Chapter 1: Grammatical categories of verbs in general English

Coursework
Contents

Introduction.................…………………………………………………………….

Chapter 1:Grammatical categories of verbs in general English.
1.1 Importance and challenges of verbs in studied language.
1.2 Verbs and their grammatical categories.
Chapter 2: The syntactic and grammatical categories of the verbs.
2.1 Verb inflection and stems in learning English.
2.2 Distribution learning of syntactic categories.
Conclision
Used literatures
Introduction
Verbs are the action words in a sentence that describe what the subject is doing. Along with nouns, verbs are the main part of a sentence or phrase, telling a story about what is taking place. In fact, without a verb, full thoughts can’t be properly conveyed, and even the simplest sentences, such as Maria sings, have one. Actually, a verb can be a sentence by itself, with the subject, in most case you, implied, such as, Sing! and Drive!

When learning the rules of grammar, schoolchildren are often taught that verbs are ‘doing’ words, meaning they signify the part of the sentence which explains the action taking place: He ran away, she eats chocolate cake on Sundays, the horses gallop across the fields. Ran, eats and gallop are the ‘action’ parts of those sentences, thus they are the verbs. However, it can be confusing because not all verbs are easily identifiable as action: I know your name, Jack thought about it, we considered several applications. These are non-action verbs, i.e. those that describe a state of being, emotion, possession, sense or opinion. Other non-action verbs include include love, agree, feel, am, and have.

How to Recognize a Verb

As you can see from the examples above, one clue to help you recognize a verb is its location compared to the subject. Verbs almost always come after a noun or pronoun. These nouns and pronouns are referred to as the subject. The verb thought comes after the noun Jack, so the action Jack (subject) was taking was thinking (verb).

Mark eats his dinner quickly.
We went to the market.
You write neatly in your notebook.
They thought about all the prizes in the competition.
Here are some other ways to recognize verbs in a sentence:

If you’re not sure if a word is a verb, ask yourself, “Can I do ______?”

Can I think, wonder, walk, yawn? Yes, so these are verbs.

You can also ask, ”What is happening?”

In the sentence Mark eats his dinner quickly, what is happening? Eating is happening, so eating is the verb.

In the sentence They thought about all the prizes what is happening? Thought (thinking) is happening, so thought is the verb.

Chapter 1
Grammatical categories of verbs in general English
1.1 Importance and challenges of verbs in studied language.

Verbs are very important for language development because they allow children to start building early sentences. Every sentence needs a verb. And the choice of verb determines many of the grammatical forms in a sentence.

A verb is a word that come from the Latin word verbum. It is a part of speech that is used to describe motion or convey a subject in action. Examples of verbs include: learn, walk, run, read etc. in most languages a verb can be infected or modified to portray a specific tense, voice or mood. There are also verbs that also have to agree with a certain gender, argument or person. Verbs play a vital role in english grammar and have multitude of assignments.
A verb must have specific tense. Present — indicates that the action is actually being carried out at that moment. Past tense means that the action has already taken place and future tense means that the action will be carried out at a later time (future).
A verb is a very important part of any sentence. There are two main functions that a verb can play: there are those verbs that puts a subject into motion and other verbs offer more clarification on the same subject. Here are some examples:
My father “smiled” at the well-arranged table.
My father is the stalled subject and smiled is the verb in the sentence.
The overworked computer exploded.
The over worked computer is the stalled subject and exploded is the verb and it is in past tense.
The most important thing that you need to note is that every subject must have a verb. If this rule is not followed you will end up with a fragment — a big writing error.
You should always consider the function of a word before you use it as a verb. There are many English words that have more than one function when used in a sentence. You will find out that a word can be a noun, verb or even a modifier. As a result of this, you must pay close attention to how a word is used in a sentence.
A good example is crunch. It is a word that can be used as a verb and as a noun too. Crunch is a doing word that you can do. You can crunch cockroaches under your foot. You can crunch popcorn with your friends. You can also crunch numbers. Also crunch can be a noun — crunch of potatoes is a thing that you can hear, hence a noun.
It is easy to spot a doing word in any sentence. Sing, paint, chew or dance, what do these words show? They are simply showing there is action — action that the subject of the sentence can do. That’s why words like these are called action verbs.
Here is an example John sneezes loudly. Sneezing (sneezes) is something that John can do, hence it is an action verb.
If you find some sentences that you cannot identify the action verb, you take a closer look at the sentence and ask yourself, what is this something that a person (subject) can do? Whatever your answer is, that’s the action verb.
Take an example: during break time, I will call my dad.
There is only one thing that you can do in that sentence, and that is “call”. You cannot do during or dad. In the example sentence you will end up with call as the only action verb in the sentence.
You should also know a linking verb when you see it in a sentence. These are special kinds of verbs that are not used to describe an action, but they are used to connect the subject to other added relevant information.
Here is an example:
Esther “is” my sister.
“Is” is not something that Esther can do, but it is used to connect the subject to added information that is about Esther who is the subject of the sentence. Here are some example of true linking verbs: be (were, am, are being, has been, might have been etc.), seem and become. There is no other way these verbs can be used except as true linking verbs.

