Lessons on the English Verb: No Expression Without Representation 9780773560277

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L E S S O N S O N T H E E N G L I S H VE R B

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Lessons on the English Verb No Expression without Representation WALTER

HIRTLE

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2007 ISBN -13: 978-0-7735-3198-7 Legal deposit second quarter 2007 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. This study has been published with the help of a grant from the Fonds Gustave Guillaume, using funds from the Bourse Roch Valin. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP ) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Hirtle, W. H. (Walter Heal), 1927– Lessons on the English verb: no expression without representation / Walter Hirtle. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3198-7 1. English language – Verb. I. Title. pe1271.h57 2007

428.2

c2006-905927-6

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Baskerville.

To my students especially those who questioned

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix

3

1 Studying the Verb

9

2 Chronogenesis I: Aspect

25

3 Chronogenesis II: Mood

37

4 Chronogenesis III: Tense

55

5 The Simple Form I: Activities 6 The Simple Form II: States

68

86

7 The Simple Form III: Prospective Events 8 The Subjunctive

120

9 Person in the Verb

145

10 What Does Do Do?

167

11 Compounding with Do 12 The Progressive

103

178

195

13 The Transcendent Aspect: Perfective Events

222

14 The Transcendent Aspect: Imperfective Events 15 The Passive 16 Auxiliaries

253 277

17 The System of Voice: A Hypothesis

291

241

viii

18 Conclusion Glossary Notes

317

321

Bibliography Index

309

343

335

Acknowledgments

My debt to Guillaume’s writings is too widespread to be acknowledged everywhere. It is paralleled by my debt to Roch Valin, thanks to whom I was introduced to Guillaume’s panoramic view of human language and his reflections on the verb. My thanks go to him and to my other colleagues at the Fonds Gustave Guillaume, as well as to former students, particularly Christina Gordon, Claude Bégin, Mark Wickens, Patrick Duffley, Lia Korrel, Lori Morris, and Carleen Gruntman for the innumerable questions, observations, and discussions that have helped me avoid many a false step. For the pitfalls I have not avoided, I can only appeal to the reader’s indulgence, convinced as I am that perceiving others’ mistakes can help one to see more clearly one’s own. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my wife, whose support has made this study possible.

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L E S S O N S O N T H E E N G L I S H VE R B

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Introduction

THE STARTING POINT

This volume is based on a course I taught over a number of years, attempting to develop it on each occasion so as to further our understanding of the whys and wherefores of the English verb. The students, for the most part future teachers of English as a second language, were not satisfied with the arbitrary nature of rules of usage and wanted to know the reason for using a given form in a particular situation. Describing the meaning brought to the sentence by the progressive, for example, made them more sensitive to the difference with the simple form and added a dimension to their own teaching that enhanced its interest and effectiveness. Like many university courses, this one soon got out of hand, the intrinsic interest of the subject superseding the utilitarian aim when, as a result of dealing with more and more particular problems of usage (what are often called “exceptions”), I began to marvel at the capacity of native speakers to speak with such ease and rapidity without making any of the mistakes found in the esl classroom. And so questions of little practical value for the language classroom were raised – the reason for using do auxiliary in interrogative and negative sentences for example.1 Thus the course tended toward a more general goal proper to linguistics as I attempted to include all manifestations of the verb in a global view, to see the verb as a system. The content of this course, which, like any other course, benefited from the feedback of students, thus forms the basic matter of the present volume. It consists essentially in trying to describe the meaning of a form in order to explain why a speaker or writer

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Lessons on the English Verb

would use it in any of the contexts where it is found. The material has, however, been discussed with colleagues, reflected on, reworked, developed, and extended considerably beyond what was actually presented in the classroom, so that the analyses outlined here go far beyond the practical aims of an esl course. That is, certain systemic relationships have been perceived permitting further progress toward that comprehensive view sought by those who approach the verb as a grammatical unit of English, a part of speech. The study in language systemics presented below describes this attempt to discern an order in the mind underlying and permitting usage. Unless I am much mistaken, these lessons bring into clearer focus than ever before the mental system of the English verb. It remains that these are lessons, not a grammar of the verb, in the sense that they are not intended to constitute a definitive description but rather the most adequate view obtained so far in an ongoing process of observation and reflection. Furthermore, as lessons they give me the latitude to repeat a point and to approach the same topic from different angles as one does in any teaching situation. Although the description of some forms has been carefully checked with usage in more detailed studies, in the case of others the description is exploratory, still requiring that painstaking work of confronting a general view, a hypothesis, with the observable data found in actual usage. And so in these lessons, as in my teaching, some questions are treated with the assurance born of having resolved many particular problems of usage, whereas the treatment of other questions is tentative, often bringing out areas of ignorance. In approaching such areas, experience has shown the importance of having some idea, however ill-defined, of what we are looking for, an idea that can only come from a view, albeit vague, of the verb as a systemic whole. Without this global view, discerning what is pertinent in the data remains problematic and the attempt to situate the different forms within the verb becomes, ultimately, arbitrary, based on accidental criteria having little or nothing to do with the nature of the verb. The history of English grammar is littered with the wreckage of such attempts, as Michael makes clear in his examination of grammars published over a period of two centuries. As we will see in lesson 1, he faults grammars for having no clear view of “the fundamental distinction between formal and semantic criteria” (373).

Introduction

5

Thus important though it is to approach usage with an allembracing view, the final word, to determine whether or not the proposed system corresponds to reality, belongs to the observed facts. It is crucial, therefore, to realize that the facts to be observed are of two types: signs and meanings. (For those familiar with Saussure’s terminology, it should be pointed out that the term sign is used here in its common-language sense of something perceivable that calls to mind or signifies a meaning, and not as Saussure redefined it.) Most accessible to the observer are the physical means of expression, the set of signs or semiology of the verb including both the way each word is formed, its morphology, and the order in which the words occur, the syntax. The meaning, i.e. the mental content expressed by the sign, is often more difficult to observe and describe, firstly because the meanings of distinct words are amalgamated during the construction of the sentence to produce the “complete thought” a sentence is said to express, and secondly because it arises only in the observer’s mind, and this has led some linguists to question and even reject meaning as an observable. The meaning expressed by some verb form in a given sentence is, however, something that anyone competent in English must call to mind in order to understand the sentence, and so it constitutes something that is given as part of actual language when we come to observe it. This then raises a crucial problem: can meaning be observed in a way that is useful for linguistic analysis? MEANING AS AN OBSERVABLE

It is generally assumed that words, and language in general, are symbolic in nature, i.e. involve an inherent relation between a meaning and a sign. While the sign, being physically perceivable, lends itself to the type of observation practiced in other sciences, meaning, being mentally perceivable only, can be seen only subjectively, through introspection. This led one linguist to argue that “an empirical science cannot be content to rely on a procedure of people looking into their minds, each into his own” (cited in Lyons, 408) and another to maintain that if “linguistics is to be the study of language as a whole, it must abandon the claim to be a science” (Reid 1956, 34) since it must leave out half of its object, meaning. More recently, Diver (48ff) has proposed that although meanings cannot be observed they can be hypothesized on the basis of the observation of signs.

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Lessons on the English Verb

The difficulty with each of these approaches is that, judging by the communicative efficacy of everyday speech, the meaning of words and of sentences is a mentally observable part of the linguistic landscape for ordinary speakers and so is part of what must be explained by the linguist. We communicate readily by means of language because people reading or hearing a sentence like It’s raining out all understand much the same thing. This is indicative of an important point: through introspection, through mental observation, everyone with a sufficient competence in English observes approximately the same meaning, and this consensus among speakers makes communication possible. Like ordinary speakers, a linguist must begin by mentally observing a sentence to see what it means, to understand it the way any other speaker would. This consensus, I would maintain, is what makes it possible for a linguist to observe meaning in such a way as to provide valid data, because the test that observations must meet to qualify as data is not where the observed object exists (in the mind or outside it), nor the means of observation (by introspection or by the external senses aided or not by instruments), but the consensus of competent observers. That is, insofar as competent observers agree as to the meaning of a sentence, they attest a fact calling for explanation. Considering the consensual meaning expressed by sentences as data entails distinguishing through analysis its various sign/meaning components. Here however the observer meets a major difficulty: a given form does not always express the same meaning. For example, it is well known that the simple form sometimes expresses ‘habit,’2 sometimes an ‘instantaneous’ event, sometimes a ‘scheduled’ event, a ‘command,’ etc. Far from being an isolated case, variation of expressive effect of this sort is the general rule, obliging us to distinguish between what the verb form contributes to a given use and what is brought in by other elements in the context, and this, as Ruhl shows, is rarely an easy task. Moreover when, through substitution and comparison, the contribution of the verb can be adequately distinguished from that of other words in the sentence, it remains to discern within the verb itself its lexical import from its grammatical import. Even then, as we shall see in lessons 5, 6, and 7, in different uses the import of the simple form is not always the same, so we are confronted with a variation in the grammatical meaning it expresses, a problem of grammatical polysemy. Any

Introduction

7

attempt to explain usage in light of the meaning a speaker is expressing must deal with this problem at the outset. How can a given form express diverse meanings and yet be understood as the same form? How can listeners know which of these senses was intended by the speaker and arrive at the same meaning? DEALING WITH POLYSEMY

In these lessons, as in my teaching, I appealed to the only principled solution to the problem of polysemy I was aware of: that proposed by the French linguist Guillaume in his theory the Psychomechanics of Language. His approach, as simple as it is general, is based on the well-known idea that language consists of more than the eye can see, or the mind’s eye can be aware of. Besides the sentences in which usage is observed, i.e. discourse, language involves what necessarily precedes and permits any use, our mother tongue, of which we are normally quite unaware because what we acquired as infants (and later) resides in our preconscious mind. Since our mother tongue allows us to produce readily the discourse we want, Guillaume postulates that on the grammatical side it consists of an organized set of forms and that the meaning and sign of each form exist as potentials permitting its different possible uses. (This is not unlike acquired skills like riding a bicycle: once the ability to maintain balance is learned, it can be exploited in different ways such as riding with one hand, no hands, and even with the front wheel in the air.) Thus the simple form, as we shall see in lesson 17, occupies a position in the system of the verb, a position providing it with a meaning potential, one of whose possibilities is actualized each time the form is required to represent an event in a sentence. That is to say, it is postulated that the diverse senses a form expresses in discourse can be explained by its single potential meaning in tongue. Equally important for these lessons is that Guillaume’s is a wordbased theory. In view of the fact that everything in human language is expressed by means of words, the sayable elements of discourse, he took for granted that only by analyzing the makeup of words can we explain their combinations in discourse. It follows that the various verb compounds of English are to be analyzed in terms of the words of which they are composed, and that in these lessons we must first examine the grammatical makeup of the simple form before attempting to deal with the verb compounds.

