The finite forms of the verb make up a very complex and intricate system; its intricacy is caused by the fact that they are directly con­nected with the structure of the sentence, the finite verb functioning as its predication centre.

The morphological study of the English finite verb includes the study of its categories, those of person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.

Person and number are treated by scholars as closely related cat­egories. In their treatment two approaches are contrasted: tradition­al and modern.

In accord with the traditional approach to these two categories, scholars point out to the existence in English of three persons and two numbers.

In modern linguistic works on the problem it is also stressed that the categories of person and number are closely interwoven in English and should be considered together. At the same time it is particularly emphasized that these categories are specific because they don't con­vey the inherently "verbal" semantics. It means that the categories of person and number have a "reflective" character: the personal and numerical semantics in the finite verb is the reflection in the verb lexeme of the personal and numerical semantics of the subject referent.

The semantic and formal analysis of the person-number forms of the verb shows that in the strictly categorial sense one should speak of personal pronouns set consisting of six different forms of blended person-number nature - three in the singular and three in the plural.

The intermixed character of the numerical and personal forms of the finite forms of the verb finds its expression both at the formal and  functional levels of analysis in different subsystems of verbs. The pe­culiarity of expressing person-number distinctions in the English verb lies in the deficiency of the finite regular verb for there exists the only positive person-number mark of the finite regular verb - the mor­pheme of the third person singular. This deficient system cannot and does not exist in the language by itself: in fact, the verbal person-number system only backs up the person-number system of the sub­ject. Due to it the combination and strict correlation of the English finite verb with the subject is obligatory not only syntactically but also categorically.

Category of Tense

The category of tense is considered to be an immanent grammatical category which means that the finite verb form always expresses time distinctions.

The category of tense finds different interpretations with dif­ferent scholars. Thus, in traditional linguistics grammatical time is often represented as a three-form category consisting of the "lin­ear" past, present, and future forms. The future-in-the-past does not find its place in the scheme based on the linear principle, hence, this system is considered to be deficient, not covering all lingual data.

At the same time linguists build up new systems of tenses in order to find a suitable place in them for future-in-the past. Nevertheless, many of such schemes are open to criticism for their inconsistency which finds its expression in the fact that some of them deny the inde­pendent status of future tenses while others exclude from the analysis future-in-the-past forms.

The said inconsistency can be overcome if we accept the idea that in English there exist two tense categories.

The first category - the category of primary time - expresses a direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted, due to which the process receives an absolute time characteristic., This category is based upon the opposition of "the past tense" and "the present tense", the past tense being its strong member.

The second tense category is the category of "prospective time", it is based upon the opposition of "after-action" and "non-after-ac­tion", the marked member being the future tense. The category of prospect is relative by nature which means that it characterizes the action from the point of view of its correlation with some other ac­tion. As the future verbal form may be relative either to the present time, or to the past time included in non-future, the English verb acquires two different future forms: the future of the present and the future of the past. It means that the future of the past is doubly strong expressing the strong members of the category of primary time and the category of prospect.

The category of primary time is subjected to neutralization and transposition, transposition being more typical. The vivid cases of transposition are the "historical present" and the "Preterite of Mod­esty". As for the category of prospect, it is often neutralized; neutral­ization can be of two types: syntactically optional and syntactically obligatory.

The category of aspect

Grammatical aspective meanings form a variable grammatical category which is traditionally associated with the opposition of con­tinuous and non-continuous forms of the verb. Yet, one can find a great divergence of opinions on the problem of the English aspect. The main difference lies in the interpretation of the categorial seman­tics of the oppositional members - continuous and indefinite forms: the categorial meaning of the continuous form is usually defined as the meaning of duration, while the interpretation of the categorial semantics of the Indefinite form causes controversy (the indefinite form may be interpreted as having no aspective meaning (I.P. Ivanova), as a form having a vague content (G.N. Vorontsova), as a form stressing the fact of the performance of the action (A.I. Smirnitsky). In Modern Linguistics A.I. Smirnitsky's interpretation of the cate­gorial semantics of the indefinite form is widely accepted.

In theoretical grammar the interpretation of perfect / non-perfect verb-forms also refers to disputable questions. Some linguists inter­pret the opposition of perfect / non-perfect forms as aspective (O. Jespersen, I.P. Ivanova, G.N. Vorontsova), others - as the op­position of tense forms (H. Sweet, G.O. Curme, A. Korsakov). A.I. Smirnitsky was the first to prove that perfect and non-perfect make up a special, self-sufficient, category which he called the "cate­gory of time correlation"; this viewpoint is shared now by a vast majority of linguists.

Developing A.I. Smirnitsky's views on the categorial semantics of perfect / non-perfect forms, we can come to the conclusion that in English there exist two aspective categories: the category of develop­ment (based on the opposition of continuous and non-continuous forms) and the category of retrospective coordination (based on the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms).

The perfect form has a mixed categorial meaning: it expresses both retrospective time coordination of the process and the connection of the prior action with a time-limit reflected in a subsequent event. The recognition of the two aspect categories also enables one to give a sound interpretation to the perfect continuous forms: they must be treated as forms having marks in both the aspect categories.

The opposition of continuous and non-continuous forms can be neutralized and transponized. Besides, in the category of development verbs which are usually not used in continuous forms can be subjected to the process of reverse transposition, e.g.: Were you wanting my help?

As for the opposition of perfect and non-perfect forms, it can under­go only the process of neutralization, transposition being alien to it.

Category of Voice

The category of voice occupies a peculiar place in the system of verbal categories because it reflects the direction of the process as re­gards the participants in the situation denoted by a syntactic construc­tion. The passive form, being marked, expresses the reception of the action by the subject of the syntactic construction; its weak counter-member - the active form - has the meaning of "non-passivity".

