Morphosyntax 3 – Lecture 1 – Verbs I
Lexical verbs (full meaning) (open class) - regular X irregular
- a lexical verb is a word or a phrase which expresses the existence of a state (love, seem)
or the doing of an action (take, play).
Auxiliary verbs (helping) (closed class) – primary X modal
- an auxiliary verb gives further semantic or syntactic information about the lexical verb
following it – it helps to complete the form and meaning of the main verb
Lexical verbs – base form, -s form, -ed past, -ed participle, -ing participle
Spelling and pronunciation: -s form, -ing form, -ed form, deletion of and addition of –e,
treatment of –y, irregular verbs
Auxiliaries: primary – BE – as lexical verb – copular
- as aux. – progressive aspect
- passive voice
HAVE – as lexical verb – takes a direct object
- as aux. - perfect aspect
DO – as aux. – questions, negations, emphasis, operator before
elipsis (She reads faster than I do /=read/.)
Modal – central – may/might, can/could, will/would, shall/should, must
- phrasal (semi-auxiliaries) – have to, ought to, need to, be going to, be
supposed to, …
primary auxiliaries - marked for grammatical categories
modal auxiliaries - not marked for grammatical categories
- followed by bare infinitive: I can come.
- inversion of subject and modal: Will she come?
- 'not' goes with the modal: I may not come.
- the difference between modals such as can and could is usually one of meaning,
not of tense
While only one modal can occur in a verb phrase at a time, more than one primary
auxiliary is possible
The kind of auxiliary we use specifies the form of the main verb that follows
Semi-auxiliaries - intermediate between auxiliaries and main verbs