8

Lessons on the English Verb

Much more could be said of Guillaume’s approach to language, but this is not the place for it.3 His analysis of the French verb was at the origin of my interest in exploring the system of the verb in English, and many of his insights have proved fruitful in treating the questions discussed in these lessons, but most valuable is his method of analysis. His constant concern was to infer the form’s underlying potential meaning from observed uses in discourse. This potential meaning corresponds to what many grammarians call the form’s “basic” meaning, but with this crucial difference: like any other potential it makes possible an operation of actualization. That is, it is not just a common element of meaning, a sort of base to which different variations can be added, but rather a potential that can give rise to different senses, that contains these sense variations virtually. This concept of the meaning of a form as a potential of operativity will be exploited time and again in these lessons to explain polysemy in usage. It will also provide a basis for explaining verb compounding. Thus the purpose of these lessons is to discern and describe the system of the English verb in light of all the data. This will involve taking the dilemma confronting any grammarian by the horns – keeping constantly in mind both observables, form and meaning – and trying to reconstruct the mental system each speaker of the language has acquired, a preconscious system consisting of the coherent relations between the potential meanings attached to different forms.

LESSON ONE

On Studying the Verb

THE TRADITION

At the beginning of these lessons, it is only prudent, as in any intellectual inquiry, to glance at the views of our forebears concerning the verb, not just to avoid the embarrassment of rediscovering the wheel but if possible to learn from their insights.1 The first such insights come from classical Greece. For Plato, a verb is a word denoting action. Aristotle characterizes it as a word that expresses time and predication (i.e. it says something about a subject). Other characteristics are also brought out by ancient grammarians – including person, mood, and voice – but the most consistent defining characteristic is the expression of time: a verb is a word cum tempore, with time or with tense, the grammatical unit expressing time. And this is quite understandable because the expression of past, present, or future is clearly indicated by the observable form of the verb in both Greek and Latin and distinguishes the verb from the noun and other parts of speech. During the renaissance, scholars became interested in vernacular languages, and this led to the publishing of some 248 grammars of English between 1600 and 1800. A renewed interest in antiquity also led scholars to view their own language in light of the classical tradition – especially Latin, the international language of the time. It was not clear, however, how Latin grammar was to be applied to English, as grammarians attempted to do from the end of the sixteenth century on. In fact, if grammarians “looked at English with an empirical eye, strictly distinguishing tense (a feature of words) from time (a feature of consciousness) they were led to conclude that English had not

10

Lessons on the English Verb

even three tenses, only two: present (I love) and past (I loved). But this seemed an absurd conclusion. If there were three times how could there be fewer than three tenses? It was at this point, where the formal differences between Latin and English are most obvious, that English grammarians most easily broke away from the tradition, commanding as its authority was” (Michael, 116). One understands the quandary of grammarians: if our experience tells us that there are three time-spheres – past, present, and future – and our observation of the English verb in the indicative distinguishes only two tenses, two morphemes for expressing time (-ø and -ed), it would seem impossible for a verb to fulfill its function of expressing time. The problem persists even today, and we shall return to it in the next lesson. The disarray in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century grammars resulting from this breakaway from the tenses of Latin is well summarized by Michael (395ff). After examining all the grammars of English published during this two-hundred-year period, he found that they propose 299 ways of classifying tenses in the indicative of the active, more tense-schemes than grammars! This proliferation of proposals for categorizing verb forms, a consequence of the influence of the Latin tradition, brings to light a more fundamental problem: the criteria for determining what constitutes a tense varied from one grammarian to another. Those for whom tense was to be defined in terms of what is found in Latin had assumed that the system of tense must be basically the same in all languages because we use tense to talk about time as we experience it, and we all have the same experience of time. On the other hand, this approach involved ignoring the forms of the English verb, including its physical signs like -ø vs -ed, and so led most grammarians to abandon the Latin model. But even those who attempted to base tense on the physical signs of English ran into the problem of discerning which of the many forms of the English verb signify tense. Is, for example, the perfect vs nonperfect (I have seen vs I see) a distinction of tense or, as many claim today, a distinction of aspect? Does the progressive vs nonprogressive (I am seeing vs I see) constitute a distinction of tense? How about the do + infinitive construction (I do see vs I see)? If we take into consideration all the forms of the verb, simple and compound, there is clearly room for as many different tense schemes as there are grammars. Thus, until 1800, grammarians were caught between considering tense as the expression of a universal human experience of time and considering it as a set of verb forms specific to English.

Studying the Verb

11

In retrospect, the benefit to be drawn from this dilemma is that it makes quite obvious the need to find criteria on which some consensus can be based. It is not sufficient to agree on what tense does – it expresses time – one must also have some idea of what tense is, of its makeup enabling it to express time. Thus the chaotic situation described by Michael squarely poses the problem to be solved: what is the nature of tense? What is there in a verb that permits it to express time in ways differing from one language to another? That is, the question was not restricted to English. If, in fact, it is assumed that the system of tenses in English is not a facsimile of that in Latin or any other language – the only valid assumption – this implies that tense in English must be examined on its own. But it also implies that tense in English, with all its particularity, has something in common with tense in other languages. And since most grammarians consider it the keystone of the verb, this is clearly the crucial problem to be solved in order to give a coherent account of the verb in English, or in any other language. The problem is even more general, however, because, without some commonly accepted basis for analyzing observed forms in terms of both meaning and sign, one can hardly expect to reach a consensus concerning tense.2 Turning to another characteristic of the verb, we find that the tradition to 1800 left the question of mood in much the same state (cf. Michael, 424ff). Some grammarians denied the existence of mood in English and some simply did not talk about it, but the majority considered it a category of the verb for expressing different attitudes of the subject. On this basis, twenty-two distinct systems of mood were proposed. The “wide and wild differences” between the treatments of mood showed that “the grammarians were floundering” because here, too, they were caught in the dilemma between verb forms and what the sentence expresses, “between formal and semantic criteria.” According to Charleston (cited in Michael, 434n1), this is “a confusion and hesitancy which is still to be observed today,” as can be seen by comparing Sweet’s subjunctive, conditional, compulsive, and permissive moods of the verb (1958, 127ff) and Quirk et al.’s indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods of the “finite verb phrase” (149) with Kruisinga and others who do not even mention mood as a category of the verb. It is hard to conceive of any way out of the confusion without establishing generally accepted criteria based on a clearer view of what mood is

12

Lessons on the English Verb

as a part of the conjugation, a view of what it contributes to a word whose distinctive role is to express time. It can be seen that the problem posed is like that of tense: what is the nature of this grammatical category? Again, without an appropriate method of analysis to detect this, there is little hope of discerning what mood contributes to the expression of time. Verbs were also characterized in terms of their “assertive” function, which brought into focus relationship to a subject as a mark of the verb. However since not all verb forms can attribute something to a subject – an infinitive or participle cannot take a subject pronoun – this brings out a distinction between finite and nonfinite verbs. Is then an infinitive or participle not a verb because it is not “assertive”? Like any other verb, infinitives and participles can take a direct object and they name an event, but something in their grammatical makeup prevents them from predicating this action or state of a subject. Again we are led to question, through analysis, the nature of the categories of the verb in order to discern the difference between finite and nonfinite forms giving rise to such different syntactic possibilities. This focusing on the verb-subject relationship was also discussed in terms of different kinds or voices of the verb (cf. Michael, 372ff). Grammarians distinguished the active “defined in terms of ‘doing’ or ‘action’” from the passive “to express ‘suffering,’” a distinction based on form (e.g. I saw vs I was seen) and the meaning expressed by the sentence as a whole. But there was no attempt to analyze the grammatical form of the verb in each voice in terms of what it contributes to the meaning of the sentence, to understand, for example, why auxiliary be + past participle should express a sense of passivity. Some grammarians introduce a syntactic criterion when they treat intransitive verbs as a further distinction of voice or kind: “neuter” verbs, i.e. as neither active nor passive. This treatment brings out “the range and confusion of criteria used in discussing the verb” and particularly grammarians’ “lack of the fundamental distinction between formal and semantic criteria.” As in the case of tense and mood, all this left voice as a grammatical category without any clear basis for analysis. As we shall see in lessons 15 and 17, this basis is to be sought by analyzing the different ways of relating a verb to its subject, or more generally and more precisely, by discerning within the verb the various relations between the time element and intraverbal person 3 – person as represented in the verb itself.

Studying the Verb

13

Thus the tradition to 1800 tells us that the verb is a part of speech, that it expresses time (cum tempore), and that it is assertive. Most grammarians agree that it involves mood and voice (or “kind”), but this means little when these categories are described partly in formal terms and partly in terms of meaning expressed by the verb or by the resulting sentence but without showing how each of these categories contributes to the expression of time. It is even less insightful to define the verb in terms of tense when few grammarians can agree on what the tenses of English are, either in terms of meaning or of verb form, let alone what tense is in itself. It seems that grammatical person is assumed by many grammarians to be an element of the verb, at least to provide a motivation for the -s inflexion, but it is not discussed as a category entering into the makeup of the English verb because of its low profile. One new category, aspect, has been introduced since the eighteenth century thanks to the influence of the Slavic languages, but it has not yet gained general acceptance, and even those contemporary grammarians who do accept it are not in agreement as to what the aspects of English are. For example, where Huddleston and Pullum (117) propose non-progressive and progressive (goes vs is going) Quirk et al. (188f) propose perfective and progressive (has gone vs is going). One inevitably wonders why the effort of so many grammarians has produced such disappointing results. If it is the failure to make “the fundamental distinction between formal and semantic criteria,” as Michael claims, then “It is surprising that the verb, which received individual attention more than any other part of speech, should not have provoked more writers into a discussion of the relation between meaning and form” (373–4). In spite of the importance of this issue, however, nineteenth-century grammarians paid little attention to it and were content to imagine new schemes for classifying verb forms. And even today the problem persists: for example, in some grammars I have seen is considered a past tense because of the meaning it expresses (it often calls to mind a past happening), whereas in others it is considered a present tense because of its form, its physical sign (have not had). This problem of the relation between formal and semantic criteria is not limited to the verb. Since every word consists of a physical part and a mental part, a sign and its meaning, the problem arises with the other parts of speech as well. In fact, it constitutes a fundamental

14

Lessons on the English Verb

question and so should be addressed at the outset: “Of all the relations and correlations in language and in the science which observes it, the most important, and the most neglected (the least taken into account), is that between the physical and the mental” (Guillaume 1984, 69). If, then, grammarians have not had clear criteria for describing the verb in English, it is because they have not had a sufficiently clear view of what a word is, of the essential relation between its physical form or sign, and its mental significate or meaning. Without a general conception of the word as a unit of language, grammarians were not able to find a satisfactory method for analyzing verbs. And yet this general view of the word had been provided by the tradition handed on to renaissance scholars. THE WORD