There are ways that you can use to identify when the verb is used as an action verb or a linking verb. If you can replace the verb with am, are or is and still get a logical sentence, then you have a linking verb. But if the sentence makes no sense, then you have an action verb. For example: Jack tasted my food — replace tasted with is or are, you will get Jack are my food. This makes no sense meaning that the verb tasted was used as an action verb. The substation method does not work with the word appear, you have to go further and check the verb function in the sentence.

Example: Jane appeared in my doorway.
Appear is something that Jane can do regardless of what you may want.
Jane appeared sad to me. In this sentence the word appear is used as a linking verb. Liking Jane, the subject, to added information of looking sad.

Much of the style advice given so far revolves around the importance of verbs. Think of your sentence as a machine, and the verb as the engine that makes the machine work. Like machines, sentences can function efficiently or inefficiently, and the use of a strong verb is one way to make them work effectively. Also like machines, sentences can be simple or complex. Here are some key principles regarding the effective use of verbs in your sentences. While effective sentences may occasionally deviate from these principles, try to follow them as often as possible:

Keep the subject and the verb close together; avoid separating them with words or phrases that could create confusion
Place the verb near the beginning of the sentence (and close to the subject)
Maintain a high verb/word ratio in your sentence
Prefer active verb constructions over passive ones
Avoid “to be” verbs (am, is, are, was, were, being, been, be) whenever possible
Try to turn nominalizations (abstract nouns) back into verbs.

1.2. Verb and their Grammatical Categories

The finite verbs in the contrasted languages has six common morphological categories which are realized partly with the help of synthetic (simple) means (by inflections) and partly through different analytical (compound, consists of at least two verbal elements) forms. Thus the categories of person and number are realized in both contrasted languages synthetically, whereas the category of tense is realized both synthetically and analytically. Verbs present a system of finite and non-finite forms.

The non-finite forms (or verbals) are four in number, they are: the infinitive, the gerund, the present participle, the past participle.

The verb in its finite form possesses the morphological categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice and mood.
Category of person expresses the relation of the action and its doer (agent) to the speaker, showing if the action is performed by the speaker (1st person), someone addressed by the speaker, addressee (2nd person) or someone/ something other than the speaker or the person addressed (the 3rd person).
Category of number shows whether the action is performed by one or more than one persons or non-person (for to be: am/is/are; was/were). We find three persons and two numbers in finite verbs.
The category of tense in English (as well as in Ukrainian and Russian) expresses the relationship between the time of the action and the time of speaking. Time and tense are not the same thing. ‘Time’ (consisting of past, present and future) is a concept; tense is a grammatical device. Unlike Ukrainian, where there are three tenses: Present, Future and Past, English has two distinct tense forms: Present tense and Past tense, though plenty of ways of talking about future. Besides, there is one more tense in English, the so-called future in the past, when a future situation is viewed from some moment in the past.

In English, the present simple is the unmarked tense. This means it is used for very general time where specific marking for non-present time is unimportant and so unnecessary. To put this another way, any period that includes the moment of speaking (whether extending into the past or the future) can be regarded as present time and use a present tense. The past simple, marked usually by inflection, is a marked tense. Conceptually, the present tense form ties the situation described closely to the situation of utterance: I live here now. The past tense form makes the situation described more remote from the situation of utterance: I lived there then. The situations in the future are treated differently. They are inherently non-factual, but can be considered as either relatively certain (i.e. perceived as close to happening) or unlikely or even impossible (i.e. perceived as remote from happening). The verb form that is traditionally called ‘the future tense’ is actually expressed via modal verb which indicates the relative possibility of an event: I will live here.

Aspect – perfective or progressive. In order to talk about aspect, we have to look inside the situation.5on of aspect is accomplished via the perfect or progressive forms of the verb. If we want to emphasize that the action or state:

Is in some way completed or achieved, though still relevant, this is called perfective aspect and is indicated by the use of HAVE + past participle of the lexical verb. I have written the letter (so now I can send it).

Is/was in progress or temporary or uncompleted, this is called progressive aspect and is indicated by using BE + present participle. I am/was writing the letter.
Voice: active or passive. A distinction between active and passive is often called a distinction of voice. It offers different ways of focusing attention on various parts of information.
When you talk about the person or thing that performs an action, you use the active voice. Mr Smith locks the gate at 6 o’clock every night. The storm destroyed dozens of trees. I deny that, said Joan. We know you’ve been cheating us. Why have you done it? Thus, the active voice shows that the person or thing denoted by the subject of a sentence is the agent (the doer of an action) expressed by the predicate verb.

