Lingua inglese 1

Auxiliary Verbs and Semantic Categories of Lexical Verbs

Auxiliary verbs occur before a main verb and qualify the meaning of the main verb- Jack the Ripper could be (aux.) staying (main v.) there​. We have 3 major classes:

1. Lexical verbs​ (/full verbs) function as main verbs​- (​run, eat, think)
2. Primary verbs​ function both as auxiliary and main verbs​- (​be, have, do)
3. Modal verbs function as auxiliary verbs ​- (​can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must)

Lexical verbs are more common and used in conversation and fiction. Semantic categories of lexical verbs include:

• Activity verbs
• Communication verbs
• Mental verbs
• Causative verbs
• Verbs of occurrence
• Verbs of existence or relationship
• Verbs of aspect

Activity verbs refer to an action performed intentionally by an agent (they can be transitive or intransitive)- he bought biscuits and milk. Common activity verbs include: bring, buy, come, follow, get, give, go, leave, make, meet, move, pay, play, put, run, show, take, try, use, work.

Communication verbs...

verbs

Involve communication activities, particularly describing speech and writing

• You said you didn't have it
• They asked me if I wanted to see how the money was spent
• Ask, call, claim, describe, offer, say, speak, suggest, talk, tell, thank, write

Mental verbs

Refer to mental states and activities (not physical action but emotions and attitudes, perceptions, receiving communication)

• I think it was Freddie
• I wanted very much to give him my book
• Think, know, love, want, see, taste, read, hear, touch

We tend to find mental verbs mostly in conversation and fiction:

• Believe, consider, expect, feel, find,
• Hear, know, like, listen, love, mean,
• Need, read, remember, see, suppose,
• Think, understand, want, wonder

Causative verbs

Indicate that some person or thing helps to bring about a new state of affairs, the information enables the formulation of precise questions

• What caused you to be ill?
• This would help protect that

1. species• Allow, help, let, require, cause, force
2. Become, change, develop, die, grow, happen, occur
3. Appear, contain, exist, include, indicate, involve, live, look, represent, seem, stand, stay
4. Begin, continue, keep, start, stop
5. Many patients are quite fit when admitted to the surgical

1. ward (physical meaning) - I must admit it gave me a bit of a shock (mental meaning)
2. Most common lexical verb: say
3. Speakers and writers rely heavily on say to report the speech of themselves or others. It is very common with the past tense:
   • You said you didn't have it
   • No use sitting about, he said
   • He said this campaign raised doubts about free choice
   But also with present tense:
   • So he says!
   • Rachel says she thinks that he is acting very badly
4. get
   • Very common in conversation
   • To obtain something: see if they can get some of that beer
   • Moving to or away from something (activity): get in the car
   • Causing something to move (causative): we ought to get these wedding pictures into an album of some sort
   • Causing something to happen (causative): it gets people talking again
   • Changing from one state to another (occurrence): she's getting ever so sad now
   • Understanding something (mental): do you get it?
   • Get in the perfect form

It's got little to do with it.

Common verbs- Go/come

- Know, think, see, want, mean (report states of awareness, certainty, perception, and desire)

In the past tense these verbs report the thinking and perception of fictional characters:

- She knew what had happened to them

'See' is used to report scientific observation:

- I have seen this kind of disease in Angola

- Give (with activity meanings):

- She was too shy to give him more than a covert glance

Repeated use of common verbs

● She and Cathy might like to come because she did say to me, how is Cathy and I said she was.....

● She knows about Cathy's problem?

● Yes, she said, do you think Cathy would mind if I rang her? And I said no, I'm sure she wouldn't

Regular and irregular verb endings

Mark third person singular with an -s suffix and past tense with a -ed suffix

● Base - infinitive, present tense except third person singular and subjunctive

● Base + suffix (e)s

–> third person singular tense

Base + suffix –ing​ –> ing-participles (as in progressive aspects)

Base + suffix – ed -> simple past tense and –ed participles

Look - looks - looking - looked

Move - moves - moving - moved

Try - tries - trying - tried

Push - pushes - pushing - pushed

Reduce - reduces - reducing - reduced

Irregular verbs

Class 1 ​A​ –t​ suffix marks past tense and –ed​ participles:

Build – built

Send – sent

Spend – spent

Learn - learnt

Class 2 ​A​ –t​ or –d suffix marks the past tense and –ed​ participle and the base vowel changes:

Mean – meant – meant

Think – thought – thought

Sell – sold – sold

Tell – told - told

Class 3 ​ ​The regular –ed​ suffix marks past tense but an​ (e)n suffix marks –ed participles

Show- showed - shown

Class 4 ​ ​No suffix

Linguistics that deals with the structure or form of words. It is important for learners to understand how words are constructed and how they can be disassembled to arrive at meaning.

Much humour is based on the process of disassembling and assembling words​ ​- «what’s the most shocking city in the world? Electricity»- «what do you call a dance for people who don’t like each other? Avoidance.»

Morphology deals with the internal structure​ of words: many words can be subdivided into smaller meaningful units called morphemes. It has two main subdivisions: inflection and derivation.

- Inflection:​ deals with patterns of word structure that are determined by the role of words in sentences.

- Derivation:​ creates new words with different meanings, e.g. the adverb quickly from the adjective quick.

Morpheme: ​For example, the word headphones consists of the three morphemes head, phone, and -s; the word ringleader

consists of three morphemes, ring, lead, and -er. Some of these morphemes may stand alone as independent words (head, phone, ring, lead), others must always be attached to some other morpheme (-er, -s).

FREE: are single units which can stand alone or act as a base. They can be:

• Functional
• Lexical

A word may consist of one or more morphemes, which shall, however, not be confused with its prosodic elements, i.e. its syllables. EX: the noun moralize contains the three syllables mo-, ra-, lize, but only two morphemes - moral and -ize.

Let's compare the syllables and the morphemes: contrary to the syllables, each morpheme in "moralize" has a stable "meaning", which remains the same even if the respective morphemes appear in a different context - e.g. in im-moral, moral-ity or in to moral-ize.

Inflection: process by which affixes combine with roots to indicate