Reflection on the word began in antiquity with the recognition of the distinction between sound and meaning. According to Michael (44) Aristotle suggests that the word is “a minimal meaningful unit” and Dionysius Thrax (second century bce), in the first systemic grammar in our tradition, explicitly defines the word as “the smallest unit of discourse.” This sets the stage for further exploring the problem of what a word is, the most general problem for grammarians and linguists. Another important contribution to our understanding was discerning the word’s ability to express meaning in two ways. This is suggested by Aristotle (cf. Padley, 11–13) but not made explicit until the middle ages, when grammarians bring out: “a threefold distinction between vox, the mere speech-sound; dictio, the word regarded as a meaningful speech-sound; pars, the word regarded as a syntactical unit” (Michael, 45). For example, Thomas of Erfurt (early fourteenth century) points out that, as part of a word (dictio), a physical sound (vox) has a double capacity of signifying: he distinguishes between what a word signifies directly (its lexical meaning) and what it signifies indirectly, what it consignifies (its grammatical meaning), which makes it a part of speech (pars) capable of assuming a syntactic function. Thus by the end of the medieval period, scholars had proposed a basis for inquiring into the nature of the verb as a part of speech within the more general framework of the word. No doubt most scholars in the renaissance took for granted that the word is made up of a physical sign linked to a mental significate,

Studying the Verb

15

a meaning, but they did not keep in mind this embryonic theory of the word – as a minimal sayable unit signifying two types of meaning, lexical and grammatical – proposed by classical and medieval grammarians: “The renaissance grammarians made no use of the two most important ideas about the word available to them: Dionysius Thrax’s description of it as a minimum unit of discourse, and the speculative grammarians’ distinction between semantic and syntactic units” (Michael, 47). That is, grammarians did not realize that “the syntactical function of a word is part of its meaning” and so failed to see that, as well as being the unit for signifying a lexical meaning, the word is the minimal unit for consignifying a grammatical meaning and constructing a sentence. As a consequence, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century grammarians had no general idea or framework in which to situate the different forms of the verb, no theoretical basis for analyzing what they observed. Lacking a coherent view of the various elements entering into the makeup of the verb, they appealed indiscriminately to lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, morphology, syntax, and sentence meaning in fruitless attempts to find some orderly way to classify verb forms. The problem is particularly acute in English, where verb inflexions, reduced to a minimum, are of little help in comparison with Latin. In particular, dealing with verb compounds is a major problem that cannot be solved by appealing to the Latin tradition. Although nineteenth-century grammarians brought little to clarify our view of the verb and its constituent parts, linguists did contribute something of far more importance: a method for analyzing the observable forms of language with all the rigour of science. The comparative method, based on the meticulous observation of the earliest texts of diverse languages, enabled scholars to compare different physical signs with like meanings and trace each set of signs back in time, imagining a common source for them and their prehistoric development from it. This led not only to postulating the existence of prehistoric languages like Proto-Indo-European but to the reconstruction of certain of their forms. For the first time in the human sciences, an area of reality was theorized to provide an explanation for observed facts in such a way that any scholar could make the observations, follow the reasoning, and reach the same conclusions concerning the imagined prehistoric source of the signs observed. This application of the scientific method to human language was a remarkable achievement because it took into account the word as

16

Lessons on the English Verb

the minimal unit of discourse and distinguished between the expressing of lexical and grammatical meanings within the word. However the comparative method is not immediately applicable to our problem since it is concerned with observing various languages from a historical perspective and comparing different physical signs with like meanings. Our problem, on the other hand, is concerned with observing the various forms of the English verb, simple and compound, from a descriptive perspective and comparing the different meanings expressed by each one in contemporary English. It was not until the twentieth century that a linguist found the way to apply the comparative method with its scientific rigour to a problem in contemporary descriptive grammar. Under such different circumstances the method had to be applied not to the physical sign but to its grammatical meaning. The purpose of these lessons is to apply this method to the English verb. G U I L L A U M E ’S A P P R O A C H T O T H E V E R B

It was not until the twentieth century that the required conditions – a curiosity about language forms and their uses, a good grasp of the scientific method in comparative grammar, and above all an unshakable conviction of the reality of some order or system underlying the forms observed in ordinary speech – were realized in a linguist: Gustave Guillaume. This conviction is the starting point for all scientific investigation because it takes for granted that there is some order in what one observes, some hidden factor that will permit one to understand the data. “Science is based on the insight that the world of appearances tells of hidden things, things which appearances reflect but do not resemble. One such insight is that what seems to be disorder in language hides an underlying order – a wonderful order. The word is not mine – it comes from the great Meillet, who wrote: ‘a language forms a system where everything fits together and has a wonderfully rigorous design’” (Guillaume 1984, 3).4 This conviction had to be unshakable because it was only after nearly twenty years of thinking about the hidden part of language – tongue 5 – that he made “the inspired guess”6 that led to a theory of the verb as a time word, outlined in his Temps et verbe (1929). Even more important, it permitted him to adapt the method of analysis used in historical and comparative studies to descriptive studies, introducing a temporal parameter into synchrony.

Studying the Verb

17

It may well have been Guillaume’s experience as a young man teaching French to Russian émigrés at the beginning of the last century that awakened his curiosity about his mother tongue. In any case, one of the major problems in this teaching provided the subject of his first important study, Le Problème de l’article, published in 1919. The preface of this work begins as follows: “The present work is an attempt to apply the comparative method to the formal [= grammatical] part of languages.”7 He later commented that although in this study he did not manage to find what he was looking for, the system of the article, he did come to realize something important, namely that the hidden system of tongue, whatever it may be, provided the potential for all the actualized uses observed in discourse, language as expressed in sentences. Because this condition-consequence relationship permits us to understand and so to explain what we observe, his insight put him in the mainstream of scientific investigation, which seeks causal factors (preconditions) having the data as consequences. Some years after this first study Guillaume was mulling over a curious problem of parallelism in French, the alternance of mood in Si vous le faites et qu’il s’ensuive un accident, on vous en tiendra rigueur.8 Here the event faites (‘do’) is used after si (= ‘if’) and so is expressed as hypothetical even though it is in the indicative. Similarly, s’ensuive (‘result’) in the subjunctive expresses its event as merely possible even though it is used after que (‘that’), a conjunction that expresses what is real. That is, he saw that, in order for the clauses to be parallel, the indicative had to present its event as real, the subjunctive as possible. What intrigued him here was the interplay between the possible and the real, and he suddenly realized what appears self evident once it is pointed out, namely that something is possible before it becomes real. This obvious fact was crucial because it implied that an event represented in the subjunctive must somehow arise before it is represented in the indicative. This in turn implied that there had to be a succession, a sequence, within the system of mood itself, that the system involved a ‘before’ position and an ‘after’ position. The realization that the subjunctive is obtained before the indicative soon led him to conclude that the system of mood involves a dynamism, a movement from one position to the other. And since he was concerned with meaning here, this must be a mental process, a preconscious mental operation. Not only that: it was an operation that could be held up early or

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Lessons on the English Verb

late to give the particular mood required by the sentence. As it turned out, this insight gave him the key to a method for analyzing other systems in tongue, a method similar to that used to analyze the development of language in historical time. But before going on to this, let us pause to consider this moment of discovery, what turned out to be his Experimentum Crucis (cf. Gleick, 81). The concern of science is to infer what is hidden from the senses, to discern those areas of reality that, once conceived, permit us to understand what we perceive. The following well-known passage depicts the situation in which Guillaume found himself: “In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism that would be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one that could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison” (Einstein and Infeld, 31). This is the situation when one is confronted with the different forms and meanings of the French or English verb: someone who is “ingenious” enough will obtain a mental view of its hidden reality, will conceive of a system, the potential in tongue, and this will permit them to understand what they observe in discourse. Thus thanks to his initial insight Guillaume saw mood as an operative system, i.e. a unit made up of different positions, one for each mood, arising one after the other in the mental operation made possible by the system, each mood contributing its own meaning to the verb. Examining aspect from this point of view (his knowledge of Russian made him particularly sensitive to this category), he realized that it constitutes another operative system, the aspects arising one after the other in one mental operation. And finally he realized that tense constitutes a third such system. Three systems, each providing its particular contribution to the conjugation of the verb. This led him to see that these three systems are themselves activated in a given order, one after the other in a single mental operation for generating the complex image of time found in any verb, an operation he called chronogenesis, i.e. an operation for forming a grammatical representation of time. We shall examine each of these systems in the chronogenesis of the English verb in

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later lessons. What is pertinent at this point is that Guillaume developed these insights – this “system of guesses”9 – to the point where he postulated that every grammatical system is dynamic, that is, based on a mechanism permitting the mind to occupy successive positions each representing its own grammatical meaning. This operative view of a grammatical system is quite different from the static view found in Saussure and others who consider a system to be a set of oppositions. An opposition is a relationship resulting from opposing two distinct entities and so, as Guillaume liked to point out, presupposes two positions. Describing a grammatical system, therefore, entails describing the positions it contains and the operation relating them. Because Guillaume was the first to insist on the operations involved in these preconscious mental systems, the theory he propounded came to be known as the Psychomechanics of Language. To understand the signs and meanings of the verb observed in discourse, then, the Psychomechanics of Language postulates the real existence of a preconscious system of operative subsystems available at any moment to the speaker, a postulate that distinguishes this theory from others. Because everything we express by means of language must be thought in the form of words, a word-forming system must be the most general grammatical framework of any language.10 Hence the system of tongue is conceived of as a mental mechanism (an operational potential) enabling the speaker to carry out different word-forming operations and the aim of grammatical analysis is to describe this all-inclusive system and its subsystems producing the different types of word found in a language. In English, as in all the other Indo-European languages, these word types correspond to the different parts of speech. In this way, psychomechanics aims at describing the grammatical makeup of the word, the smallest unit of discourse, and of the parts of speech (for those languages that have parts of speech within the word11) in order to explain their uses: in Guillaume’s view the grammatical makeup of a word – the aspect, mood, tense, etc. of a verb, for example – makes possible its relations with other words in the sentence. Explaining usage as a consequence of the meaning words consignify (their grammatical meaning) leads to a quite different result from that found in many grammars, where usage is described by means of syntactic rules that at best depict facts to be explained but offer no view of words “as they emerge from their origins.”12

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Lessons on the English Verb LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL MEANING