When you want to focus on the person or thing that is affected by an action, rather than the person or thing that performs the action, you use the passive voice. The gate is locked at 6 o’clock every night. Dozens of trees were destroyed. The news will be announced after dinner. The child knew that she was being praised. Nearly all the furniture will be taken out of the room. I was not allowed to chat. Trespassers will be prosecuted. The passive voice serves to show that the person or thing denoted by the subject of a sentence is not the agent (the doer of the action) expressed by the predicate verb but is the object of this action. The subject of the Passive verb does not act but is acted upon, it undergoes an action. To form the passive voice, all tenses use the corresponding active tense of BE + past participle. The chair was broken in the fight. Only transitive verbs can have a passive form.

Mood. A distinction (opposition) between indicative (for facts), imperative (for requests, instructions) and subjunctive (for non-facts, hypotheses, and suppositions) is usually called a distinction of mood.
The imperative is the same as the base form of verb. You use the imperative to ask or tell someone to do something, or to give advice, warnings, or instructions on how to do something. Start when you hear the bell. Don’t go so fast. Pass the salt. Hurry up!
There are few subjunctive forms in modern English, which usually finds other ways of indicating that the events being talked about are uncertain or hypothetical. There are two types of subjunctive:
Base of the verb for all verbs and all persons is used to express wishes. God save the Queen! Bless you! Long live the President! Heaven help us!
Were-subjunctive. The verb BE can use WERE for all persons in certain constructions.

If I were rich, I would change the world. If only I were young again. Suppose she were to win the championship.

CHAPTER 2
The syntactic and grammatical categories of the verbs.
2.1 Verb inflection and stems in learning English language.
Verb inflection in English language refers to the modification of a verb to indicate various grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, mood, and voice. English verbs are inflected based on the tense and number of the subject.
The simple present tense is used to describe actions that are currently happening or happen regularly. In the third person singular form, the verb typically takes the suffix "-s" or "-es", such as "He walks to work every day."
The simple past tense is used to describe actions that have already occurred. The past tense form for regular verbs typically ends in "-ed", such as "She walked to the store yesterday."
The present participle form of the verb ends in "-ing" and is used to describe an ongoing action, such as "I am walking to the store."
The past participle form of the verb typically ends in "-ed" or "-en" and is used in the perfect tense and passive voice, such as "I have walked to the store" or "The car was driven by John."
English also has various irregular verbs, which do not follow the standard "-ed" pattern for the past tense and past participle. Examples of irregular verbs include "go" (went, gone), "be" (was/were, been), and "eat" (ate, eaten).
Overall, understanding verb inflection is important for effective communication in English, as it allows for clear and accurate expression of actions and events.
In English language, a verb stem refers to the base form of a verb without any inflectional suffixes. Learning verb stems is important because they serve as the foundation for the various forms of a verb, including its inflected forms.

The infinitive form of a verb, which is the base form of the verb with the word "to" added before it, is a common example of a verb stem. For instance, the verb "to walk" has the stem "walk", which is used to form other verb tenses and forms, such as "walked", "walking", and "will walk".

