Chapter XIII

THE VERB: PERSON AND NUMBER. OTHER MORPHOLOGICAL CATEGORIES

The categories of person and number must be considered in close connection with each other, since in language of the Indo-European family they are expressed simultaneously, i. e. a morpheme expressing person also expresses number, e. g. in Latin the morpheme -nt in such forms as amant, habent, legunt, amabant, habebunt, legerunt, etc., expresses simultaneously the 3rd person and the plural number.

We shall, however, start by considering the meaning of each of these categories, and then proceed to the analysis of their state in Modern English.

The category of person in verbs is represented by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, and it expresses the relation between the speaker, the person or persons addressed, and other persons and things. The 1st person, of course, expresses the speaker or a group of which the speaker makes a part; the 2nd person, the person or persons spoken to, and the 3rd, that person or thing (or those persons or things) which are neither the speaker nor the person(s) spoken to. ¹

The category of number expresses the quantity of the subjects (one or more than one). Speaking deductively, we might build the following system of personal and numerical categories:

1st person singular — the speaker

2nd person singular—one person spoken to

3rd person singular — one person or thing (neither

speaker nor spoken to)

1st person plural — the speaker and another person or other persons

2nd person plural — more than one person spoken to 3rd person plural — more than one person or

— thing (neither speakers nor spoken to)

However, this system does not hold good for the Modern English verb, and this for two reasons,

First, there is no distinction of persons in the plural number. Thus, the form live may, within the plural number, be connected with a subject of any person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd).

¹ It will certainly not do to say that the 3rd person represents that which is spoken about. E.g. in the sentence You must come at once, you is the person spoken about but it is not the 3rd person.

124 The Verb: Person and Number

Second, there is no distinction of numbers in the 1st or 2nd person. Thus, the form live inthese persons may refer both to one and to more than one subject. ^l

So what we actually find in the Modern English verb is this:

3rd person singular — lives All the rest — live

If we analyse this state of things in the Modern English verb in exact terms we shall reach the following conclusion. The opposition lives I live, or, in general terms, stem + s / stem + Ø, expresses the relation: 3rd person singular / any person of both numbers except 3rd person singular.

It is quite clear that the first item of the opposition is marked both in meaning (3rd person sing.) and in form (-s), whereas the second item is unmarked both in meaning (everything except the 3rd person sing.) and in form (zero-inflection). We ought to add that the category of mood is implied in this opposition, the form lives belonging to the indicative mood only, whereas live may also be any person of both numbers in the subjunctive mood (as far as we recognise its existence at all). Another consequence of this analysis is, that the -s -inflection in verbs conveys 4 meanings: 1) 3rd person, 2) singular number, 3) present tense, 4) indicative mood. The present tense is of course characterised by other signs as well: by the absence of the -d (or -t) morpheme denoting the past tense in regular verbs, and by alternation of the root vowel (e. g. [ı] in drinks as against [ae] in drank) in irregular verbs. But in verbs of the type put the -s is the only distinctive sign of the present.

The ending -s having four meanings to express simultaneously is of course a synthetic feature, standing rather by itself in the general structure of Modern English.

Some verbs do not fit into the system of person and number described above and they must be mentioned separately both in a practical study of the language and in theoretical analysis. We will limit ourselves to the verb can (the verbs may, shall, and some others sharing some of its features) and the verb be, which stands quite apart and, of course, is very widely used.

The verb can, as is well known, takes no -s- inflection parallel to such forms as lives, writes, takes, etc. Hence it follows that this verb has no category of person or number at all.

¹ We do not consider here the forms livest, livedst, etc., which do not make part of the grammatical system of literary and colloquial English. See p. 125.