When we regard the word as a complex entity consisting of a composite meaning (lexical and grammatical) and a physical sign (itself often made up of root and inflexion), we can see that the relation between a word and its lexical meaning is not the same as that between a word and its grammatical meaning. The word-base or root signifies the lexeme, the lexical or material content of a word, a significate peculiar to that word, sui generis, distinguishing it from every other word. Among the thousands of verbs in English there is no other that signifies exactly the same lexical notion as, say, talk or work or sleep. As a consequence, whenever a speaker wants to express the notion ‘talk’ or ‘work’ or ‘sleep’ the same sign is used.13 That is to say, the lexical meaning of each word has its own distinctive sign (barring homonyms), whence the thousands of dictionary entries for verbs. On the other hand, the grammatical meaning of each word does not have its own individual sign: the past tense of every verb, for example, is signified by the same inflexion, except for the irregular verbs. That is, the inflexion or ending (even if it is a zero ending) consignifies the morpheme(s), the categorial or formal content of a word, a significate common to a whole set of words, all those formed by means of a given grammatical categorization. It would not be possible to calculate how many words can be formed through the past tense consignified by -ed. And even in the case of verbs like saw or wrote, no grammarian has ever, to my knowledge, suggested that the “irregular” sign consignifies a different grammatical meaning, a different past tense in contemporary English. This suggests that, in the absence of a one-to-one relationship, what constitutes the unity of the sign-morpheme combination is its categorial meaning. To describe an abstract grammatical significate like this it must be contrasted with other categorial meanings of the same type, other tenses or moods or aspects, etc. And this requires it to be described as part of a system. This double relation between a word and what it means – what medieval grammarians tried to express by distinguishing between signifying, i.e. sign-calling-to-mind-lexeme, and consignifying, i.e. sign-calling-to-mind-morpheme(s) – is important because it provides a guideline for observing verbs. It tells us that whereas the base or root is linked to a unique mental entity (the representation of a

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process or state as distinct from any other), the inflexion calls to mind a very general mental representation that is distinct from other such representations but is related to them in a systemic way. Every morpheme is opposed to another morpheme (or other morphemes) with which it constitutes a psychosystem, a mental system or system of meanings. Thus, for example, a verb like working is opposed to both the past participle worked and the infinitive work. That is, whenever a grammatical sign is observed, it leads us, via its own grammatical meaning, back to an underlying system, a system that cannot be observed directly because it never emerges into consciousness. We cannot, however, assume that a lexical meaning leads back to a system.14 This is why the distinction between lexical and grammatical meanings must be kept in mind when examining the verb. When observing verb usage it is important to distinguish first between what the sentence expresses and what the verb itself expresses. Failure to do this – and in some cases it may be difficult to draw this distinction – makes it impossible to focus on the verb itself. Once the verb’s contribution to the sentence meaning has been discerned, its lexical import must be distinguished from its grammatical import because only the latter can lead to a view of the underlying mental system. Furthermore, in a complex construction like a verb, its grammatical import must also be analyzed to distinguish between the import of tense from that of mood, aspect, etc. It is only when we have a view of any one of these psychosystems that we can have an understanding of what it is as a mental category and so avoid adding to the confusion described by Michael. And only when we have a sufficiently clear view of all of them can we obtain a view of the verb as a system of subsystems. THESE LESSONS

It is customary to examine the English verb for the purpose of using it correctly or more effectively, a practical aim suitable to a language lesson. In a linguistics lesson, however, we approach the verb in order to understand why it is used the way we observe. Trying to understand the reason for something, as opposed to trying to use it more effectively, constitutes a properly scientific aim. But it is also a typically human activity in no way reserved, as the prerogative of a specialist, to the scientist. This is perhaps best illustrated by the proverbial youngster who takes something apart just to see how it

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Lessons on the English Verb

works. Indeed, according to Einstein (1954, 290) “the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.” And in the present lessons we will try to refine our thinking about an everyday activity, the way we speak or write English. The aim here is to explain the uses of the English verb. To explain, however, we must first understand, and to understand we must first observe. “We can explain to the extent that we have understood. We can understand to the extent that we have observed” (Guillaume 1984, 69). This three-phase process begins with observation. The observable part of language, discourse consisting of sentences spoken or written, is a complex reality, partly physical and partly mental. Since both parts cannot be observed in the same way, this poses a double problem: how to observe as exactly and as completely as possible both what is physically perceivable, the signs, and what is not physically perceivable but only mentally perceivable, the meaning. We can learn to observe the spoken sign aurally and even, when necessary, with the help of instruments, but the only way we have of observing meaning, which must be sought through the external signs but cannot be found outside the mind, is to become conscious of it, to develop more and more sensitivity to its nuances. The point is that if either the sign or the meaning is neglected, part of the data will be lacking and the whole process vitiated. “To be complete, observation in the science of language must take in both what is physically (and so immediately) visible as well as what is mentally (and so non-physically) visible beneath the physically visible part of language” (Guillaume 1984, 69). It is incumbent on linguists, then, to be capable of observing as meticulously as possible both the physically and the mentally perceivable facets of language, and in these lessons it will be the observation of meaning that will require most attention, since the observation of the signs of the verb in English poses little difficulty. The second step of the three-phase process, understanding, calls for this refinement of everyday thinking involved in science because what we observe of language often seems to be arbitrary and even contradictory, as in If we did it tomorrow … (the use of a past tense with an adverb expressing future time). That is, the data is disorderly and “by nature disorder defies understanding” (Guillaume 1984, 44). As we saw when discussing Guillaume’s approach to the verb, however, attempting to understand presupposes that there is more to language than we can become conscious of through observation,

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that there is an order behind the apparent disorder. What distinguishes our discipline from many others is that the hidden part of language, what lies beyond the scope of direct observation, is to be found, not in the deep time of geology or in the microspace of the atom but in the subconscious, or better, preconscious mind of the speaker. We shall see that, here as in other sciences, forming a hypothesis, an image of what we cannot observe directly, calls for the use of the imagination in an attempt to see the connections between different meanings expressed and thus reconstruct the preconscious mental system governing usage, the order behind the data permitting us to understand it. In order to explain and convince others, the third step, most sciences can have recourse to repeating an experiment. When dealing with a hypothesis about meaning, however, experimentation is out of the question since we cannot isolate all the factors conditioning the production of a sentence and predict what a person will say. The only way left is to confront hypothesis and data – not just the observed facts that aroused curiosity in the first place and helped to establish the hypothesis but new facts, other uses consistently sought so that the data base is constantly being extended. Explanation thus permits others to go through the process of proof, which may be long and laborious, to verify the well-foundedness of the proposed theory with their own data. This may invalidate the hypothesis or confirm it or lead to modifying it. It not infrequently happens that, thanks to the vantage point provided by the hypothesis, hitherto unobserved facts are brought to light and the soundness of an explanation is thereby considerably enhanced. “A theory – any theory – must necessarily confront the facts. And this confrontation with fact is the critical moment for a theory” (Guillaume 1984, 22). This, then, is the program here – in light of observations of both form and meaning, to describe the English verb in operative terms as a psychosystem in order to explain usage. These lessons outline the results of persistent efforts to imagine this mental program or software the speaker activates when calling on the verb in one of its various forms. Starting with the traditional idea of a verb as a time word, we shall first see, in three lessons on theory, how time is represented through chronogenesis. We shall then turn to the expression of time in discourse, examining uses of the simple form and verb compounds. Lessons on person, the passive, auxiliaries, and

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voice will complete the attempt to sketch the system. Although there has been considerable progress in analyzing certain subsystems of the verb, far less in analyzing others, it is hoped that the system as outlined here will prove sufficiently coherent and close to the data to stimulate further observation and reflection along the avenues suggested and thus allow others to rectify any proposals that prove untenable.

LESSON TWO

Chronogenesis I: Aspect

INTRODUCTION

We have seen that grammatical tradition considers the verb a time word in the sense that its grammatical meaning – not its lexical meaning – provides a representation of time. In order to explain the unerring effortlessness with which anglophones use the diverse forms of the verb, we have postulated that there must be a subconscious thought system for producing the representation of time expressed by the different forms of the verb. This mental program permitting the genesis of a verb has been called chronogenesis in order to highlight the fact that the process for generating a formal (i.e. grammatical) image of time is central to it. In this lesson we shall begin exploring what is involved in the chronogenesis of the English verb. In order to ensure a framework sufficiently broad to situate all the forms of the verb concerned with the representation of time, it is important to start with a view of the system of the word, the most general form in any language. To begin with, we can regard the word as a minimum unit of discourse, a vocable, consisting of both lexical and grammatical import tied to a sign, the two crucial ideas neglected by renaissance scholars. Far from being an entity “stored in the speaker’s mental lexicon” (Taylor, 74), a word is produced by the system of tongue each time a speaker needs it for constructing a sentence. In an Indo-European language like English, the system of tongue forms it into a unit as a specific kind of word, as a particular part of speech, and this enables it to play a certain syntactic role in discourse. Thus every word produced by someone speaking English has the grammatical form of a

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Lessons on the English Verb

part of speech, which provides it with the potential for relating to other words in a given manner and so to contribute to the sentence the speaker wants. For example, the very fact of being formed as a finite verb gives a word the capacity to attribute some action or state (its lexical import) to a subject. This predicative function or “assertive” role of verbs, which will be examined in a later lesson, cannot be fulfilled by any other kind of word, not even an infinitive. In this way we can understand why the set of conditions permitting the syntactic function of a word is part of the word’s meaning, the part making it a minimum unit of discourse. To construct a word of a specific kind it must be formed along certain lines. To have a substantive, for example, a lexical notion must be given a grammatical number, must be mentally grasped or formed as, say, ‘plural.’ Grammarians point out that, to permit a finite verb to express time, its lexical import must be mentally grasped or formed by a particular tense morpheme, say ‘past.’ That is, the mental program or system for producing a verb involves providing its lexeme with a particular tense as a necessary prior condition for it to be categorized in the most general form, the part of speech. What grammarians did not see is that aspect and mood are related to tense in such a way that they are also required for a verb to express time and so are necessary conditions for the lexeme to be formed as a verb with its capacity to function as a minimum unit of discourse. We shall examine below the part played by aspect and mood but here we must complete our summary description of the word as a basis for this analysis. First, a note of caution: in speaking of the grammatical “form” of a word, there is always the danger that I will be understood as referring to the physical sign, the different inflexions of a substantive or verb. Here, “form” and “formal” will often be used to designate a mental category providing a shape or mold for the word’s lexical import or matter. In this sense, the form provided by a morpheme like tense or by a part of speech like the verb can be seen to be part of the word’s meaning, what it consignifies, as medieval grammarians expressed it. We shall be dealing with this formal part of the verb’s meaning in these lessons, but it should never be forgotten that a word also signifies something and that this lexical matter can have an influence on the grammatical form. Thus, for example, the verb know is rarely used in the progressive because of its lexical import (cf. lesson 16).

