classes of English

Word classes of English



Class 1: noun



Class 2: verb



Class 3: adjective



Class 4: adverb



Class A: the, a/an, both,



Class B: may, might,

can,



Class C: not



Class D: very, rather,

pretty,



Class E: and, or, but



Class F: at, by, in



Class G: do, does, did



Class H: there



Class I: when, why



Class J: after, when



Class K: well, now,



Class L: yes, no



Class M: look, say,

listen



Class N: please



Class O: let’s

Determining word classes

Determining word classes



Formal means for determining the word

classes of a language.



Distributional tests – words that fill the

same syntactic slot are considered to

belong to the same class of words.



Semantics is ignored in such tests.



The ______ book is on the shelf.



large, green, exciting, damaged,



*while, *very, *that, * up, *him, *sing

Inflectional tests

Inflectional tests



In inflectional test all words that take a

particular inflectional suffix are believed

to belong to the same word class.



The _______ [-er, -est] book.



bigger, biggest, thicker, thickest



*hander, *arrivest, *ander, *himest



Derivational morphology is not used in

such tests as it is highly idiosynchratic

and individual in its combinatory

possibilities.