Lengua Inglesa II
2009-2010
Topic 3: Grammatical Units
Tom Morton
IV-bis 205 tom.morton@uam.es

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The Verb Phrase
The verb phrase (VP) contains the sequence of verbs between Subjects and Objects/Complements etc.
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I ate yesterday
I have been eating all day
At 5pm, I will have been working for 5 hours.
 VPs can be discontinuous:
 Can you see him?

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The Verb Phrase
At its simplest, the VP consists of a single verb, called the main verb:
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I love Mary
She is here.
Before the main verb, The verb phrase can consist of up to 4 elements:
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MOD: a modal verb : I must run
PERF: some form of ‘have’ (followed by an –en verb):
I have driven far today
PROG : some form of ‘be’ (followed by an –ing verb):
I was driving home.
PASS : some form of ‘be’ (followed by an –en verb):
I was driven home.


The Verb Phrase
All combinations of these elements are possible
MOD will
I
I
I
I
I
I
Subj
I
I
I
I will will
PERF PROG PASS have have have have have am been am be been am being been being
PRED eat eaten eating eaten eaten eating eaten eaten eaten eaten will

1. A bicycle whizzed past me as I was crossing the road. It startled me.
2. It also startled the elderly woman just ahead of me.
3. She was clutching a bag or bundle or something, and almost fell.
4.
‘Can’t you be more careful?’ I shouted after the cyclist.
5. He just turned his head a little, but said nothing.
6. He was pedalling fast and was soon lost in the traffic.
7. He could have injured us both.
8.
The elderly woman’s bundle had fallen open into the middle of the road.
• A strange collection of objects was rolling everywhere.
10.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, as we scrambled to pick up the things before the lights changed.

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One element VGs whizzed startled fell shouted turned said are asked scrambled pick changed
Two-element VGs Three-element VG was crossing (prog) was clutching (prog) can’t … be (mod) was pedalling (prog) was lost (pass) had fallen (perf) was rolling (prog) could have injured (mod, perf)

One day, as you are washing your hands, you happen to glance into the mirror over the basin and a sudden doubt will flash across your mind: “ Is that really me?” “What am I doing here?” “Who am I?”
Each one of us is so completely cut off from everyone else. How do you know you are reading a book? The whole thing may be an illusion. How do you know that red is red? The colour could appear blue in everyone else’s eyes. A similar doubt, differently expressed, is inherent in the wellknown question: “A tree that has fallen in the forest, far from the nearest man - when it fell , did it make any noise?”

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The Verb Phrase
The first occurring verb in a finite clause, is called the Finite verb.
The Finite verb has to agree in number with the Subject:
I am eating!
We are eating!
 The Finite verb also expresses the TENSE of the clause
(except when it is a modal):
Present: I am eating.
Past: I was eating!


The Verb Phrase
Each Auxiliary verb conditions the verb that follows it (the following verb must have a particular inflection):
MOD: modal+infin.: I will be there .
PERF: have + -en: I have eaten
PROG: be + -ing:
PASS: be + -en:
I was being eaten
I was eaten.
.

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The Verb Phrase
Express future, habitual action, ability, obligation etc.
Range from strong (must) to weak (can)
The verb that follows must be in the infinitive form:
I will run (to run)
More on Modals in topic 5.

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The Verb Phrase
Expressed via an auxiliary ‘have’ with the following verb inflected with the past participle (-en)
I had spilt my coffee
Can combine with modal, progressive and passive:
I may have spilt my coffee.
I have been eating irregularly lately.
I have been bitten by a shark!
Present-perfect:
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Meaning 1 : The consequence of the action still affect the time of speaking e.g. I have spilt my coffee (the coffee is still spilt)
Meaning 2 : the period of the event is still open e.g., We have sold 20,000 units this year

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The Verb Phrase
Expressed via an auxiliary ‘be’ with the following verb inflected with the present participle (-ing)
I am studying English at the Autonoma
Can combine with modal, perfect and passive:
I may be studying English next year.
I have been studying English for 2 years now.
I am being bitten by a shark!
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Present-progressive :
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Meaning 1 : the action described by the main verb is still ongoing
( I am eating )
Meaning 2 : alternative to future tense, when used with a temporal adjunct ( I am seeing Mary tomorrow )
Past-progressive : the action described by the main verb was ongoing at some past point of time. ( I was eating when … )

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3.3 The Verb Phrase
Expressed via an auxiliary ‘be’ with the following verb inflected with the past participle (-en)
I was accepted into the course!
Can combine with modal, perfect and progressive:
I may be accepted into the course next year.
I have been accepted into the course.
I am being examined tomorrow.
Can be confused with attributive use of the lexical be verb:
I am burnt (be+adjective or be+verb)
Test for attributive: can you insert “more” or “very” in front of it: I was very burnt (ok, thus attributive)
Test for passive; can you add an agent:
I am burnt by the sun (a bit strange)
In general, if present tense, attributive.

