The verb, its meaning, form and function. Finite and non-finite verbs.

General characteristics

Grammatically the verb is the most complex part of speech. First of all it performs the central role in realizing predication - connection between situation in the utterance and reality. That is why the verb is of primary informative significance in an utterance. Besides, the verb possesses quite a lot of grammatical categories. Furthermore, within the class of verb various subclass divisions based on different principles of classification can befound.

Semantic features of the verb. The verb possesses the grammatical meaning of verbiality - the ability to denote a process developing in time. This meaning is inherent not only in the verbs denoting processes, but also in those denoting states, forms of existence, evaluations, etc.

Morphological features of the verb. The verb possesses the following grammatical categories: tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, number, finitude and phase. The common categories for finite and non-finite forms are voice, aspect, phase and finitude. The grammatical categories of the English verb find their expression in synthetical and analytical forms. The formative elements expressing these categories are grammatical affixes, inner inflexion and function words. Some categories have only synthetical forms (person, number), others - only analytical (voice). There are also categories expressed by both synthetical and analytical forms (mood, tense, aspect).

Syntactic features. The most universal syntactic feature of verbs is their ability to be modified by adverbs. The second important syntactic criterion is the ability of the verb to perform the syntactic function of the predicate. However, this criterion is not absolute because only finite forms can perform this function while non-finite forms can be used in any function but predicate. And finally, any verb in the form of the infinitive can be combined with a modal verb.

The verb: Tense, Aspect, Voice, Mood. Grammatically the verb is the most complex part of speech. First of all it performs the central role in realizing predication - connection between situation in the utterance and reality. Semantic features of the verb. The verb possesses the grammatical meaning of verbiality - the ability to denote a process developing in time. Morphological features of the verb. The verb possesses the following grammatical categories: tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, number, finitude and phase. The common categories for finite and non-finite forms are voice, aspect, phase and finitude. Syntactic features. The most universal syntactic feature of verbs is their ability to be modified by adverbs. The second important syntactic criterion is the ability of the verb to perform the syntactic function of the predicate. And finally, any verb in the form of the infinitive can be combined with a modal verb.According to the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity verbs fall into transitive and intransitive. According to the implicit grammatical meaning of stativeness/non-stativeness verbs fall into stative and dynamic. According to the implicit grammatical meaning of terminativeness/non-terminativeness verbs fall into terminative and durative. According to the nature of predication (primary and secondary) all verbs fall into finite and non-finite. According to syntagmatic properties (valency) verbs can be of obligatory and optional valency, and thus they may have some directionality or be devoid of any directionality. In this way, verbs fall into the verbs of directed (to see, to take, etc.) and non-directed action (to arrive, to drizzle, etc. According to their functional significance verbs can be notional (with the full lexical meaning), semi-notional (modal verbs, link-verbs), auxiliaries. According to their stem-types all verbs fall into: simple ( to go), sound-replacive (food - to feed, blood - to bleed), stress-replacive (import - to im port, transport - to transport, expanded (with the help of suffixes and prefixes): cultivate, justify, overcome, composite (correspond to composite nouns): to blackmail), phrasal: to have a smoke, to give a smile (they always have an ordinary verb as an equivalent). 2.According to the way of forming past tenses and Participle II verbs can be regular and irregular. The objective relations between the action and the subject or object of the action find their expression in language as the grammatical category of voice. Therefore, the category of voice reflects the objective relations between the action itself and the subject or object of the action. The category of voice is realized through the opposition Active voice::Passive voice. The realization of the voice category is restricted because of the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity. The category of tense is a verbal category that reflects the objective category of time. The essential characteristic of the category of tense is that it relates the time of the action, event or state of affairs referred to in the sentence to the time of the utterance (the time of the utterance being 'now ' or the present moment). the major tense-distinction in English is undoubtedly that which is traditionally described as an opposition of past::present. But this is best regarded as a contrast of past:: non-past. Some scholars do not recognize the existence of future tenses, because what is described as the 'future' tense in English is realized by means of auxiliary verbs will and shall. That is why future tenses are often treated as partly modal. The category of aspect is a linguistic representation of the objective category of Manner of Action. It is realized through the opposition Continuous::Non-Continuous (Progressive::Non-Progressive). Among the so-called ‘non-progressive’ verbs are think, understand, know, hate, love, see, taste, feel, possess, own, etc. As the result of internal transposition verbs of non-progressive nature can be found in the Continuous form: Now I'm knowing you. Generally speaking the Continuous form has at least two semantic features - duration (the action is always in progress) and definiteness (the action is always limited to a definite point or period of time). 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, i.e. the subject of a hypothesis, speculation, desire. the division of the general mood system into several moods on the upper level of presentation. The most common view is that in Modern English there are three moods, Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative which keep distinct in English in the same clear way as in many other languages.The forms comprised in the Indicative Mood are used to present predication as reality, as a fact. The Imperative, like the Indicative, has the same form as the base of the verb; the same is true of the Present Indicative (except the third person singular) and of the whole of the Present Subjunctive.The Imperative Mood serves to express requests which in different contexts may range from categorical order or command to entreaties. The necessary meaning is generally signalled by the context and intonation.