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Because a verb often designates some activity or process that the speaker has in mind, it has often been called an “action word” to distinguish it from a substantive, often said to name “a person, place, or thing, etc.” Of course verbs can designate states as well as activities. They can in fact designate any happening, anything perceived by the speaker as extending over a stretch of time. What I decide to talk about, my intended (or purposed) message, is always my personal experience of some situation, be it perceived, remembered, or imagined. A verb targets a process or state in the intended message, but this happening I want to talk about belongs to my stream of conscious awareness, which is mine and mine alone. The happening (process or state), which is part of the message I intend to communicate, cannot therefore constitute the lexical meaning of the verb because a verb’s lexeme is shared by other speakers. Rather, what constitutes the lexical meaning of a verb is a representation of the happening, a mental figuration of that personal experience by means of a lexeme that the speaker has in common with other speakers of the language. This distinction between the happening, i.e. the process or state in the speaker’s intended message, and the way the speaker represents it linguistically thanks to a word (or words) in our language is of crucial importance. Without it we would not be able to understand how something as intimate and incommunicable as one’s own experience can be made known to others, perhaps years later. Making the intended message sayable is, in fact, the challenge confronting human language at every moment in every speaker. Every act of language involves representing adequately, with the resources made available to speakers in tongue, anything in their stream of consciousness they may want to talk about. Without the linguistic means of representing the intended message a speaker would not be able to express it. The basic principle involved here, often repeated by Guillaume, is: no expression without representation. Thus the role of the lexical import of any word is to depict some set of impressions in the message the speaker intends to communicate. To represent that these impressions are perceived as a happening, the appropriate lexeme must be configured by aspect, mood, tense, etc. and be finally categorized as a verb. A commentary heard during a recent Olympic Games will serve as an example of this: Will he medal tonight? Here the lexeme of medal is called on to depict or represent certain activities in the situation of the

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Games closely associated with the metal object itself. And this version of the lexeme, where the impression of extending over a span of time is prominent, is then formed as a verb. Such examples permit us to see that the material import of a word, which represents something in the speaker’s particular experience, is configured by its formal import so that the word can fulfill the function foreseen for it in the sentence the speaker is constructing. Thus the relation between lexical and grammatical meaning is that between matter and form, a relation thanks to which the two are constituted into a mental unit, a quantum of meaning. Once this unit of meaning is constructed, its sign is activated, and this constitutes a word ready to be pronounced or written and so play its part in the sentence. In our analysis, then, it will be important to keep in mind that aspect, mood, tense, etc. give a mental form to the lexical matter so that it can be categorized as a verb. Without this framework based on a general view of the system for constructing words in English we would have no criteria for analyzing different verb forms other than the relations between particular observations of usage. And we saw in the previous lesson how unreliable these can be when they are the only guide. The best way to approach the system of the verb is probably to examine the category that is most commonly said to characterize it: tense. And we can begin by attempting to see what is implied by typical descriptions of tense such as “the time in which an event occurs” (Nesfield, 55) or “the TIME at which an action takes place” (Zandvoort, 58). There are two elements involved here, the happening or “action” itself (or rather its representation – what I shall call the event) and the time in or at which it takes place. This leads others to define tense in terms of the relationship involved between the two. For example, in his descriptive grammar of English, Jespersen speaks of tense as “the linguistic expression of time relations, so far as they are indicated in verb forms” (1954, 4: 1). Comrie, in his well-known work on aspect, is even more explicit: “Tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time, usually to the moment of speaking” (1976, 1–2). The aim of this lesson and the next two is to show that these common ways of characterizing tense necessarily imply two other systems of representation, aspect and mood, without which the system of tense would not be able to carry out the functions attributed to it by grammarians.

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ASPECT

When we consider that tense involves relating an event (the representation of a process or state) to its place in time, it is obvious that there are, as in any relationship, two elements involved: the time and the event related to it. Many grammarians take this relating for granted without analyzing it any further, and so it is significant when Comrie characterizes the function of tense as relating the “time of the situation [= the happening] referred to to some other time”. That is, tense brings into relationship two depictions of time, the time of the happening as represented in the event and the time to which the event is related. This manner of viewing tense is significant because it helps us focus on something all events have in common – the representation of a certain duration. One can easily fail to keep this in mind because it reflects an obvious fact, namely that anything we experience as a happening must have not only a beginning and an end (even if we are not aware of them) but also a stretch of time in between. This can be depicted by means of a simple diagram figuring the duration stretching from its beginning (B) to its end (E): B B

EE

Thus in representing some happening as an event we must represent the span of duration it extends through (or at least that part of the duration we want to talk about). This event time, as we shall call the representation of a happening’s duration, with its particular event, is then related to the “other time” Comrie talks about. Granted then that every event necessarily involves a representation of event time, we can see that this is not dependent on the particular activity or state depicted by the lexical import. That is, event time is something quite general, found in every verb, consignified by the verb. As such, it is part of the grammatical import, part of the formal representation of time that helps categorize the matter of the verb. It may be this that led Comrie to see that “the time of the situation [= happening]” calls for a grammatical representation of time and not a lexical representation. That is, he considers that this configuring of time is not part of the verb’s notional import, as it is in adverbs like yesterday, soon, before, etc., but part of the verb’s formal import. He attributes it to the category of aspect: “aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation” (1976, 3).

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Lessons on the English Verb

In proposing this as a general definition of aspect, he acknowledges his debt to Holt, who, some thirty years earlier, had defined aspect as “The different ways of conceiving the flow of the process itself.”1 Holt, in turn, was familiar (cf. 10–12) with Guillaume’s description of aspect in Temps et verbe (1929) as “the time within the word’s image” (15), and as “the very image of the verb in its unrolling” (21). Although, as we shall see immediately, Guillaume later found more adequate ways of speaking about aspect, it seems that he was the first to make explicit a clear grammatical distinction between the time in the event, its event time, and the time in which the event takes place. And he first recognized that the representation of event time is the function of a specific subsystem, that of aspect. In order to designate in a general way the inside of the event – its duration depicted by the verb – Guillaume later adopted the term “immanence” (from the Latin immanere ‘to remain within’). He recognized that certain languages, Latin and Russian for example, have a system of aspect based on two different ways of representing the immanence of an event – as incomplete and as complete – giving rise to two aspects, the imperfective and the perfective.2 On the other hand, confronted with verb compounds consisting of avoir (have) + past participle in contemporary French and the other Romance languages, he realized that the basis of the system of aspect had changed since the Latin. The opposition is now between representing the immanence of the event itself and its “sequel” or aftermath in time, i.e. the “transcendence” of the event as he was to call it later. Thus the aspect representing the event’s accomplishment phase, its “internal temporal constituency” or “the flow of the process itself,” he called the immanent aspect. And the aspect representing the time involved in the event’s aftermath or result phase he called the transcendent aspect.3 The fact that Guillaume was able to recognize the nature of aspect as a system, as a set of relationships opposing two or more positions to provide a form for the lexeme, permitted him to discern its place as a subsystem in the verb. This in turn enabled him to see that the Russian system of aspect is one way of instituting a means of representing event time, the system in Latin another way, and the system in French a third way. He thus avoided the pitfall of attempting to analyze aspect in French or Latin in terms of the system in Russian, where it was first observed and analyzed. Turning to English, we have to look for verb forms that express, as one grammarian put it, “distinctions of time independent of any

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reference to past, present, or future” (Sweet 1891/1955, 1014) because, as Quirk et al. point out (188): “Unlike tense, aspect is not deictic … in the sense that it is not relative to the time of utterance.” What corresponds most clearly to this description is the opposition between the have + past participle compound and all other forms of the verb, simple or compound. This can be illustrated by the following pairs, where the point in time that the event is referred to is specified lexically by the adverb phrase: At 2 o’clock, the train left. / At 2 o’clock, the train had left. At 2 o’clock, the train leaves. / At 2 o’clock, the train has left. At 2 o’clock, the train will leave. / At 2 o’clock, the train will have left. The point of these examples is to show that, regardless of its tense or mood, the have + past participle compound refers its subject to a place in time after the event left, whereas the other verb forms refer the subject to a moment within the event.5 That is to say, in each case, the simple form (left, leaves, infinitive leave) expresses the image of the event from beginning to end, whereas have + participle expresses a moment during the aftermath of the leaving. Since the simple form of the verb represents time inside the event and have + past participle time after the event, inside its aftermath, we are led to propose two aspects in English, immanent and transcendent. There are of course other manners of representing both the interior of the event (e.g. the progressive) and its aftermath (e.g. the perfect progressive), but the immanent aspect always represents the event’s accomplishment phase, the transcendent aspect its result phase. Some grammarians consider the progressive form to be the expression of a distinct aspect in English because it provides a distinct means of representing the event that is found throughout the conjugation. On the other hand, like the simple form, the progressive represents the interior of the event, albeit in a manner different from that of the simple form, as we shall see in lesson 12. Furthermore, as the following examples bring out, the relation between the progressive and the so-called progressive perfect is identical to that between immanent and transcendent aspects illustrated above: They were playing tennis. / They had been playing tennis. They are playing tennis. / They have been playing tennis. They will be playing tennis. / They will have been playing tennis.

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Lessons on the English Verb

Finally, as Quirk et al. point out, considering have + participle and the progressive as the two aspects of English expressing the event respectively as complete (perfective) and as incomplete (imperfective) “is an oversimplified view, as is clear as soon as we observe that these two aspects may combine within a single verb phrase (e.g.: I have been reading is both perfective and progressive)” (189). Obviously, it would be a contradiction to consider an event both complete and incomplete at the same time, a fact that throws further light on the system of aspect as presented here. Basically, if aspect constitutes a system, i.e. a set of mental positions in opposition to one another, then one cannot have two aspects, two opposites, represented in the same verb. On the other hand, to argue that have + participle represents an event’s transcendence involves no contradiction here since one can represent the aftermath of either a complete or an incomplete event, as we shall see in lesson 14. Ultimately, it would contradict the very notion of system as a set of oppositions, or as Guillaume would say, a set of positions in opposition to one another, to have two aspects in the same verb. This means, then, that the progressive does not constitute a distinct aspect opposed to others within the system of aspect in English.6 We shall examine the system to which it belongs later, a point of considerable importance because we cannot have a satisfactory understanding of how the system works until each form of the verb is situated in its proper place. It also means that naming the have + participle construction the “perfect” is misleading because this term, borrowed from Latin grammarians (perfectum), inevitably suggests something complete. We shall therefore adopt Guillaume’s more precise but less known term “transcendent” because it designates a position beyond, not a state of completeness. THE SYSTEM

In the previous lesson we saw that any word in discourse has both a lexical and a grammatical import, or, in more abstract terms, both a material and a formal significate. The lexical import of any verb is an event, the representation of a happening, of something in the intended message involving duration. All full verbs (and auxiliaries, which we will deal with in lesson 16) represent this duration grammatically as their event time by means of aspect. Without this formal representation of duration the lexical import would not depict an event and so there would be no verb. This is one of the differences

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33

between a verb and a substantive. The lexeme ‘medal’ in the example given above, like ‘swim’ in I swim tomorrow, has been formed by the system of aspect, whereas the notions in his medal and in a good swim have not, even though ‘swim’ formed as a substantive implies a certain duration that can be expressed lexically, as in a good half-hour swim. Similarly for the verb: the duration can also be expressed lexically, as in I swam for half an hour, where the prepositional phrase manifests concretely the more abstract grammatical representation of event time inherent in any verb. The point is that representing event time is a necessary phase in forming a verb. We are now in a position to describe the system of aspect. Aspect is defined as the grammatical category providing a representation of event time, of time within an event. Everything we perceive as a happening involves duration. Being a time word, a verb represents this stretch of duration as the time inherent in its event. Because all verbs express an event with its event time, any distinction between aspects, between the ways of representing event time, will hold throughout the conjugation since it is the event, including its event time, that is conjugated by means of different moods, tenses, and persons. An examination of the various forms of the English verb shows that the opposition between the have + participle compound and all other forms corresponds to an opposition in meaning between the immanence of an event and its transcendence, between representing either its accomplishment phase or its result phase. This contrast can be observed in discourse because the subject is always situated at some moment either during the event’s accomplishment or in its aftermath. In the following diagram, the event time involved in the immanent aspect is depicted by a dotted line to suggest that the subject can be seen at any point in it: B B

EE

We shall see in a later lesson how the various possibilities for situating the subject in the event’s immanence affect the expression of the event. The transcendent aspect can be diagrammed as follows: past pastparticiple participle

have have .................................

