Appunti Linguistica inglese, 2 semestre

THE ENGLISH MOOD SYSTEM

We distinguish three moods: indicative (facts), imperative (non-facts) and subjunctive

(hypothetical situation, unreal). In English:

1. The indicative, “fact mood”, expresses situations as facts. Through declarative or

interrogative (closed: yes/no, tag, alternative; or open: wh-?).

2. The subjunctive, “thought mood”, or “what-if mood”, expresses situations as

contrary-to fact occurrences or hypotheses.

3. The imperative, “will mood”, expresses situations that are desired by speaker/writer

to become true. Imperative => unbalancing power between the people who use it

(controller and controlled).

1. The indicative mood

Speaker/writer considers the situation expressed by the verb phrase to be factual or

conceivably real. It covers the standard uses (non-modal uses) of simple and

compound tenses in English.

learn

e.g.: we in tragedy that his purposes are not always our ow

have acted

we with resolve for several reasons

2. The subjunctive mood

Situations that are hypothetical or otherwise contrary to fact.

PDE: subjunctive mood can be formally expressed through:

- modal verbs and semi-modal verbs

- the modal past (and modal past perfect): past tense to talk about present time,

might+have

- if-clauses

- that-clauses after certain verbs (insist, recommend, beg, ask, be required), adjs

(advisable, imperative, desirable), nouns (decision, requirement, resolution).

e.g.: I recommend that he leave

- clauses following verbs of wishing (I wish I were rich)

We can recognize three types of subjunctive in modern English:

• formulaic subjunctive: typically used in formulas expressing wishes (and in other

fixed expressions). Positive wishes or blessings are sometimes called optatives (a-b)

while negative ones or curses are sometimes called maledictives (c).

c.God save the Queen

d.God bless America

e.Satan take your soul!

•mandative subjunctive: expresses some sort of obligation, orders or intentions.

Typically appears after nouns, verbs, and adjectives expressing requests, orders,

compulsions and the like. It is rare in BrE but used quite extensively in AmE.

f.I demand that he be executed

g.It is imperative that he show respect and humbleness

h.There’s a standing order that any private present his weapon for inspection

•‘were’ subjunctive: expresses that the situation is a hypothetical wish. Unlike the

formulaic subjunctive it is used not in fixed expressions. It is typically represented with

the form “were” across the board – even with the 1st and 3rd person singular

subjects.

e.g.: if I were you, I’d put that gun away, son

3. The imperative mood

The situation expressed is desired to such a degree that the speaker or writer feels

that he or she can order other people make that situation happen. Different uses:

a. Directive imperative: typical use of the imperative in English. In English, it

covers the following subfunctions (giving orders, command, instruction, request,

advice, permission, prayer).

We have to bear in mind that the use of directive imperative presupposes, or

constructs, an unequal power relationship between speaker/writer and

hearer/reader. But there are differences across functions: giving

orders/commands (speaker/writer is required to have some sort of authority

over hearer/reader in order to use the imperative).

- Kill him now!

- Stand at ease! / Stand up now!

These following uses of the imperative: speaker/writer does not have authority

over hearer; these uses are nevertheless sanctioned by unequal power

relationships:

Stand up, please (request)

Press play on tape (instruction)

Buy that CD. It’s the best they’ve ever recorded (advice*)

Take £50 in the safe, sonny (permission) expert power

*advice is based on a specific kind of power called (speaker/writer

has access to knowledge that hearer/reader does not have access to)

b. Other functions: here the directive-function is less apparent or perhaps not

even applicable at all

- Go to hell (rejection, insult)

- Come on, you stupid car; Enjoy the movie (wish)

- Say another word and I’ll… (threat)

Directive use of imperative has to do with basically social issues like power relations

=> the context of situation plays a major role.

SYNTAX

It deals with the structure units such as phrases, clauses and sentences and the rules

according to which words combine to create them. Also, the word order is important to

underline the function of each word. In English declarative clauses the subject is place

before the verb, while the object after (unmarked order of constituents –> more

common: SVO order. Modifiers (which accompany words and modify the head) are

divided into pre-modifiers, when they precede the head, and post-modifiers, when

they follow it. The headword is the most important element in the phrase; the

syntactic unit wouldn’t make sense without it. Phrases can be of five types: noun

phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), adjective phrase (AdjP), adverb phrase (AdvP) and

prepositional phrase (PP). They are characterized by which word is at the head of the

phrase. VERB PHRASE

It consists of a head verb wither alone or accompanied by one or more other verbs.