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The Verb Phrase
We can place a “do” before the main verb for emphasis:
I do like ice-cream!
Fills the same slot as a modal, so cannot be combined with a modal auxiliary:
 I will do go.
“Do” can appear as the main verb also, with a different meaning:
I will do it.

The Verb Phrase
Insertion of a “Do” is forced in some cases:
1.
When the finite has to be moved in front of the Subject , and there are no other auxiliaries

Like you ice-cream?

Do you like ice-cream.
Exception: when the main verb is ‘be’:
 Is he well?
2.
When the sentence is negated with ‘not’ : and there are no other auxiliaries:
 I like not ice-cream.
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I do not like ice-cream.
Exception: lexical be

I am not here today.

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The Verb Phrase
We can negate a clause by inserting “not” after the
Finite verb:
I will not be eating here today.
I am not the person you want!
When there are no auxiliary verbs, a “do” insert required: I did not eat today.

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The Verb Phrase
We sometimes also get verb phrases such as:
I have to eat
It started to fall
It started raining
It stopped raining (but not: it stopped to rain)
 These VPs allow other auxiliaries:
I will have to be driven there!
He has started to run

3.3 The Verb Phrase
Once upon a time, during the winter of 1956, in a town on Boston’s North
Shore, there lived a family of six: a mother and father and their four children. It was Christmas vacation, and with school out, the two older boys dressed for the cold weather, threw their ice skates over their shoulders, and headed off to the park next to a neighborhood elementary school.
The town’s Park Department and Fire Department had teamed up to flood the park to a depth of 3-4 inches. With the weather predicted to be clear and below freezing day and night for several days, an ice rink had come to life as water from a hydrant was directed onto the park’s frozen turf.
At the park’s edge, the brothers dropped their bikes behind a green wood-slat bench, put on their hockey skates, and inched out onto the ice.
In Narrative, sequence of clauses in simple past indicates sequence in time.
Use of Past perfect for a “flashback” to some events relevant to the story line.
Then return to the story, and sequence of simple present

Example: Front Page News (FPN)
3.3 The Verb Phrase
WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama said the nation's economy seems to be moving in the right direction, helped by a $787 billion stimulus package he signed into law early this year.
The Commerce Department announced this week that the U.S. economy grew 3.5% in the third quarter, after a year of contraction. In his weekly radio address, the president called the results "a good sign," and evidence that steps taken by his administration are "blunting the worst of this recession and helping to bring about its conclusion."
A new report on the economic stimulus act, also issued this week, shows it created and saved more than one million jobs, the president added. However, he cautioned that despite signs of a turnaround, the U.S. has a long way to go before it returns to prosperity and likely will see further job losses ahead.
• In FPN, the main goal of the writer is to detail a sequence of events, so the use of tense is similar to that of Narrative: sequence of clauses in simple past.
•Present tense in the 2nd/3rd paragraphs: “are” , “shows”, “has”. These are stative (no change over the period of the process) rather than dynamic (the process involves change). When analysing tense, we need to look at these separately. Note default present tense: Dyn: I am eating Stative: I love Mary.

Example: Front Page News (FPN)
3.3 The Verb Phrase material, as it is from a different text type (e.g., while the previous text is a news article, the next paragraph was:
"As I've said many times, it took years to dig our way into the crisis we've faced. It will take more than a few months to dig our way out. But make no mistake: that's exactly what we will do," the
 president said.
The quoted text will have text qualities appropriate for presidential addresses, and not for news (different Field, tenor, Mode and Text Type).
 So do not include the tenses of quoted material in your analysis.
 However , the “said” at the end would be analysed as a tense of the news article.

Example: Editorial
3.3 The Verb Phrase
Gordon Brown this week promised a crackdown on "sharp practices" by credit card issuers. As the U.S.
Congress before him, the British Prime Minister is selling this as a consumer-protection measure. But the PM might want to look across the pond at how a similar law, passed in Washington last spring, is actually hurting consumers and restricting access to credit.
There, Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd has been hearing from constituents upset because banks have been raising the interest rates on their credit cards. This week Mr. Dodd decided to do something about it. He proposed a bill imposing an immediate freeze on those rates.
•While FPN mainly reports a sequence of events, the purpose of an Editorial or
Opinion text is to firstly introduce the event being examined, and then analyse it in some way: showing wider consequences of the event for the future
•Present perfect is more common, as the desire to show the consequence of the past events being analysed have consequence for the present.
•Use of present continuous present in the first paragraph, showing that the results of the action are currently and continuously affecting the present.