The event time of the result phase is situated beyond that of the past participle event and depicted by a dotted line to allow for locating the subject at different points in it, whereas the participle’s

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event, which can be seen only in retrospect, is depicted by a leftoriented arrow to suggest something left behind. Combining these two diagrams we get a view of the system of aspect in English, a two-phase system consisting of the immanent aspect and the transcendent aspect. immanence immanence transcendence transcendence

It is important to notice that, like all systems in tongue, this one is dynamic, that is, it makes available the potential for carrying out a specific operation of representation. Like any other operation, this one takes time because the two aspects of the event involve a necessary sequence: the transcendence can be reached only by leaving the immanence behind, by exiting from the place occupied by the immanence of the event. Although the time required for this operation of representation is extremely short – the microtime required for a preconscious mental operation – it is sufficient to permit the mind to intervene, intercepting the operation early enough to get a representation of the immanence of the event, or letting it proceed to the second phase, where an interception delivers a representation of the event’s transcendence. The unity of the system is thus ensured by the fact that it consists of the potential for a single operation permitting two possible representations of event time: a moment within the specific event’s accomplishment phase or within its aftermath phase. The internal consistency of the system is based on the link between the two phases: the prior accomplishment of the event is a necessary condition for the actualization of its result phase. This very simple system thus provides two mental forms for configuring the event time implicit in the lexical matter of any verb, even infinitives and participles. As a consequence, in discourse a verb in English expresses its event time as either in the immanence or the transcendence of the event that the verb expresses lexically. Before it is ready for discourse, however, a verb must, as we have seen in the “Aspect” section above, relate this representation of time to another representation of time. This next step in chronogenesis brings us to the system of mood and the part it plays in generating the image of time expressed by a verb. We shall turn to this in the next lesson, but first a comment on the fact that the transcendent aspect calls for a verb compound.

Aspect

35

A VERB COMPOUND

While the immanent aspect is expressed by various signs in discourse, the transcendent can always be recognized by the fact that it is expressed by auxiliary have + participle. This is significant because it indicates a certain constraint in expressing a result phase, and this will lead us to a necessary condition in representing event time as transcendent. The constraint can be illustrated by a sentence expressing a sudden realization like I’ve lost my keys! Here the participle represents in retrospect the event of losing that is attributed to the subject (I did the losing), even though the speaker is not talking about this event. The verb tells us about the speaker’s present state of being without keys, about the result of losing them. And this is the constraint imposed on the verb: it must designate something (the state of the subject) it does not represent as such. That is, have lost does not represent lexically ‘being without keys,’ but only the subject’s place in time in the result phase of losing and so designates, refers to, the subject’s predicament only indirectly, by implication. Because the auxiliary alone does not name a specific event, the verb compound leaves the particular situation, the state of the subject at that moment, to be worked out. We must project from what the event, accomplished and left behind, entails (and from everything we know of the speaker, the situation, etc.) to imagine its result at the moment in time the auxiliary represents. One could say that the transcendent in a sentence names by implication but without specifying; it simply points to where its designatum, the state of the subject, exists in time, namely, after the losing. This can give rise to a great many possible effects in usage, as we shall see in lesson 8, but here the aim is to discern what this fact of discourse tells us about the conditions of representation in tongue. The fact that the verb compound represents an event consisting of what results from another event indicates that the auxiliary have represents a span of time after the other event and nothing more. The possibility of forming a word as a verb with its lexical import reduced to this extent is quite a remarkable phenomenon, as we shall see when examining auxiliaries in lessons 10, 12, and 13. The point to be made here, however, is that this is the reason the transcendent aspect requires a verb compound. Because have auxiliary on its own cannot signify a particular event, it must have the import of another word, the past participle, for it to be used in a sentence. Such an obligation

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may appear unnecessarily constraining, but it should be remembered that this simple compounding mechanism permits the designating of whatever resulting situation may arise from some happening, and so it is far more economical, elegant even, than having a full verb to designate each such aftermath situation. Much more remains to be said about the forming of a verb compound, but the question cannot be satisfactorily explored until we have the whole process of chronogenesis in mind. We have seen in this lesson that the first step in the process calls on the system of aspect to represent an event with its event time. Only by keeping clearly in mind this role of aspect, and particularly when considering the have + participle compound, can one avoid much of the confusion to be observed in descriptions of the verb that do not maintain a clear grammatical distinction between aspect and tense, which must relate the event and its event time to “some other time.” But before tense can fulfill this function, another subsystem of the verb must be activated. That second step of the process of chronogenesis will be examined in the next lesson.

LESSON THREE

Chronogenesis II: Mood

REPRESENTING THE

“OTHER

TIME”

Approaching the verb through tense, we started with Comrie’s view making explicit what is commonly implied by many grammarians: “Tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time, usually to the moment of speaking” (1976, 1–2). In the previous lesson we saw that the “time of the situation,” the duration of the happening we want to talk about, must be represented as event time by means of the system of aspect before tense can carry out its relating function. There is, obviously, another condition to be met before tense can enter into operation: the “other time, usually the moment of speaking” must also be represented if something is to be related to it. That is to say, any relation involves two terms at least, and both terms must be called to mind before the relationship can be actually established between them. In this lesson, then, we are concerned with how the second term of the relation established by tense is configured. Granted that tense relates event time to “some other time,” it is quite remarkable that no scholar has, to my knowledge, ever asked which grammatical system of the verb represents this “other time” – no scholar other than Guillaume, that is. The reason for this is important if we are to keep the criteria clear when dealing with verb forms. For a verb form to express some meaning, we must first call this meaning to mind. As Guillaume puts it: “The human principle underlying language is that expression is possible only if something has first been represented” (1984, 94). As was pointed out in the introduction, we are obliged to translate any raw experience into a linguistic representation in the

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Lessons on the English Verb

mind, depict it by means of our language resources, before we can give it a sign and so express it. And this is true even of elements of experience that are common to all, like an awareness of the moment of speaking. Thus, no expression without representation. With this principle in mind, it is obvious that Guillaume was led to ask which system represents this “other time” expressed by the verb. To illustrate the answer he proposed, we can reflect for a moment on some simple observations of usage in English. It is usual to consider that the verb is in the present tense in: I leave today. I leave tomorrow. In ordinary discourse1 we cannot say something like *I leave yesterday.2 because leave cannot locate its event at a point in the past, such as that represented by yesterday. That is, this tense relates its event to the moment of speaking or to some moment beyond it, but not to any moment before it, and so is contrasted with the past tense left. On the other hand, when we consider uses like They suggested I leave today. They suggested I leave tomorrow. They suggested I leave yesterday. the third sentence is no less acceptable than the other two. This may well appear to be an inconsistency in the use of the finite verb leave and so calls for an explanation. For Guillaume and other grammarians it seems obvious that, in the first set of three sentences, relating leave to a moment in the past is not acceptable because the tense of the verb establishes a particular link between its event and the present moment, a link that precludes situating the event before that moment. In the second set, on the other hand, where all the sentences are acceptable, the tense of the verb permits situating the event anywhere in time – at the moment of speaking, after it or before it. Manifestly the tense of leave here differs from its tense in the first set. What is this difference?

Mood

39

We get a clue concerning the difference by omitting the adverb in the second set of sentences: They suggested I leave. In this sentence there is no indication when the leaving was to take place – in the past, the present, or the future – except obviously that it is to occur after the moment of suggesting. This leads us to conclude that, unlike the verb in the first set of sentences, leave here does not relate its event to the present. How can this be explained? It cannot be a difference in event time since in each case the event is represented by means of the simple form, i.e. in the immanent aspect. There must be some difference between the two sets of sentences in the manner of representing the “other time,” the time to which the event is related by tense. The question then is: what is the grammatical difference between the verbs in the first and second sets? Which grammatical system is involved here? This can easily be determined by changing the subject, by substituting he for I, as in the two following sets: He leaves today / tomorrow / *yesterday. They suggested he leave today / tomorrow / yesterday. In the first set, the verb of course takes the -s inflexion with a subject in the third person singular, but in the second set this ending is not found. The absence of -s here is significant because this is one of the marks for recognizing a verb in the subjunctive mood in English. That is to say, we are here dealing with verbs in two different moods, the indicative and the subjunctive, and this in spite of the fact that the physical sign is identical except in the third person singular. Because a verb in the subjunctive mood does not refer its event “to the moment of speaking” we infer that it provides a representation of the “other time” different from that of a verb in the indicative mood. Such considerations lead us to the discovery Guillaume made: it is the system of mood that gives the second representation of time in a verb. This, then, is the hypothesis Guillaume applied to the verb in French, and in other languages, in order to discern how the process of forming a time image, chronogenesis, unfolds in each: the system of mood provides a representation of the time to which an event with its event time is referred by means of tense. Like other grammarians, Guillaume observed that any event, wherever it may be in time, no matter how far in the past or in the future, can be related to this time

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Lessons on the English Verb

by the appropriate tense. And so he assumed this “other time” to be represented as an endless stretch, as is suggested in the following diagram by means of a line with symbols of infinity at each end: 8

8

Time represented as an unbounded horizon in this way reflects the common experience of time as a sort of background or container for all happenings, for our stream of consciousness. This representation was later called universe time, since, like the spatial universe, it is conceived as capable of containing any temporal entity, any event. Mood, then, is the subsystem of the verb for representing universe time, time capable of containing any event, as opposed to aspect, the subsystem for representing event time, time contained in any event. Guillaume’s hypothesis was a major innovation. For the first time mood was related not to the attitude of the speaker but to what makes a word a verb, its role of consignifying time, of expressing time grammatically. Not only that: his hypothesis implied that without mood one cannot have tense incorporated into the verb because without a representation of universe time there would be no “other time” to situate an event in. The aim of this lesson is to apply the same hypothesis to English to see if it can provide us with a theory of how universe time is represented through the system of mood. Since there is little agreement among English grammarians on the question, a theoretical understanding of mood would provide a valuable basis for examining usage of the subjunctive and the nonfinite forms. THE INDICATIVE

We shall begin with the best known mood, the indicative, because its representation of universe time is more readily discernible thanks to the fact that an event is always located in relation to the present. This implies that somewhere in the endless stretch of time the present is represented as a point or limit dividing time already realized from time to be realized, as in the following diagram: 8

8

Any event referred to time configured in this way will necessarily be situated to the left or right of the limit, or astride it.