There are different types of verbs which have different functions: lexical verb , primary

verbs functioning as main verbs, primary auxiliaries and modal auxiliary verbs.

Auxiliary verbs are used to express grammatical categories such as aspect, voice and

modality and to signal negation and clause type. Modal auxiliaries combine with the

lexical verb to express modality such as obligation/necessity, permission/ability,

possibility, prediction. VPs can be:

- finite: they contain a verb in its finite or tensed form (which mean that the verb

indicates tense).

- Non-finite: they contain a verb in its non-finite form (infinite, present participle,

past participle).

The English VP can give info about:

- tense (present or past) marked through verb inflections. The present tense is

signalled by the base form of the verb or the -s inflection of the 3rd singular. It is used

for present time, past time in the historic present or future. The past tense is marked

with -ed inflection or irregular allomorphs while the future tense has no verb

inflections but uses structures like the modal will/shall+verb: to predict future events

not so obvious; when the future reference is based on a decision taken at the

moment; to make a promise; to offer to do something; to make an offer and suggest

to do something. The form be+going to+infinitive is used: to make predictions based

on present evidence; to take about plans, decisions and intentions. Be

about+infinitive is used to talk about future events considered as occurring in the

immediate future. Be to+infinitive: is used to refer to immediate future events, seen

as obligations or part of a fixed plan. The present progressive is used to talk about

something already organised. The present simple form can be used to make

references to fixed events in the future that cannot be changed such as schedules,

timetables, conference programmes, arrangements.

- Aspect: there are two aspects in English. The perfect aspect signals that the

action occurred at an earlier time and usually for a certain period, which might include

the time of utterance. It is constructed using the auxiliary have followed by the -ed

participle of the lexical verb. The progressive aspect indicates that the action is in

progress, so it’s unfinished at the time of utterance. Moreover, it is usually adopted for

events or states that last for a specific and limited amount of time and it is

constructed using the auxiliary verb be followed by the -ing form of the lexical verb.

Both aspects can be then combined with present or past tenses, leading to the

creation of: present/past perfect, present/past progressive, present/past perfect

progressive.

- Voice: it is a grammatical category expressed by some verbs. Transitive verbs can

occur in the active (the subject the agent and performs the action expressed) by the

VP) or the passive voice (the subject is the recipient of the action and is constructed

get,

with be+ed participle form of the lexical verb, but can also be constructed using

even though it’s more informal). The massive is employed in specific registers and

when one does not know or doesn’t want to specify the agent or if one wants to

highlight the receiver.

- Modality: modal verbs belong to the germanic core of the language and function as

auxiliary verbs and are followed by the base form of the lexical verb. English also has

semi-modals, multiword verbs which behave like modal verbs. They’re not inflected

and are followed by the base form of the lexical verb. They express a wide range of

meanings and morality can be either deontic/intrinsic (It refers to actions or events

that can be controlled by humans) or epistemic/extrinsic (it refers to different levels of

likelihood or certainty of a specific event or state).

THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE

It is a phrase which has an adjective as its head and can consist of a single adjective

or of an adjective with pre or post-modifiers. Modifiers can be single words, phrases or

clauses and some examples of adjective+modifier are: extremely important/ very

unhappy with your decision. A head adjective is frequently pre-modified by an

adverb, while frequent pre-modifiers are adverbs or occasionally a NP (he’s fourteen

years old). Frequent post-modifiers are adverbs or a PP made up of Prep+NP (I’m

unhappy with your decision), a preposition followed by a VP (I’m quite good at

playing tennis), a that-clause (I’m sure that…) a to-indefinitive clause (glad to see),

an -ing clause introduced by a preposition (unhappy about not being..)

THE ADVERB PHRASE

It is a phrase which has an adverb as its head. They can consist of a single adverb or

of an adverb accompanied by modifying elements and convey information related to

circumstances such as manner, frequency, time, modality, place, degree and point of

view or it links clauses. They can modify a VP ( she arrived extremely late) or a

clause (if they express modality, point of view or evaluation: Perhaps you should

invite her) and their position in the clause changes according to their syntactic role.

Frequency adverbs are placed between the subject and the verb.

THE PROPOSITIONAL PHRASE

This phrase has a preposition as a head, which is followed by another element which

is usually a NP, e.g. ‘in the garden’. The element which follows the preposition is

called complement of the preposition (C) which may sometimes be a clause (e.g. the

company for which I work). PPS can occur in different positions in clauses and can

post-modify head nouns e.g. a man with a gun. Sometimes they can cause ambiguity,

for example ‘the policeman stoped the man with a gun’ has 2 possible meanings:

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