He smokes. To smoke like that must be
Mary is having a smoke. dangerous.
He must smoke 40 a day. I regret having started to smoke.
You have been smoking all The cigars smoked here tend to be
day. expensive,
That was the last cigarette to have been smoked by me.
Simple and complex verb phrases
The finite verb phrase is siMPLe when (without ellipsis) it consists of only one word. It is complex when it consists of two or more words.
The auxiliaries follow a strict order in the complex verb phrase:
(a) MODAL, followed by an infinitive:
must go
(b) PERFECT (the auxiliary have) followed by an -ed participle:
has examined; must have examined
(c) PROGRESSIVE (the auxiliary be), followed by an -ing participle:
was talking; must have been talking
(d) passive (the auxiliary be), followed by an -ed participle:
was visited; must have been being visited
While the above order is strictly followed, gaps are perfectly normal:
(a) +(c): must be going (modal + progressive) (b)+(d): has been examined (perfect + passive) (a) + (d): may be visited (modal + passive) Contrasts expressed in the verb phrase
It may be convenient to list here the contrasts in which the verb phrase plays an important part.
(a) Tense requires a choice between present and past in.the first or only verb in a finite verb phrase (cf 4.3/7):
She works hard. She worked hard.
(b) Aspect requires a choice between the nonperfect and the perfect and between the nonprogressive and the progressive (cf 4.7):
He writes poems. (simple: nonperfect, nonprogressive) He has written poems. (perfect, nonprogressive) He is writing poems. (progressive, nonperfect) He has been writing poems. (perfect, progressive)
(c) Mood requires a choice between the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive (of 11.15ff, 3.23f):
fiers is listening to me ST s22 (indicative)indicative
3.23
The subjunctive mood 43
Listen to me. (imperative)
I demand that he /isten to me. (subjunctive)
(d) Finiteness requires a choice between the finite and nonfinite (3.19/):
She plays tennis.
Playing tennis is good for your health.
The verb element of a finite clause (as in the first sentence) is a finite verb phrase; the verb element of a nonfinite clause is a nonfinite verb phrase (eg: Playing in Playing tennis).
(e) Voice involves a contrast between active and passive (¢f 3.25f):
A doctor will examine the applicants. (active)
The applicants will be examined by a doctor. (passive)
(f) Questions generally require subject-operator inversion (of 11,3; for an exception, cf 11.10):
I should pay for you. ~ Should I pay for you?
The students objected. ~ Did the students object?
(g) Negation makes use of operators (¢f 10.33, but cf 3.23 Note [b]):
I should pay for you.~1 shouldn’t pay for you.
The students objected. ~The students didn’t object.
(h) Emphasis is frequently carried by an operator (ef 3.11):
I SHOULD pay.
The students Dip object.
The subjunctive mood Forms of the subjunctive
There are two forms of the subjunctive. They are traditionally called the present and past subjunctive, although the distinction relates more to mood than to tense.
The present subjunctive is expressed by the base form of the verb. For the verb be, the subjunctive form be is distinct from the indicative forms am, is, and are. For other verbs, the subjunctive is distinctive only in the 3rd person singular:
I insist that we reconsider the Council’s decisions. [1 {indicative or subjunctive]
Tinsist that the Council reconsider its decisions. (2) [subjunctive]
Linsist that the Council’s decision(s) be reconsidered. [3]
[subjunctive]
NOTE
3.24
3.25
44 Verbs and auxiliaries
The past subjunctive (or were-subjunctive) survives only in were as a past form of BE. It is distinguishable from the past indicative of BE only in the Ist and 3rd persons singular:
If she was leaving, you would have heard about it.
[indicative]
If she were leaving, you would have heard about it.
[subjunctive]
The indicative was is more common in less formal style.
[a] Only were is acceptable in as it were (‘so to speak’), were is usual in if J were you, [b] Negation of the present subjunctive does not require an operator. Hence, reconsider in [1a] is unambiguously subjunctive:
| insist that we not reconsider the Council’s decision. [la]
Uses of the subjunctive
We distinguish two main uses of the present subjunctive:
(a) The MANDATIVE SUBJUNCTIVE is used in a that-clause after an expression of such notions as demand, recommendation, proposal, intention (eg: We insist, prefer, request; It is necessary, desirable, imperative; the decision, requirement, resolution). This use is more characteristic of AmE than BrE, but seems to be increasing in BrE. In BrE the alternatives are putative should (14.14) and the indicative.
resign, <esp AmE>
The employees demanded that he { nem resign. <esp BrE>
resigns.