Another important verb stem in English is the present participle, which is formed by adding "-ing" to the base form of the verb. The present participle is used to form the present continuous tense and can also function as an adjective or a noun. For instance, the present participle of the verb "walk" is "walking".
Irregular verbs, on the other hand, have unique verb stems that do not follow the standard "-ed" or "-ing" patterns. For example, the past tense of the irregular verb "go" is "went", which is not formed by adding "-ed" to the verb stem "go".
Overall, learning verb stems is essential for understanding how English verbs are formed and used in various contexts. It enables learners to conjugate verbs in different tenses and forms, thereby allowing them to communicate more effectively in English.
Enindhilyakwa verb stems may be simple or complex. New verbs are formed with a particular suffix: this can be a derivational suffix that creates verbs from nominals (inchoative, factitive), orwhich has a valency-changing function (reflexive, reciprocal, causative). Verbs borrowed from English or Kriol are admitted into the language by the addition of an element that takes the inflection. All of these suffixes are very productive. They carry the tense and aspect inflection and they determine the conjugational class of the resulting stems. In Enindhilyakwa, as in some other Northern Australian languages, some stem-forming suffixes can be traced back to former independent verbs. Verbs fall into six main conjugation classes, to be described in Chapter 6. Class membership is largely determined by the final syllable of the stem. This can be one of the derivational suffixes, or it can be a recurring stem-final submorphemic element. This chapter describes these final syllables that allocate polysyllabic stems to the various conjugations, and investigates the common semantics of stems ending in the same syllable. I will argue that the majority of Enindhilyakwa verb stems are not monomorphemic, historically, but that they consist of a former finite verb root, preceded by an uninflecting element. Some of these inflecting verb roots only survive in fossilised compound stems, whereas others are still attested as synchronically independent verbs, in Enindhilyakwa and/or in other languages. One of the reasons to claim that Enindhilyakwa polysyllabic stems are historically complex is that a number of recurring stem-final submorphemic elements can be identified. For example, the stems in all involve the final syllable +bi-, they all belong to conjugation, most of them are intransitive, and most of them share the semantics of expelling something through the mouth (all data in this chapter come from the dictionary unless indicated otherwise):
-errek+bi- ‘vomit’ -errik+bi- ‘throw, collect, spend’
-me+bi- ‘sing’ -yeng+bi- ‘speak’
nyi+bi- ‘grunt’ -yi+bi- ‘swear at’ (JH)
-lyik+bi- ‘go fast, blow away’ -lye+bi- ‘go to fight, make trouble’
-merri+bi- ‘swear’ (JH) -ngeng+bi-jungwV- (REFL) ‘sigh from sadness’
These stems are synchronically tightly fused and unanalyseable, as indicated by the ‘+’ sign. Speakers may feel them to be monolexemic. However, the main point I wish to make in this chapter is that these stems used to be segmentable: although the +bi- segment in is not a synchronically independent verb in Enindhilyakwa, the fact that it recurs in a number of stems that share an element of meaning suggests it may once have been a finite verb root. In other words, these complex stems are fossilised compound structures, consisting of an uninflecting portionfollowed by an archaic verb root. Often, the uninflecting element is not otherwise attested in the language (e.g. *me [cf. -me+bi- ‘sing’]; *lyik [cf. -lyik+bi- ‘go fast, blow away’). In the few cases where we can identify it synchronically, it is either a noun or a verb. For example, -errek+bi-‘vomit’ in involves the noun erra ‘NEUT.vomit’ (allowing for some morpho-phonemic changes,see section 7.6), and -yeng+bi- ‘speak’ involves the incorporated noun yeng- ‘speech, voice’ (cf. proto-Gunwinyguan *yang ‘voice’ [Harvey 2003a]. Examples of an uninflecting element corresponding to a synchronically independent verb stem include -andhabv+me- ‘wonder what you mean’, which contains the stem -andhaba- ‘ask’ , and -ngadhu+wa- ‘to cry for (transitive)’ involves the common verb -ngwadhv- ‘to cry (intransitive)’. Neither +me- or +wa- synchronically occurs as an independent verb.
Prepound: cover term for the uninflecting portion of historical noun+verb compounds, verb+verb compounds and cranberry morph+verb compounds. The majority of prepounds are not attested as free forms, though they may recur in a number of stems. Prepounds may well include former ‘coverbs’, but these no longer exist as an independent word class today, as they are fused to the verb
• Thematic: cover term for the inflecting part of the frozen compounds. Some thematics are synchronically attested as independent verbs, either in Enindhilyakwa or in other languages, whereas others only survive in compound stems
• Derivational suffixes: productive stem-forming elements. They are similar to thematics in that they determine the conjugation of the verb stem and they probably derive from former verb roots - but they differ from thematics in their productivity and structural transparency. Another difference is the fact that the element to which they attach is an independent word.

2.2 Distributional learning of syntactic categories.

Distributional learning of syntactic categories is a cognitive process through which humans acquire knowledge of the grammatical structure of language by identifying patterns in the distribution of words and phrases within sentences. This process is believed to be crucial for the development of syntactic knowledge, as it allows learners to extract regularities in the co-occurrence of words and use them to identify grammatical structures.

In distributional learning, learners use statistical analysis to identify patterns in the distribution of words and phrases within sentences. This involves analyzing the frequency and co-occurrence of words in a large corpus of language data. For example, if the learner observes that the verb "eat" frequently occurs with the noun "food", they may infer that "food" is a noun that typically occurs in the object position of a transitive sentence.Research has shown that humans are able to use distributional learning to acquire syntactic knowledge in a variety of languages, including English, Chinese, and Dutch. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that distributional learning occurs even in the absence of explicit instruction or feedback, indicating that it is a natural and automatic process.

Distributional learning is thought to be facilitated by the human brain's ability to detect statistical regularities in complex linguistic input. This ability is supported by a network of brain regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex and the left inferior frontal gyrus, that are involved in language processing and statistical learning.
Overall, distributional learning of syntactic categories plays a critical role in the acquisition of language, enabling learners to extract regularities in the co-occurrence of words and use them to build a mental model of the grammatical structure of their language.