Mood

41

Since I want to show that a grammatical representation of the present in universe time is what characterizes the indicative mood, it is important to make clear at the outset that the term “present” is being used here in the technical sense proper to grammar. It is sometimes used in English grammars in just this sense: a limit or point or boundary that divides the whole horizon of time into two stretches but that is not itself a stretch of time, since a limit occupies no space and has no duration. This sense should be distinguished from that found in its common, non-technical use in “for the present,” “the present of speech,” etc., where it expresses not a limit but a short span of time containing the moment of awareness, the brief stretch during which we speak or listen, or do anything else, for that matter. The technical use here should also be kept quite distinct from the use found in grammars that speak of the “present tense,” a confusing manner of naming tense in English, as we shall see in the next lesson. Although experiencing the moment of conscious awareness is common to all humans during their waking hours, it cannot be assumed, as is sometimes done, that the representation of this moment is the same everywhere, that the grammatical present depicted in the above diagram is common to all languages. This would be to ignore the distinction between our experience, which is outside language, and the representation of our experience by means of our language. The categories permitting representation vary from one language to another, and the present is a good case in point. The grammatical present is represented as a limit in English and the other Germanic languages, but it is represented quite differently in French and the other Romance languages.3 Each language must therefore be examined on its own to determine how the experienced present is represented grammatically within the system of the verb. The reasons for proposing the above configuration for English will be discussed below. Even in grammars concerned only with English, this distinction between our experience of the present moment and our representation of it is sometimes neglected. When we use a verb in the indicative, the grammatical present – the limit dividing universe time into two stretches – usually corresponds to an instant within the present of experience, and this easily leads us to forget that the grammatical present is a mental configuring of an experienced instant. The distinction between the experienced and the represented present can

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Lessons on the English Verb

be made clear if we recall that we are not obliged to represent the grammatical present as contemporary with the act of writing or speaking. We have only to think of uses like the historic present or the science-fiction present to realize that, to suit their purposes, speakers can represent the limit between the two stretches of universe time anywhere, whether in remembered time or in time they imagine as future, or within the moment of speaking. The effect of introducing a limit or vertical cut on the horizon of time is to create two time-stretches, two time-spheres, an endless extent of time after the limit and an endless (or should we say beginningless) extent of time before it. Because it usually4 represents an instant within the moment of awareness, of live experience – the moment in time that is identifiable, localizable, usually shared by both speaker and listener – the grammatical present is felt to depict the one instant of experiential reality in time. That is, time to come, the future, we experience as time that does not exist yet (or exists only in imagination), and time already over, the past, we experience as time that no longer exists (or only in memory). On the other hand, we experience the present moment as the time of living awareness, of current consciousness, i.e. the place the mind experiences its real, actual existence in time, so that any event referred to this moment (and to the speaker through the person of the subject) is seen in terms of its relation to this moment of reality, of conscious awareness. Thus the experienced present is a unique moment, and the way it is represented grammatically has repercussions on the indicative mood. The idea of the grammatical present represented as a limit has been proposed by other grammarians. Thus for Jespersen (1951, 258): “the present moment, ‘now,’ is nothing but the ever-fleeting boundary between the past and the future.” Quirk et al. (175) suggest something similar: “time can be thought of as a line (theoretically, of infinite length) on which is located, as a continuously moving point, the present moment. Anything ahead of the present moment is in the future, and anything behind it is in the past.” It is worth citing a well-known physicist who expresses similar impressions: “apparently we all nearly always think of time as a homogeneous and unlimited one-dimensional sequence, all past time on one side, all future time on the other, separated by the present which is in continuous motion from past to future” (Bridgman, 29). He later remarks: “We usually think of the future stretching before us, and ourselves as going to meet it” (32).5

Mood

43

The interesting thing here is the suggestion of the present as constantly on the move toward the future, a point leaving its temporary position behind and moving on to the subsequent instant as its new position. This gives the impression that the past is constantly extending, constantly being added to, though the time beyond the present is in no way diminished or shortened. In the indicative this results in an impression of a constant movement in universe time, of moving away from the past toward the future, an impression of moving forward, ascending in time. In a diagram this can be suggested as follows: 8

8

Because of the present’s key position in the verb system, this impression of a mobile rather than static limit deserves a comment. As the present moves ahead, each moment of time encountered is actualized and left behind, added to the past where nothing more can happen. This makes the moment just ahead of the present limit something active, a place for actualizing universe time, “the budding and unfolding present” (Bridgman, 29) for realizing in each successive instant its possibility for containing events, before leaving it to the past, where there is no further possibility of realizing an event. It seems as if English has based its representation of the present not on the impression of a place in time where things happen to us or where we exist, but on the impression of a place where we do things. Representing the moment of reality with this as the dominant impression may well have influenced another subsystem of the verb, as we shall see when we look at the system of voice in lesson 17. The effect of representing the moment of present consciousness as an advancing boundary between time that has been and time that is not yet thus depicts it as the place in time for effecting an event. On the other hand, seen as a mere limit, the represented present offers no possibility of lodging something within its confines. It follows that in English when one wishes to represent some event as carried out at the moment of speaking, as contemporary with the present of speech, the event must be situated in a segment of universe time that starts with the forward-looking grammatical present and extends as far toward the future as is needed to lodge the event. Jespersen (1951, 258) describes this difference between the represented, grammatical present, a limit, and the stretch of

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Lessons on the English Verb

time required for situating contemporary events as follows: “Theoretically [the present] is a point which has no duration any more than a point in theoretic geometry has dimension … But in practice ‘now’ means a time with an appreciable duration.” That is, there is a real difference between representing universe time by means of the indicative mood and locating an event in it by means of tense: the grammatical present is a mere limit with no duration, but it provides the initial point from which a span of time can extend forward to lodge an event. We shall discuss this in some detail when we examine uses of the simple form. It is not easy to keep these different ways of talking about the present distinct in our minds, but the difficulty can be greatly reduced if we adopt the term “nonpast” to designate the endless timestretch starting with the grammatical present and extending into the future. The nonpast will thus contrast with the “past,” the beginningless time-stretch extending up to the grammatical present. This calls for two tenses in the indicative, each named after a time-stretch. It is quite common to speak of the “past tense” but less common to speak of the “nonpast tense.” This name is nevertheless valuable because it not only avoids the confusion introduced by the term often found in grammars, “present tense” (still another sense of “present”), but it corresponds better to the reality of this tense, which situates an event in a span of time either at the beginning of the nonpast time-stretch or at some later place in it, as in When you get home, call me. Thus the indicative is characterized by the representation of the present as an advancing limit dividing boundless universe time into two time-stretches extending toward the future. The following diagram summarizes this: 8

8 Past

Past

Nonpast

Nonpast

Since the indicative offers two time-stretches in which an event can be situated it meets the second requirement for relating an event to time (the first requirement being, as we have seen in the previous lesson, to represent event time by means of the system of aspect) by making it possible to situate the event either before or after the present-limit. As a result there are only two tenses in the indicative, each of which relates an event to the present with its impression of reality. The subjunctive also meets this second requirement but in a different way, as we shall now see.

Mood

45

THE SUBJUNCTIVE

For many, the first question that arises here is whether English really has a subjunctive mood. The so-called “present” subjunctive, where it can be contrasted with the indicative both in form and meaning, provides clear evidence that it does. The example of this given above (repeated here) and three others will illustrate this: They suggested I leave yesterday. They insisted that we not eat meat. (Quirk et al., 157) She insists that he take/takes the 8 o’clock train. (Huddleston and Pullum, 996) It was moved that Mr. L.G. be and hereby is appointed sessional chairman of the Liberal party. (Jespersen 1954, 7: 644) The use of yesterday with leave and the possibility of not before finite eat provide syntactic evidence that the two verbs are not in the indicative mood. Take vs takes and be vs is give morphological evidence of two different moods. Such evidence should suffice to establish that this tense of the subjunctive really exists in contemporary English. We will examine this question in more detail in lesson 8. The question of the existence of the so-called “past” subjunctive calls for more careful examination here. The only clear evidence from the physical sign is provided by the verb to be with first and third persons in the singular: If he were here now he would settle the matter. This cannot, however, be considered conclusive evidence because many speakers today can express the same thing in the indicative: If he was here now he would settle the matter. Thus it could be argued that were here is merely an archaism on the level of the sign, and that when we use it we really think the indicative meaning ‘was’ (something like the use of thou in prayers).6 On the other hand, there is evidence of a syntactic nature that carries more weight. We still encounter examples involving inversion like:

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Lessons on the English Verb

Were he here now he would settle the matter. It would not be possible to replace were with was here because inversion with was would produce a question. That is, in such contexts were expresses a meaning that cannot be expressed by indicative was and so does appear to involve a different grammatical form, a subjunctive. If such limited evidence suffices to establish the existence of this tense of the subjunctive in contemporary English, it should be pointed out that its use is restricted to rather formal contexts, written for the most part, and that perhaps many speakers, especially in the younger generation, would understand it but would not use it. There is a further restriction: few verbs can be used in this way. A number of examples of inversion given by Jespersen (1954, 5: 375f.) give a picture of the situation: Were she alive now and should she make the same remark now, Mary would reply … Had my eyes been shut I could have half believed … This might seem a paradox, did we not remember that … Knew I a charm to make him wise, I’d sell my jewels and buy it. Stood you at the altar, I would pluck you from the man holding your hand. Clearly the last two of these examples are obsolete today, a witness to the historical fact that this form of the subjunctive has been losing ground for some centuries. On the other hand, the first three examples might well be found, even in oral usage for some speakers. From this it appears that this tense of the subjunctive is found only with certain auxiliaries and the copula today, though a more extensive examination of contemporary usage is required to see if it can be considered as more than an historical relic for younger generations. The evidence available thus indicates that the so-called “past” subjunctive does exist although limited to auxiliaries and the copula.7 In spite of these restrictions it will be treated here as a tense of the subjunctive for the light it throws on the underlying system. The evidence we have seen indicates that the “present” subjunctive suffers no such restrictions and that it exists, notwithstanding that some grammarians do not recognize it.