 

The verb be has a system of its own both in the present indicative and in the past. Its system in the present indicative is as follows:

 

1st person singular 3rd person singular	— am — is
2nd person (without distinction of number) Plural (without distinction of person)	— are
In the past tense the system is:
1st and 3rd person singular	— was
2nd person (without distinction of number) Plural (without distinction of person)	— were

In analysing the system of person and number we have so far bypassed the forms of the type livest, takest, livedst, tookest. These forms are associated with the personal pronoun thou and are only used in religions and occasionally in poetical texts and among Quakers. As they stand outside the received grammatical system we need not go into details concerning them. Suffice it to say that with these forms the category of number appears within the category of the 2nd person and the whole system of person and number (including the past tense) must be presented in a different shape.

OTHER MORPHOLOGICAL CATEGORIES Negative Forms

The English language has in its verbal system a peculiarity distinguishing it both from Russian, German, French, and other Indo-European languages. To express the notion that an action did not take place, the English verb does not always simply add a negative particle to the verb form, as in the example has come — has not come. In many cases a special auxiliary verb, namely the verb do, is used if the negative idea is to be expressed. ^lSince the negative has (at least partly) its own auxiliary verb, it must be acknowledged as a special morphological category of the English verb.

This fact has of course been observed a long time since, and attempts have been made to tackle it. Academician A. Shakhmatov,

¹ Something broadly similar is found in some Finno-Ugrian languages, e.g. Finnish and Estonian.

126 The Verb: Person and Number

comparing the Russian negation and the English, pointed out that there is a special auxiliary for the negative in English, and put forward the idea that in English there is a special negative mood. ^l This idea, however, cannot be accepted by modern linguistics, as the negative forms may be found in every mood: compare, for instance, does not take, do not take (!) (imperative). Since the negative is compatible with different moods, it cannot itself be a mood. In other words, if the opposition takes — take (!) is an opposition of mood, the opposition lakes — does not take cannot also be an opposition of mood. The opposition takes — does not take must be based on some other category, whose concrete manifestations are the affirmative and the negative. It is hard to find a name for this general category. Perhaps we might term it "quality". ² Of its two components (affirmative and negative) the former is unmarked and the latter is marked: its marks are the group "do + not" in some forms and the particle not alone in others.

As the auxiliary do appears in some negative forms only, it might be argued that the category of quality is found only in these forms. However, it seems preferable to state this category for the English verb as a whole, and to differentiate the means of expressing it into "do + not" and not (alone).

We need not give here a full list of forms in which the one or the other of these means is used to express negativity. The use of the pattern "do + not" is restricted to the forms which have no other auxiliary of any kind. That is, the auxiliary do is incompatible with any other auxiliary verb.

Interrogative Forms

An important question arises concerning the interrogative forms of the English verb. It is well known that the auxiliary do is used here in the same way as in the negative forms and that interrogative-negative forms exist, in which the auxiliary do is used on the same principle.

Since the verb do is an auxiliary to form the interrogative, we must conclude that the opposition between declarative and interrogative forms (e. g. takes — does... take?) is also based on some grammatical category, which is no less difficult to define and to give a name to. We might perhaps think that the interrogative should be included as a third item in the opposition "affirmative — negative", thus forming a triple grouping "affirmative — interrogative — negative". But this is rendered impossible by the fact that in-

¹ See А. А. Шахматов, Синтаксис русского языка, 1941, стр. 482.

² The term "quality" is used in logic to distinguish between affirmative and negative propositions.

Other Morphological Categories 127

terrogative and negative can be united in one form, as in does... not take? Since interrogative and negative can be combined in one form, they cannot possibly belong to the same category but have to be assigned to different categories. We may put the four categories: affirmative, negative, interrogative, and interrogative-negative together in the following diagram:

Non-interrogative Interrogative

Non-negative takes does... take?

Negative does not take does... not take?

The diagram, simple as it is, shows that we have here a system of 2 X 2 categories completing each other. The peculiar thing is, that only one of the four forms does not include the auxiliary do, and that the two items of the second line differ from each other only by word order, while the two items of the first line differ from each other by the use or non-use of the auxiliary verb.

The question may be asked: what is the meaning of the auxiliary do in the negative-interrogative form does... not take? Is it an auxiliary of interrogation or an auxiliary of negation, or does it combine the two meanings? There seem to be no objective criteria in this matter, and if a somewhat subjective view may be expressed, we will say that the auxiliary do in the negative-interrogative form combines both meanings.