(b) The FoRMULAIC (or ‘optative’) SUBJUNCTIVE is used in certain set expressions:
God save the Queen. Heaven forbid that...
Long live the King. Be that asit may,...
Come what may, ... Suffice it to say that...
The past subjunctive is hypothetical in meaning. It is used in conditional and concessive clauses and in subordinate clauses after wish and suppose:
If ] were a rich man, I would...
T wish the journey were over.
Just suppose everyone were to act like you.
Subjunctive were is often replaced in nonformal style by indicative was, Voice
Active and passive
The distinction between active and passive applies only to sentences where the verb is transitive. The difference between the active voice and the
NOTE
3.26
Voice 45
passive voice involves both the verb phrase and the clause as a whole. In the verb phrase, the passive adds a form of the auxiliary be followed by the -ed participle of the main verb. For example:
kisses is kissed
has kissed has been kissed may be kissing may be being kissed
At the clause level, changing from active to passive has the following results:
(a) The active subject, if retained, becomes the passive AGENT.
(b) The active object becomes the passive subject.
(c) The preposition by is inserted before the agent.
The butler murdered the detective. [ACTIVE]
The detective was murdered (by the butler). [passtve]
The explanation was followed by an example.
The prepositional phrase (AGENT BY-PHRASE) of passive sentences is in most cases an optional element and is commonly omitted.
{a] Get is frequently used with the passive in informa! English: get caught, get dressed, get run over. 1t often conveys the connotation that the referent of the subject has some responsibility for the action. Compare the construction with a reflexive pronoun: ‘She got herself caught.’
{b] The change to passive is highly restricted if the active object is a clause. It becomes acceptable when the clause is extraposed and replaced by anticipatory it:
They thought that she was attractive.
/t was thought that she was attractive.
[c] Some stative transitive verbs, called ‘middle verbs’, normaily occur only in the active (cf 16.15), eg:
They Aave a nice house. The auditorium Aolds 500 people.
He facks confidence. Will this suit you?
[đ] In the ‘statal passive’ the -ed form refers to a state resulting from an action, and the construction contains a copular verb and a subject complement:
The building is demolished.
Her arm was already broken when I saw her.
A sentence such as Her arm was broken is ambiguous between a dynamic passive reading (‘Someone broke her arm’) and a statal reading (‘Her arm was ina state of fracture’).
Uses of the passive
In sentences where there is a choice between active and passive, the active is the norm.
Speakers or writers use the passive for the following reasons. In considering the examples, bear in mind that more than one reason may apply. Reasons |-4 illustrate the uses of the passive without the agent by- phrase, which is commonly omitted:
46 Verbs and auxiliaries
1
5 6 7
They do not know the identity of the agent of the action.
Many lifeboats were launched from the Titanic only partly filled.
They want to avoid identifying the agent because they do not want to assign or accept responsibility.
My letter Aas not yet been answered.
A mistake has been made in calculating your change.
They feel that there is no reason for mention of the agent because the identification is unimportant or obvious from the context.
The small thin pieces of metal at the sides are to protect the appliance during handling and may be discarded.
Nowadays sleeping sickness can usually be cured if it is detected early enough,
In scientific and technical writing, writers often use the passive to avoid the constant repetition of the subject Jor we and to put the emphasis on processes and experimental procedures. This use of the passive helps to give the writing the objective tone that the writers wish to convey.
The subject was blindfolded and a pencil was placed in the left hand.
To put emphasis on the agent of the action;
To avoid what would otherwise be a long active subject;
To retain the same subject throughout a long sentence.
The following sentence exemplifies a combination of these last three reasons for using the passive (ef 18.22):
Asa cat moves, it is kept informed of its movements not only by its eyes, but also by messages from its pads and elsewhere in its skin, its organs of balance, and its sense organs of joints and muscles.
Bibliographical note
For general treatments of the English verb, see Palmer (1988); Allen (1966); Joos (1964); Huddleston (1976).
