Verbal
morphology
Verbal
morphology typically involves many more
grammatical meanings than noun morphology.
a. TENSE refers to the relation between the
time of the situation described by the verb and the moment of speech. You’re probably already familiar with the distinction between
PAST, PRESENT, and, FUTURE. Some languages only make a two-way distinction in
their morphology, between past and
NONPAST or between future and NONFUTURE. For example, English verbs indicate
tense by the presence or absence of -(e)d.
The presence of -(e)d
indicates past tense, its absence indicates nonpast, since this form is used
both for present and future situations.
(2) a. I walk-ed
b. I (will) work-Ø
Future
time is distinguished from present by a separate auxiliary verb, will,
not by tense morphology on the verb. (the null sign Ø in example
(2) indicates the absence of any suffix in a particular position. Linguists sometimes talk about ZERO
MORPHEMES.) In addition to all these possibilities, languages sometimes
subdivide past tense into RECENT PAST (e.g., earlier today) and REMOTE PAST
(e.g., before today), or even three or four degrees of remoteness from the
present moment.
b. ASPECT refers to the time of a situation in
relation to its context. The two major distinctions that languages make are
between PERFECTIVE and IMPERFECTIVE aspect. In imperfective aspect, the
internal temporal structure of a situation (its beginning, middle, or end) is
being presented as important, while in perfective, only the situation as a
whole is important. Quite often, imperfective is used for present events (which
are not complete and whose internal structure is therefore of interest) while
perfective is used for past events (which are usually presented as complete
wholes). However imperfect can also be used in past time, in context like this:
(3) Imperfective perfective
While I was wandering through the
maze, I noticed a strange design on one wall.
Since
the time of noticing occurs entirely
inside the time span of the wandering, the internal structure of the wandering
is important. Thus wander would be
presented in imperfective and notice in perfective. So, often aspect presents the time of each verb with
respect to the other verbs in context, not to a fixed present moment.
Sometimes, language also distinguishes
between two types of imperfective aspect, called HABITUAL and PROGRESSIVE. Habitual
aspect refers to situations that occur repeatedly or typically, such as
‘He is empties the trash on Tuesdays’. progressive refers to one-time or
on-going events, such as ‘He is emptying the trash now’
You will also encounter something called
PERFECT ASPECT. It corresponds in meaning to the English auxiliary verb ‘have’
and is often translated ‘have already’. It is not the same as perfective
aspect; in fact, it is really more like a tense than an aspect.
aspect
n
a
term used to denote the activity, event, or state described by a verb, for example
whether the activity is ongoing or completed. Two types of aspect are commonly recognized:
A. lexical
aspect (or inherent lexical aspect)
refers to the internal semantics
of
verbs, which can be grouped into a number of categories:
1 states, verbs that refer to unchanging conditions
(see STATIVE VERB), for example be, have, want
2 activities, verbs referring to processes with no
inherent beginning or end point, for example play, walk, breathe
3 accomplishments, which are durative (last
for a period of time) but have an inherent end point, for example read a book, write a novel
4 achievements, which are nondurative and have an inherent
end point, for example finish,
realize, arrive
B.
grammatical aspect,
on the other hand, refers to the resources provided by a language (such as
verbal auxiliaries, prefixes and suffixes) to encode different perspectives
taken by a speaker towards activities, events, and states.
Languages
make available different options for realizing aspect grammatically.
English
has two grammatical aspects: PROGRESSIVE and PERFECT.
see also TENSE1
c. MOOD refers to the relationship between the
situation reported by the verb and reality. I introduce only two types here:
INDICATIVE (used for statement and questions, and concerned with how things actually are) and IMPERATIVE (used
for commands, and concerned with how the speaker would like things to be)
mood
n
a set of
contrasts which are often shown by the form of the verb and which express the
speaker’s or writer’s attitude to what is said or written.
Three moods
have often been distinguished:
1 indicative mood: the form of the verb used in DECLARATIVE SENTENCEs or
QUESTIONs. For
example:
She
sat down.
Are
you coming?
2 imperative
mood: the form of the verb in IMPERATIVE
SENTENCEs. For example:
Be
quiet!
Put
it on the table!
In English,
imperatives do not have tense or perfect aspect (see ASPECT)
but they may be
used in the progressive aspect. For example:
Be
waiting for me at five.
3 subjunctive mood: the form of the verb often used to express uncertainty, wishes,
desires, etc. In contrast to the indicative mood, the subjunctive usually
refers to non-factual or hypothetical situations. In English, little use of the
subjunctive forms remains. The only remaining forms are:
a.
be (present subjunctive), were (past
subjunctive) of be
b.
the stem form, e.g. have, come, sing of other verbs (present subjunctive
only)
The use of the
subjunctive form is still sometimes found in:
a
that clauses after
certain verbs. For example:
It
is required that she be present.
I
demand that he come at once.
b past subjunctive of be in if
clauses. For example:
If
I were you, I’d go there.
c in some fixed expressions. For example:
So be it.
d. agreement. The most common type of AGREEMENT
is morphology on the verb that indicates something about the subject. For example, in English present tense verbs with
third person singular subjects carry an –s suffix. If the subject is some other
person or number, the suffix is absent.
(4) a. she/he/it ride-s fifteen miles a day.
b. I/we/you/they
ride-Ø fifteen miles a day.
We say that English
verbs ‘agree with their subjects in person and number’.
Stem
and affixes
Morphology has to
do with the various ways that morphemes are combined to form words.
Stems usually have richer semantics than
affixes. That is, stems usually have lexical
meaning, while affixes often (not always) have grammatical meaning.
Thus, stems can usually be glossed by a translation equivalent, while affixes
often require technical linguistic terms.
Stems are usually members of OPEN
CLASSES, while affixes are almost always members of CLOSED CLASSES. ‘Open’ and
‘closed’ refer partly to the number of members in a class, but more to the
possibility of adding new members to the class.
Finally, affixes are always BOUND, while
stems may be either bound or FREE. When we say that morpheme is free, we mean
that it can occur by itself as a word. A morpheme that is bound cannot be a
word by itself but must always be attached to some other morphemes.
In summary the distinction between stems
and affixes is a distinction between the central and peripheral parts of a
word. The normal characteristics of stems and affixes are summarized in the following chart:
STEMS AFFIXES
Usually lexical meaning usually grammatical meaning
Usually from open classes almost always from closed classes
Either bound or free always bound
open
class n
also open set
a group of
words (a WORD CLASS), which contains an unlimited number of items.
Nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs are open-class words. New words
can be added to
these classes, e.g. laser,
e-commerce, chatroom.
The word
classes conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns consist of
relatively few
words, and new words are not usually added to them.
These are called closed classes,
or closed sets.
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