However, the whole problem of negative and interrogative forms of the English verb requires some deeper investigation.

Emphatic do -forms

Another question arises concerning the so-called emphatic do-forms, such as he does know, she did go, meaning more or less the same as he really knows, she really went, etc. The specific meaning of such formations is well known, but their status in the morphological system of the verb has not been clearly defined.

In the first place, we must find out whether the verb do does or does not introduce any lexical meaning of its own into the formation. Apparently it does not: it merely emphasises the meanings expressed by the infinitive following the form of the verb do. If this view is endorsed, we must conclude that these are analytical verb forms, that is, the verb do is an auxiliary verb here just as it is an auxiliary in the negative and interrogative formations of which it is a necessary component. If that is so, the opposition between knows and does know, or that between went and did go, etc., must be based on some grammatical category or other. It is also evident that the forms does know, did go, etc., are the marked members of the opposition, while the forms knows, went, etc., are its

128 The Verb: Person and Number

unmarked members. This is obvious both from the meaning and the form of each member: does know, did go, etc. are necessarily emphatic and they have the auxiliary as a means of expressing emphasis, that is, they cannot be used unemphatically; knows, went, etc., on the other hand, are not necessarily unemphatic: they may very well become emphatic if pronounced with the appropriate intonation, even though they have no special auxiliary or any other material sign to mark them off. The category which lies at the basis of this opposition may perhaps be briefly termed emphasis.

It should also be noted that the do -forms do not cover the entire field of the English verb: they are only found in the finite verb form (thus not in the infinitive, participle, or gerund), and only in those which have no auxiliary in the unemphatic form.

We may add that for all those forms of the verb which do not fall under this definition the way to express emphasis is purely phonetic: the verb form is pronounced with strong stress; in writing the form is usually underlined, and in print it is given in italics.

The auxiliary do is also occasionally used as a kind of homogeneous part parallel to a modal verb and marking the reality of the action denoted by the following infinitive, as distinct from, and opposed to, its mere possibility or necessity, etc., expressed by the modal verb. Here is an example of this use: Life could and did go on almost as usual. (M. MITCHELL)

Hierarchy of Verbal Categories

It is natural to assume that in the system of verbal categories there is some hierarchy, that is, some categories are above others, determining their possibilities. To give a clear example: the category of voice to some extent dominates that of aspect, as there are fewer continuous forms in the passive than in the active voice: such continuous forms as shall be writing, have been writing, had been writing find no counterpart in the passive. We could also say that the passive voice limits the possibilities of the continuous aspect. ¹

The category of mood, as we take it, dominates the category of tense. In the indicative mood there are (at least) three tenses, whereas in the "oblique" moods there are at any rate not more than two, and the imperative mood has no tenses at all.

¹ In this the English language fundamentally differs from Russian, where the category of aspect dominates. As Academician V. Vinogradov puts it, the category of aspect dissects the entire system of the Russian verb (see В. В. Виноградов, Русский язык. М., 1947, стр. 493). Thus, in the imperfective aspect in the indicative mood there are three tenses, while in the perfective there are only two.

Other Morphological Categories 129

A peculiar relation obtains between the categories of number and of person. Leaving aside for the moment the verb be with its individual system of forms, number and person of English verbs have a positive (that is, non-zero) expression only in the -s -ending of the 3rd person singular present indicative. We might even suppose that in Modern English there are not two separate categories, number and person, but one "combined" number-person category. It is, however, doubtful whether such interpretation of phenomena would in any way yield a clearer and more consistent view of the verbal system. The notions of "number", that is, the difference between one and more-than-one doer, on the one hand, and that of "person", that is, distinction between the speaker, the one spoken to, and that which is neither speaker nor spoken to, seems too far apart, to be united under a common heading.

In pursuing this subject further, it should be possible to work out a system of verbal categories, something of a "pyramid"; however, there would probably arise some doubts and difficulties in assigning a place to this or that category.

б в. A. Ильиш