On the passive see Granger (1983); Stein (1979); Svartvik (1966). For studies relating more particularly to meaning in the verb phrase, consult the Bibliographi- cal note to Chapter 4.
4.1
4 The semantics of the verb phrase
Time, tense, and the verb
In abstraction from any given language, we can think of time as a line on which is located, as a continuously moving point, the present moment.
Anything ahead of the. present moment is in the future, and anything behind it is in the past (see Fig 4.1a):
THE PRESENT MOMENT
PAST TV FUTURE
Fig 4.1a
In relating this REFERENTIAL view of time to the meaning of verbs, it is useful to reformulate it so that on the SEMANTIC level of interpretation something is defined as ‘present’ if it exists at the present moment and may also exist in the past and in the future. Hence Paris stands on the River Seine may be correctly said to describe a ‘present’ situation, even though this situation has existed for many centuries in the past and may well exist for an indefinitely long period in the future. The same is true for sentences of more limited time span: John boasts a lot applies to past and present, and carries the implication that it will apply to an indefinite period in the future (see Fig 4.1b):
"—... PASTTIM ___ 4
[following now]
[preceding now]
THE PRESENT TIME [including now]
Fig 4.1b
TENSE is a grammatical category that is realized by verb inflection. Since English has no future inflected form of the verb, the threefold semantic
NOTE
4.2
NOTE
4.3
48 The semantics of the verb phrase
opposition is reduced to two tenses: the PRESENT TENSE and the PAST TENSE, which typically refer to present and past time respectively.
Future meaning is conveyed by various means, including the present tense:
Tomorrow is Tuesday. Cf 4.13ff.
Stative and dynamic senses of verbs
We draw a broad distinction between the STATIVE and DYNAMIC senses in which verbs are used to refer to situations (¢f4.11). Verbs like be, have, and know have stative senses when they refer to a single unbroken state of affairs:
J have known the Penfolds ail my life.
Verbs like drive, speak, and attack have dynamic senses, as can be seen when they are used with the present perfect to refer to a sequence of separate events:
I have driven sports cars for years.
[a] A verb may shift in sense from one category to another. Have, for example,.is usually stative: She has two sisters. But it has a dynamic sense in We have dinner at Maxim's quite frequenily.
(b] Dynamic verb senses can regularly occur with the imperative and progressive, but stative verb senses cannot:
Learn how to swim. *Know how to swim.
I am learning to swim. *] am knowing how to swim.
In general, only dynamic senses follow do in a pseudo-cleft sentence (cf 18.20):
What she did was (to) /earn Spanish.
*What she did was (to} know Spanish.
Tense
Simple present tense for present time
(a) The STATE PRESENT is used with stative verb senses to refer to a single unbroken state of affairs that has existed in the past, exists now, and is likely to continue to exist in the future. It includes the ‘timeless present’, which refers to ‘eternal truths’ such as Two and three make five or to less extreme instances of timelessness, such as The British Isles have a temperate climate. It also includes more restricted time spans:
Margaret is tall. He does not believe in hard work.
We live near Toronto. This soup tastes delicious.
(b) The HABITUAL PRESENT is used with dynamic verb senses to refer to events that repeatedly occur without limitation on their extension into the past or future. Like the state present, it includes the ‘timeless
NOTE
44
()
Time, tense, and the verb 49
present’, such as Water boils at 100°C and The earth moves round the sun, and more restricted time spans:
We go to Brussels every year. She doesn’t smoke.
She makes her own dresses. Bill drinks heavily.
Whereas the state present always refers to something that applies at the time of speaking or writing, this is very often not so for the habitual present: We can say Bill drinks heavily when Bill is not actually drinking.
The INSTANTANEOUS PRESENT is used with dynamic verb senses to refer to a single event with little or no duration that occurs at the time of speaking or writing. It is used only in certain restricted situations; for example, in commentaries and self-commentaries (Black passes the ball to Fernandez, I enclose a form of application) and with performative verbs that refer to the speech acts performed by uttering the sentences (J apologize for my behaviour, We thank you for your recent enquiry).
Itisa sign of the habitual present that one can easily add a frequency adverbial (eg:
often, once a day, every year) to specify the frequency of the event.
Simple present tense for past and future
There are three additional kinds of uses of the simple present that are best seen as extended interpretations of the basic meanings of 4.3.
