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participle phrases are not more demonstrative of the thesis in ques-
tion than, say, the attributive uses of nouns in the common form 
(e.g. the inquisitor judgement, the Shakespeare Fund, a Thompson 
way of refusing, etc.) would be demonstrative of the possessive 
case "tendency" to coincide with the bare stem of the noun: the ab-
sence of the possessive nounal form as such can't be taken to testify 
that the "possessive case" may exist without its feature sign. 
CHAPTER XII
FINITE VERB: INTRODUCTION 
§ 1. 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 ex-
tremely complex and intricate system. The peculiar aspect of the 
complexity of this system lies in the fact that, as we have stated be-
fore, the finite verb is directly connected with the structure of the 
sentence as a whole. Indeed, the finite verb, through the working of 
its categories, is immediately related to such sentence-constitutive 
factors as morphological forms of predication, communication 
purposes, subjective modality, subject-object relation, gradation of 
probabilities, and quite a few other factors of no lesser importance.. 
As has been mentioned elsewhere, the complicated character of the 
system in question has given rise to a lot of controversies about the 
structural formation of the finite verb categories, as well as the 
bases of their functional semantics. It would be not an exaggeration 
to say that each fundamental 

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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, taking as an 
example the sphere of the categorial person and number of the 
verb, we are faced with the argument among grammarians about 
the existence or non-existence of the verbal-pronominal forms of 
these categories. In connection with the study of the verbal expres-
sion of time and aspect, the great controversy is going on as to the 
temporal or aspective nature of the verbal forms of the indefinite, 
continuous, perfect, and perfect-continuous series. 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. The ver-
bal voice invites its investigators to exchange mutually opposing 
views regarding both the content and the number of its forms. The 
problem of the subjunctive mood may justly be called one of the 
most vexed in the theory of grammar: the exposition of its struc-
tural properties, its inner divisions, as well as its correlation with 
the indicative mood vary literally from one linguistic author to an-
other. 
On the face of it, one might get an impression that the morphologi-
cal study of the English finite verb has amounted to interminable 
aimless exchange of arguments, ceaseless advances of opposing 
"points of view", the actual aim of which has nothing to do with 
the practical application of linguistic theory to life. However, the 
fallacy of such an impression should be brought to light immedi-
ately and uncompromisingly. 
As a matter of fact, it is the verb system that, of all the spheres of 
morphology, has come under the most intensive and fruitful analy-
sis undertaken by contemporary linguistics. In the course of these 
studies the oppositional nature of the categorial structure of the 
verb was disclosed and explicitly formulated; the paradigmatic sys-
tem of the expression of verbal functional semantics was described 
competently, though in varying technical terms, and the correlation 
of form and meaning in the composition of functionally relevant