Verbs - English Morphology

Verbs - English Morphology

Major verb functions and classes

- 2 major roles in a verb phrase: main or auxiliary verb
Main verb can stand alone as the entire verb phrase.
Auxiliary verb occur together with some main verb.

Exceptions, where auxiliary verbs seem to function alone as verb phrases, include instances of ellipsis, where a repeated main verb is ellipted, and question and declarative tags.

- 3 major classes of verbs:

Lexical verbs (full verbs) – main verb function
– comprise an open class of words

Primary verbs (be, have, do) – main verb function
He does my washing.
Primary verbs (be, have, do) – auxiliary verb function
He was wearing a dark ski mask.

Modal verbs – auxiliary verb function
People thought he might have been joking.

In addition, verb can be classified on the basis of their semantic domains and valency patterns (copular = sporové, intransitive = neprechodné and transitive = prechodné – keď za ním nasleduje predmet). (valency = schopnosť sa viazať)
Finally, we make a fundamental distinction between simple lexical verbs and the various kinds of multi-word verbs (phrasal verbs, prepositional verb, and phrasal-prepositional verbs).

Valency patterns for single-word lexical verbs:
- 5 major patterns:

A. Intransitive – occur in the SV pattern with no object or predicative complement
More people/ come.
S V

B. Monotransitive – occur with a single direct object in the pattern SVOd (Od=direct object – we ask “What?”)
She/ carried/ a long whippy willow twig.
S V Od

C. Ditransitive – occur with 2 object noun phrases – an indirect object and a direct object in the pattern SVOiOd
Fred Unsworth/ gave/ her/ a huge vote of confidence.
S V Oi Od

D. Complex transitive – occur with a direct object noun phrase followed by either an object predicative (noun phrase or adjective) (object predicative = doplnok k predmetu)
in the pattern SVOdPo or by an obligatory adverbial in the pattern SVOdA.
It was natural to/ call/ them/ photons.
V Od Po
He reached out to/ put/ his hand/ on the child's shoulder.
V Od A

E. Copular – are followed by a subject predicative (a noun, adjective or prepositional phrase) in the pattern SVPs or by an obligatory circumstance adverbial in the pattern SVA.
Carie/ felt/ a little less bold.
S V Ps
I wasn't planning on/ staying/ at Terry and Lindsey's.
V A

Regular lexical verb inflections

Regular lexical verb have only 4 morphological variants, involving 3 suffixes added to a base:
• the base form – without any affix, used for infinitive, and present tense, excluding 3rd person singular
• the suffix –(e)s – third person singular present tense
• the suffix –ing – in progressive aspect
• the suffix –ed – past participle, in perfect and passive constructions
Consonant doubling of regularly inflected verbs

A single consonant letter at the end of the base is doubled before adding –ing or –ed, when the preceding vowel is stressed and spelled with a single letter:
drop – dropping – dropped
admit – admitting – admitted

Irregular lexical verb inflections

Classes of irregular verbs:
There are 7 main pattern (classes) – pozrieť v knihe!

Regular and irregular verbs – additional comments:

• For many verbs, regular and irregular variants can be used both as past tense verbs and as past participle
• The relative preference for regular v. irregular variants differs for each verb and is influenced by register as well as grammatical use
• The irregular variant is almost always preferred for the verbs hang and light except that in BrE hanged is used for the “death by hanging” sence
• The irregular variant is also preferred for the verbs leap, quit, spell, speed and wed although both variants are rare in some registers
• For five other verbs – sneak, dive, knit, lean and dream – the regular form is generally preferred (although both variants are rare in some registers)
• For spoilt the regular form is preferred for past tense, while the irregular form is preferred for past participle
• For burn, however, their form is preferred for past tense, while the regular form for past participle
• AmE has a stronger preference for the regular variants of these verbs than BrE

Primary verbs and their function

Be
– main verb, is most important copular verb in English, serving to link the subject noun phrase with a subject predicative or obligatory adverbial
You drank coffee like it was water.

- As an auxiliary verb – has 2 functions:
• marking progressive aspect: You are going so slow.
• passive voice: Each is called a path or a history.

Have
- As a transitive main verb, have is as common as the most frequent lexical verb in English.
- most common in conversation, least in academic prose
- can be used to make different relations:

PHYSICAL POSSETION
One of three of these families has two cars.
FAMILY CONNECTION
Jim is aged 40 and has two children.
FOOD CONSUMPTION
The kids had “superhero sundaes” which turned out to be merely ice cream.
EXISTENTIAL
But it really would be nice to have a young person on about the house again.

LINKING A PERSON TO SOME ABSTRACT QUALITY
I hope she has fun.
Will you have enough to do?
LINKING AN INANIMATE SUGJECT TO SOME ABSTRACT QUALITY
In practical terms, the gates and fences probably have little advantage over the waist-high barrier.
Stylistics can have other goals than this.
MARKING CAUSATION
The problem continues to be that a religious-fascist state wishes to hire professional terrorists to have me killed.
- Further, have occurs in a number of idiomatic multi-word phrases:
I'll have a look.
- Have serves only one auxiliary function as the marker of perfect aspect:
No one has ever seen anything like that before.

Do
-simple main verb
-pro-verb
-emphatic verb
-auxiliary verb in negative and interrogative constructions

- Main verbs do in idiomatic expressions:
Do me a favour.
- With noun phrase:
do the job, do the dishes, do your hair, do the wash, do time, do the car, do some work

- Do as pro-verb:
A transitive
Do functions as pro-verb substituting for some lexical verb, in one common pattern, do combines with a following pronoun it or this/that to form a transitive pro-verb construction:
I didn't do it.
We can't let you do that.

In some cases pro-verb do can substitute a specific lexical verb.

Sensory copular verbs

- look, feel, sound, smell, taste

Look
Common adjectives: awful, different, happy, lovely, pale, sad, puzzled, small, surprised, terrible, tired, well, young
Do I look nice?
It looks nice, doesn't it?

Feel
Common adjectives: ashamed, bad, better, cold, good, guilty, sick, sure, tired, uncomfortable, uneasy
• Physical state of being:
I'll make you feel better.
My hands feel cold.
• Mental state of being:
I always feel guilty passing Mike's house.
He felt uneasy.

Sound
Awful, angry, sad and strange to report actual hearing perceptions while good, nice, silly, stupid and interesting are used in reaction to previous utterances.
• Hearing perceptions:
She doesn't sound angry anymore.
• Reaction to idea:
Oh how nice. That sounds good to me.

Smell
Reports the smells perceived by the speaker, using adjectives such as: awful, bad, funny, musty, odd, rotten, terrible, delicious, fresh, good, lovely, nice.
The food smelled good to her.
It smells funny in here.