(a)
@®)
(©)
The HISTORIC PRESENT refers to past time, and is characteristic of popular narrative style. It conveys the dramatic immediacy of an event happening at the time of narration:
Just as we arrived, up comes Ben and slaps me on the back as if we’re life-long friends.
It is used as a stylistically marked device in fictional narrative for imaginary events in the past:
The crowd swarms around the gateway, and seethes with delighted anticipation; excitement grows, as suddenly their hero makes his entrance...
The simple present is optionally used to refer to the past with verbs of communication or reception of communication to suggest that the information communicated is still valid:
Jack tells me that the position is still vacant.
The Bible prohibits the committing of adultery.
I hear that you need an assistant.
I understand that the game has been postponed.
In main clauses, the simple present typically occurs with time- position adverbials to suggest that a future event is certain to take place:
NOTE
45
NOTE
4.6
50 The semantics of the verb phrase
The plane leaves for Ankara at eight o’clock tonight.
The use of the simple present for future time is much more common in subordinate clauses, particularly in conditional and temporal clauses
(of 14.11):
He’ll do it if you pay him.
Pll let you know as soon as I hear from her.
Somewhat akin to the other optional uses of the simple present for past time is its use in reference to writers, composers, etc, and their works (ef 19.13):
Dickens draws his characters from the London underworld of his time.
Beethoven’s Ninth is his best composition.
Simple past tense for past time
The simple past is used to refer to a situation set at a definite time in the past.
(a) The EVENT past is used with dynamic verb senses to refer to a single definite event in the past. The event may take place over an extended period (The Normans invaded England in 1066) or at a point of time (The plane left at 9 a.m.).
(b) The HABITUAL past is used with dynamic verb senses to refer to past events that repeatedly occur: We spent our holidays in Spain when we were children.
(c) The sTATE PAST is used with stative verb senses to refer to a single unbroken state of affairs in the past: I once liked reading novels.
{a] The habitual and state meanings of the past can be paraphrased by used to.
{b] The definite time may be conveyed by a previous or subsequent time expression in the linguistic context, for example by a time adverbial such as in 1066. It may also be presupposed on the basis of knowledge shared by speaker and hearer. For example, Your brother was at school with me presupposes as common knowledge that a specific period of time is spent at school.
Special uses of the simple past tense
There are three special uses of the simple past (¢f 4.9 Note):
(a) In INDIRECT SPEECH or INDIRECT THOUGHT (cf 14.17/), the simple past in the reporting verb may cause the verb in the subordinate reported clause to be backshifted into the simple past: She said that she knew you; I thought you were in Paris.
(b) The aATTITUDINAL Past is optionally used to refer more tentatively (and therefore more politely) to a present state of mind: Did you want to see me now?;, I wondered whether you are | were free tomorrow (of 14.18).
(c) The HYPOTHETICAL Past is used in certain subordinate clauses, especially if-clauses, to convey what is contrary to the belief or expectation of the speaker (cf 14.12):
47
4.8
Aspect 51
If you knew him, you wouldn’t say that. [
If she asked me, I would help her. [2]
I wish I had a memory like yours. (3]
The implication of [1] is that you do not know him, of (2] that she will not ask me, and of [3] that Ido not have such a memory.
Aspect
ASPECT is a grammatical category that reflects the way in which the action of a verb is viewed with respect to time. We recognize two aspects in English, the perfect and the progressive, which may combine in a complex verb phrase, and are marked for present or past tense:
present perfect has examined
past perfect had examined
present progressive is examining
past progressive was examining
present perfect progressive has been examining past perfect progressive had been examining The present perfect
The present perfect is used to refer to a situation set at some indefinite time within a period beginning in the past and leading up to the present.
(a) The STATE PRESENT PERFECT is used with stative verb senses to refer to a state that began in the past and extends to the present, and will perhaps continue in the future:
They have been unhappy for a long time.
We have lived in Amsterdam for five years.
She has owned the house since her father died.
I've always liked her.
(b) The EVENT PRESENT PERFECT is used with dynamic verb senses to refer to one or more events that have occurred at some time within a period leading up to the present. We distinguish two subtypes:
1 The event or events are reported as news; usually they have occurred shortly before the present time:
The Republicans have won the election.
I’ve just got a new job.
There’s been a serious accident.