Lecture 8. The Categories of Verbs

The Category of Mood

The category' of mood (modus (lat.) - xapaKTep, модyc) expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality either presenting the process as affect that happened, happens or will happen or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon. The general meaning of the category is the degree of the reality' of the action. The functional opposition underlining this category is expressed in oblique mood meaning contrasted against the forms of direct mood meaning.

The Indefinite Mood is the only real mood in tire English language. It represents an action as a real fact. The forms of the indefinite Mood are the tense-aspect forms of the verb.

The two non-fact (oblique) Moods in English are the Imperative Mood and the Subjunctive Mood.

The Subjunctive Mood represents an action as unreal expressing two degrees of reality: not quite real (Present, Future), quite unreal (for the Past).

Subjunctive signifies different attitude towards the process denoted by the verb, namely desire, suppositional, recommendation, and suggestion.

There are modal spective (subjunctive) mood forms:

1) the combination with may, might is used to express wish or desire, hope: May success attend you!

2) the combination should + infinitive is used in a various subordinate predicative units to express supposition, speculation, suggestion and recommendation: What ever they shold say of the project that must be considered seriously.

3) the combination let + objective subjunctive + infinitive is used to express an appeal to commit an action in relation to all the persons: Let’s go back.

The subjunctive, the integral mood of unreality, presents the two sets of forms according to the structural division of verbal tenses into the present and the past: “I suggest that he should continue ”. These form sets constitute the two corresponding functional systems of the subjunctive:

- the spective, the mood of attitudes;

- the conditional.

Each of these in its turn falls into two systemic subsets, so that we have 4 subjunctive form-types. And these types can be called respectively:

- subj. 1-perspective;

- subj. 2 -stipulative;

- subj. 3-contractive;

- subj. 4 modal spective.

M.A. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevska in their turn present the system of Subjunctive Mood in the following way:

The imperative mood

Imperative mood is mood that signals directive modality, especially in commands. Its use may be extended to signal permission. The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. To form the imperative mood, we use the base form of the verb (Heat the water to 65°C before adding the sample). An imperative verb is typically not inflected for most of the grammatical categories associated with verbs in a language, especially tense and person. It’s easy to see that the verbal imperative morphemically coincides with the subjunctive. The semantics of tire imperative is similar to the subjunctive too: “Go there” or “You should go there”.

The imperative mood is very powerful. It is often appropriate to use the imperative mood when giving instructions. However, in other types of documents, such as letters, procedures, or recommendations, the bare imperative may be too strong. To tone down the effect of the imperative, you can use "politeness" words, such as please, or rephrase in the indicative with an auxiliary verb such as would.

e.g. Send the relevant documents to us as soon as possible. [This imperative might be received by some readers as being too direct, and thus, impolite.]

Would you please send the relevant documents to us as soon as possible? [This request is more polite than the previous one.]

The Category of Voice

The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process regarding the participants of the situation. It is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb (strong member) to the active form of the verb. The passive form expresses reception of the action by the subject of the syntactic construction. The category of voice (which is found both with finite and non-finite forms) is one of the most formal grammatical categories, because this category doesn’t reflect any fragment of reality - it's a way of describing a certain fragment of reality. The category of voice deals with the participants of a happening (doer, action, object) and how they are represented in the sentence (subject, predicate, object). The Active Voice shows that the grammatical subject of the sentence or the subjectival is the doer of the action, denoted by the verb, the Passive Voice shows that the subject or the subjectival is an object of the action.

The frequency of occurrence of the English Passive Voice is very great, greater than in Russian. One of the reasons is that the number of verbs capable of forming the Passive Voice is greater in English than in Russian. In many languages passive voiced is expressed only by transitive verbs, in English - by any object verb.

The Russian sentences (types of sentences), which correspond to the English sentence with the Passive Voice:

1) Indefinite - personal: Ему сказали.

2) The Russian sentence with tire analytical or the synthetic passive: Дом был построен. Дом строится.

3) Russian sentences with the Active Voice, with the subject-predicate inversion:

Это сделал мой брат. (It was done by my brother).

4) Russian impersonal sentences: Крышу унесло ветром.

The idea of the Passive voice is expressed not only by means of “to be + P2”. In colloquial speech the role of the passive auxiliary can occasionally be performed by the verbs get, come, become, go + P2 and get + passive infinitive (ingressive meaning): He got involved; He got to be respected.

There are several verbs that can’t be used in passive: to rain, to snow, etc.)