Course paper Theme: Verbs as a part of speech, grammatical categories of verbs

Verbals have no category of number,mood and person.

The infinitive possessesthe category of aspect, i.e. the distinction between the common and the continuous aspect.

· To speak – to be speaking

· To have spoken – to have been speaking

He seems to be enjoying himself quite a lot – the continuous infinitive gives more prominence to the idea of the continuity, which is obviously much stringer than the mere statement.

With the gerund andthe participle things are different. They exhibit no such distinction (no continuous forms). Occasionally, a continuous participle is found: The younger Miss Thorpes being also dancing, Catherine was left to the mercy of Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Allen, between whom she now remained а a continuous Participle I is at least potentially a part of the morphological system of the English verb. But this use appears to be obsolete (archaic).

The Adverbial Modifier.

The term ‘adverbial modifier’ cannot be said to be a very lucky one, as it is apt to convey erroneous (wrong, incorrect) ideas about the essence of this secondary part. They have nothing to do with adverbs and they modify not only verbs.

There are several ways of classifying adverbial modifiers:
1. According to their meaning – not a grammatical classification. However it may acquire some grammatical significance.

2. According to their morphological peculiarities – according to the parts of speech and to the phrase patterns. It has also something to do with word order, and stands in a certain relation to the classification according to meaning.adverb,preposition + noun,a noun without a preposition,infinitive or an infinitive phrase

3. According to the type of their head-word – is the syntactic classification proper. The meaning of the word (phrase) acting as modifier should be compatible with the meaning of the head-word.