In comparison with Russian, the category of voice in English has a much broader representation as not only transitive but also intran­sitive objective verbs can be used in the passive voice.

Another peculiarity of voice distinctions of English verbs consists in the fact that active forms often convey passive meanings. As a grammatical category voice is the form of the verb which shows the relation between the action and its subject indicating whether the action is performed by the subject or passes on to it. Accordingly there are two voices in English: the active and the passive.

The active voice shows that the action is performed by its subject, that the subject is the doer of the action. The passive voice shows that the subject is acted upon, that it is the recipient of the action:

I wrote a letter – A letter was written by me.

Transformational relations for voice may be symbolized as follows:

N₁ + V_act + N₂ à N₂ + V_pas + by + N₁

According to O.Jespersen, about 70% of passive verb-patterns found in English literature contain no mention of the active subject.

The functional sentence perspective may depend on the choice of the active or passive turn; the latter is often used as an effective device to make the “psychological” subject also the grammatical subject of the sentence. This is the case, for instance, with such prepositional verb-patterns, as:

The doctor was sent for.

The bed had not been slept in.

This matter must be looked into at once.

This child must be taken great care of.

The passive voice is generally expressed by analytic combinations of the auxiliary verb to be with the past participle of the notional verb.

Category of Mood

A great divergence of opinions on the question of the category о mood is caused by the fact that identical mood forms can express: different meanings and different forms can express similar meanings.

The category of mood shows the relation of the nominative con­tent of the sentence towards reality. By this category the action can be presented as real, non-real, desirable, recommended, etc.

It is obvious that the opposition of the one integral form of the indic­ative and the one integral form of the subjunctive underlies the unity of the whole system of English moods. The formal mark of this opposition is the tense-retrospect shift in the subjunctive, the latter being the strong member of the opposition. The shift consists in the perfect aspect being opposed to the imperfect aspect, both turned into the relative substitute for the absolutive past and present tenses of the indicative.

The study of the English mood reveals a certain correlation of its formal and semantic features. The subjunctive, the integral mood of unreality, presents the two sets of forms according to the structural division of verbal tenses into the present and the past. These form-sets constitute the two corresponding functional subsystems of the sub­junctive, namely, the aspective, the mood of attitudes, and the condi­tional, the mood of appraising causal-conditional relations of process­es. Each of these, in its turn, falls into two systemic subsets, so that at the immediately working level of presentation we have the four sub-limitive form-types identified on the basis of the strict correlation be­tween their structure and their function: the pure aspective, the modal aspective, the stipulative conditional, the consecutive conditional. The elaborated scheme clearly shows that the so-called "imperative mood" has historically coincided with Subjunctive 1.

The described system is not finished in terms of the historical de­velopment of language; on the contrary, it is in the state of making and change. Its actual manifestations are complicated by neutraliza­tions of formal and semantic contrasts, by fluctuating uses of the auxiliaries, of the finite "be" in the singular.

Thus, today scholars discuss different classifications of moods in Eng­lish revealing new correlations of meaning and form in the process of expressing mood distinctions but so far a universally accepted system of moods has not been worked out. Hence our task in the objective study of language, as well as in language teaching, is to accurately reg­ister these phenomena, to explain their mechanism and systemic impli­cations, to show the relevant tendencies of usage in terms of varying syntactic environments, topical contexts, stylistic preferences.

References

1.Bloch M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. - M., 2000. – p.6-26

2.Блох М.Я. Теоретические основы грамматики – М., 2000

3. Бархударов Л.С. Очерки по морфологии современного английского языка. – М., 1975

VERB. NON-FINITE FORMS

1. A general outline of verbals: the categorial semantics, categories, syntac­tic functions

2. The infinitive and its properties. The categories of the infinitive. Modal meanings of infinitival complexes

3.  The gerund and its properties. The categories of gerund. The notion of half-gerund

4. The present participle, the past participle, and their properties

5. Language means of expressing modality

Terms: modality, aspect, time, tense, time correlation, retrospective coordination, mood, absolute time, relative time, voice.

1. A general outline of verbals: the categorial semantics, categories, syntac­tic functions

Non-finite forms of the verb (verbids) are the forms of the verb which have features intermediary between the verb and the non-processual parts of speech. Their mixed features are revealed in their se­mantics, morphemic structural marking, combinability, and syntac­tic functions. Verbids do not denote pure processes but present them as peculiar kinds of substances and properties; they do not express the most specific finite verb categories - the categories of tense and mood; they have a mixed, verbal and non-verbal, valency; they per­form mixed, verbal and non-verbal, syntactic functions.

The strict division of functions clearly shows that the opposition be­tween the finite and non-finite forms of the verb creates a special gram­matical category. The differential feature of the opposition is constitut­ed by the expression of verbal time and mood: while the time-mood grammatical signification characterizes the finite verb in a way that it underlies its finite predicative function, the verbid has no immediate means of expressing time-mood categorial semantics and therefore presents the weak member of the opposition. The category expressed by this opposition is called the category of "finitude". The syntactic content of the category of finitude is the expression of verbal predication.

The peculiar feature of the verbid verbality consists in their ex­pressing "secondary" ("potential") predication. They are not self-de­pendent in a predicative sense. The verbids normally exist only as part of sentences built up by genuine, primary predicative constructions that have a finite verb as their core. And it is through the reference to the finite verb-predicate that these complexes set up the situation denoted by them in the corresponding time and mood perspectives.

The English verbids include four forms distinctly differing from one another within the general verbid system: the infinitive, the ger­und, the present participle, and the past participle. In compliance with this difference, the verbid semi-predicative complexes are dis­tinguished by the corresponding differential properties both in form and in syntactic-contextual function.