Verb: Non – finite verbs. Verbids are the forms of the verb intermediary in many of their lexico-grammatical features between the verb and the non-processual parts of speech. The processual meaning is exposed by them in a substantive or adjectival-adverbial interpretation: they render processes as peculiar kinds of substances and properties. They are formed by special morphemic elements which do not express either grammatical time or mood.Their essential syntactic functions, directed by this relational semantics, unquestionably reveal the property which may be called, in a manner of explanation, "verbality", and the statement of which is corroborated by the peculiar combinability character of verbid collocations, namely, by the ability of verbids to take adjuncts expressing the immediate recipients, attendants, and addressees of the process inherently conveyed by each verbid denotation.The differential feature of the opposition is constituted by the expression of verbal time and mood: while the time-mood grammatical signification characterises the finite verb in a way that it underlies its finite predicative function, the verbid has no immediate means of expressing time-mood categorial semantics and therefore presents the weak member of the opposition. The category expressed by this opposition can be called the category of "finitude" The syntactic content of the category of finitude is the expression of predication (more precisely, the expression' of verbal predication).As is known, the verbids, unable to express the predicative meanings of time and mood, still do express the so-called "secondary" or "potential" predication, forming syntactic complexes directly related to certain types of subordinate clauses. The English verbids include four forms distinctly differing from one another within the general verbid system: the infinitive, the gerund, the present participle, and the past participle. The infinitive is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun, serving as the verbal name of a process. The infinitive is used in three fundamentally different types of functions: first, as a notional, self-positional syntactic part of the sentence; second, as the notional constituent of a complex verbal predicate built up around a predicator verb; third, as the notional constituent of a finite conjugation form of the verb. The first use is grammatically "free", the second is grammatically "half-free", the third is grammatically "bound".The English infinitive exists in two presentation forms. One of them, characteristic of the free uses of the infinitive, is distinguished by the pre-positional marker to. The other form, characteristic of the bound uses of the infinitive, does not employ the marker to, thereby presenting the infinitive in the shape of the pure verb stem, which in modern interpretation is understood as the zero-suffixed form. This form is called traditionally the "bare infinitive", or in more recent linguistic works, respectively, the "unmarked infinitive". The gerund is the non-finite form of the verb which, like the infinitive, combines the properties of the verb with those of the noun. Similar to the infinitive, the gerund serves as the verbal name of a process, but its substantive quality is more strongly pronounced than that of the infinitive. The present participle is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the properties of the verb with those of the adjective and adverb, serving as the qualifying-processual name. In its outer form the present participle is wholly homonymous with the gerund, ending in the suffix -ing and distinguishing the same grammatical categories of retrospective coordination and voice. The past participle is the non-finite form of the verb which combines the properties of the verb with those of the adjective, serving as the qualifying-processual name. The past participle is a single form, having no paradigm of its own.

Verb: Finite verbs. The finite forms of the verb express the processual relations of substances and phenomena making up the situation reflected in the sentence. These forms are associated with one another in an extremely complex and intricate system. The peculiar aspect of the complexity of this system lies in the fact that,the finite verb is directly connected with the structure of the sentence as a whole.each fundamental type of grammatical expression capable of being approached in terms of generalised categories in the domain of the finite verb has created a subject for a scholarly dispute. For instance, Grammatical expression of the future tense in English is stated by some scholars as a matter-of-fact truth, while other linguists are eagerly negating any possibility of its existence as an element of grammar.