Mood

47

Granted, then, that the subjunctive exists in English as a mood of the verb and that it has two tenses, this implies that it provides a way of representing universe time different from that of the indicative mood. In order to discern how it differs, we can begin with a comment on the distinction between the meanings expressed by the two tenses of the subjunctive. The so-called “past” subjunctive is often characterized as expressing something contrary to fact, “irrealis” and the like, whereas the “present” subjunctive always expresses an event whose realization is seen as possible. These two expressive effects can be described in terms of the event’s chances of realization: where the “past” subjunctive expresses an event whose chances of realization are seen as nil or quasi-nil, i.e. as negative, the “present” subjunctive expresses an event as realizable, one whose chances of realization are seen as positive. In neither case is there a representation of the subject actually realizing the event. This last fact is the revealing one for our purposes. That an event cannot be represented in the subjunctive as actually undertaken by the subject, whereas in the indicative it is always represented in terms of its realization (either actual or prospective8), can be explained by assuming that an event in the subjunctive is not referred to the one instant of reality in time, the present. That is, the experiential present is not represented as a limit on the horizon of universe time in the subjunctive. This corroborates what was observed above (They suggested I leave yesterday), namely that a verb in the subjunctive can be related to any place in time without regard to time-stretches. It follows that universe time is not divided into time-stretches, as it is in the indicative, but is represented as an undivided horizon without beginning or end. It remains to describe what distinguishes the two subjunctives. The distinction cannot be attributed to different places in time because there are no separate time-stretches represented here, which is why calling the two tenses “present” and “past” can be misleading. The only other variable is the orientation of time, the direction in which universe time is seen as moving. We saw that universe time in the indicative is represented ascending, extending toward the future, the possibilities for actualizing events being exploited instant after instant as the present moves forward. But here, where there is no present limit, ascending time can offer the event no more than an extent where actualization is possible; it cannot offer a place in time where something is actually taking place and which, a moment later,

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Lessons on the English Verb

will be part of the past, its possibilities realized. Since the “present” subjunctive always expresses an event as a possibility, it would seem to be based on this manner of representing undivided, boundless universe time as a future-oriented stretch. In a diagram: 8

8

This view of universe time, offering its full extent as a container to be occupied by some event, makes time available to the subject to realize an event and so depicts the event as having positive chances of realization. As just mentioned, however, with no representation of the present, no representation of the subject actually realizing the event can be obtained so that the event is only seen as realizable, as a real possibility, as in I suggested he be more careful. Conversely, representing universe time as descending, as extending toward the past where nothing can be actualized, would give a view of time offering the subject no possibility of realizing the event. That is, to realize an event, a subject must be seen moving forward through its event time, from its beginning toward its end. In descending time, however, the subject is not provided with a span of time for moving forward through the event, actualizing it. As a consequence, the event is not seen as being actualized, and not even as a real possibility, but only as irrealis, non-realizable, as having negative chances of realization, as in a common use like If I were you I would apologize. Thus the “past” subjunctive would seem to be based on a representation of undivided, boundless universe time as a past-oriented stretch. In a diagram: 8

8

It may well be the incompatibility between the role of the subject, required to move forward through the event from beginning to end, and the effect of time moving back toward the past making this impossible, that has reduced this tense of the subjunctive to its present state, limited to use with auxiliaries and the copula. However that may be, the status of this tense of the subjunctive appears to be little more than a historical relic for some speakers today. This then is the theory of how universe time is represented in the subjunctive mood, a theory showing how the subjunctive contributes to the forming of a time word. It has been suggested (private communication) that it would be simpler to characterize the subjunctive

Mood

49

as “not marked for time,” and indeed in Huddleston and Pullum (993) a subjunctive clause is considered “tenseless.” Such comments fail to take into account that a verb in the subjunctive fulfills its role of situating its event in time, albeit relative to the place of the verb in the main clause, as we shall see in lesson 8. It must therefore bring in a representation of universe time. That is, a verb in the subjunctive is “tensed,” is “marked” for universe time like verbs in other moods. So far we have seen that an event in the indicative is represented in terms of reality because it is related to the “here and now,” to the speaker’s place in space (through the person of the subject) and in time (through reference to the present). An event in the subjunctive, on the other hand, is represented in terms of possibility because, although it is related to the “here” through the person of its subject, it is not related to the “now,” there being no representation of the present. This difference we have interpreted as a difference in the representation of universe time and thus as the grammatical basis for distinguishing two different moods. The question now arises whether there are any other moods in English. There remain three verb forms, the infinitive and the two participles, which can be attributed to neither the indicative nor the subjunctive because they cannot take a subject. Furthermore, besides their use in verb compounds, each of these forms has nominal uses as either an adjective or a substantive. Some traditional grammars consider them to be forms of a distinct mood they call “nonfinite” in the sense of not being limited to a particular subject. Guillaume also considered that they belong to a separate mood in French, a mood he called the quasi-nominal to indicate that these forms arise at a point in the verb system very close to the system of the noun (hence their various nominal functions in discourse). In order to see if they express a separate mood in English it will be necessary to examine them briefly in an effort to discern what sort of representation of universe time they bring in. THE QUASI-NOMINAL

The very fact of considering the infinitive and participles to be verbs implies that they are formed through the process of chronogenesis (and that they involve a representation of person). Chronogenesis is a three-phase operation: 1) grammatically representing the event time involved in the particular lexical import by means of aspect; 2) grammatically representing universe time by means of

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mood; 3) relating, by means of tense, event time to universe time thus configuring the event to form an image of time (which is related to grammatical person, as we shall see in lesson 9). It is the aim of these first lessons to show that these three phases of chronogenesis are required for a word to be formed as the part of speech verb. That is, any verb in English involves a double representation of time. Since we have already seen that event time is represented in the infinitive and the participles, we must now try to discern how universe time is represented in the quasi-nominal mood. A first observation concerning usage is that the three forms of the quasi-nominal mood are all found with adverbs designating past, present, or future time. This is the case for the infinitive with an auxiliary in: We did go yesterday. / We can go now. / We will go tomorrow. The present participle with auxiliary be can also be referred to any place in time, as in: We were going yesterday, but … / We are going now. / We’ll be going tomorrow. The past participle with auxiliary have is equally versatile: We had arrived there yesterday. / We have arrived here now./ We will have arrived there tomorrow. In their nominal uses as well, these three forms can be situated anywhere in time: We wanted to buy some yesterday/now/tomorrow. We thought of buying some yesterday/now/tomorrow. Anything bought yesterday/now/tomorrow … Such examples illustrate the fact that the infinitive and participles are capable of situating an event anywhere in universe time, but by the same token are incapable on their own of locating their event at a particular place, say the past, in time. In this respect they resemble tenses of the subjunctive, and so we are led to draw the same conclusion: the infinitive and participles cannot relate an

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event to the present (without the help of a verb in the indicative). Universe time must therefore be represented as undivided in the quasi-nominal mood, as it is in the subjunctive mood. It remains to work out how it is oriented. To do this we can observe certain differences in the meaning expressed by the forms. For example A month to go. depicts the month as about to begin, whereas in A month gone. the month is depicted as over. Similarly in Going … going … going … gone! the past participle expresses something completely over, but the present participle tells us of a process partly over, proceeding toward its end. Comparing these uses, which are typical of many others, as we shall see when we examine verb compounds, we get the impression of an event parading by, of the event arriving at the moment of speech or some other moment (the infinitive), passing by it (present participle), and receding from it (past participle). Because there is no subject, the focus is on the event itself and its movement with regard to its place of realization in time, wherever that may be. This movement from what is not yet realized to what is already realized suggests the direction of universe time: it is represented descending, moving toward the past, as in the following diagram: 8

8

The fact that this representation is identical to that of the “past” subjunctive is significant. In a finite mood like the subjunctive the event is related to the place where its person, the person of the subject, can situate it in time. We have seen that descending time in the subjunctive offers no place for the subject to actualize the event, thus apparently creating a conflict of impressions, which is one factor leading to the gradual disappearance of this tense. In the nonfinite mood the event is also seen with regard to the place of its person in time,9 but person here does not have the function

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of subject, merely that of spatial support. As a consequence, the event is seen carried by the movement of universe time to the person – approaching, passing through, receding from its place in time. There is therefore no conflict between a subjectless event and time heading toward the past. In fact, it is thanks to this descending movement of time that the realization of an event can be envisaged without the contribution of a subject – that an event can be seen passing from the state where it is still only virtual to where its actualizing takes place and on to where its actualization is over. This view of containing universe time as descending is not something abstract or purely theoretical. In fact it is very close to our daily experience, reflecting the common impression that time passes, that it brings things to us from the future and bears everything away into the past. Time has often been characterized by poets as an ever-rolling stream and the like. In everyday language as well we find expressions like Time flies, As time goes by, Time will tell, and even the ordinary Christmas is coming. In such expressions there is a suggestion that the movement of time is something inescapable, beyond our control, imposing things on us. Such impressions are reflected in the quasi-nominal mood, where it is descending universe time that brings things to pass, whereas in the future-oriented universe time of the indicative mood it is the subject that brings things about. Toward the end of these lessons (lesson 17), when we consider the system of voice, we shall see that these impressions arising from common experience may well have contributed more to the system of the English verb than is apparent at first sight. THE SYSTEM OF MOOD

In this lesson we have focused on the simple forms of the verb. Our observing of how each of these forms is used to situate an event in time is now complete. It has shown that there are three moods in English.10 It remains for us to examine how the three moods are related to one another in order to get a view of the system of mood itself. We have seen that universe time in the quasi-nominal mood is represented as a boundless, undivided horizon (no representation of the present) descending toward the past. In the subjunctive, where the person of the verb is capable of assuming the role of subject, universe time is also represented as a boundless, undivided horizon, past-oriented in the “past” subjunctive, but future-oriented in the “present” subjunctive. The indicative also has person capable of

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assuming the role of subject and future-oriented universe time but its boundless horizon is now divided into two time-stretches by a limit representing the present. From one mood to the next there is a progression, a gradual complexification in the way we represent time as an endless stretch, beginning by depicting it close to the way we experience it and ending up by representing it with a necessary point of reference, the here and now of the speaker. This progressive building-up of the image of time in a verb permitting a progressive localization of the event in time suggests that these moods arise one after another in the operation underlying the system of mood. Depending on where it is intercepted, this operation can produce the particular configuration of universe time required for the verb the speaker wants to construct. 1 If intercepted early it gives a barely formed, past-oriented representation of boundless universe time, a configuration reflecting impressions arising from our common experience of time. 2 If intercepted at some mid-point it gives a partly formed, futureoriented representation of time (and, for some speakers, a pastoriented view with auxiliaries and copula), a configuration permitting the person of the subject to be represented in time. 3 If intercepted at its final point the operation gives a fully formed, future-oriented representation of universe time, a configuration of the boundless horizon divided into past and nonpast timestretches by an advancing present limit. This view of the system of mood can be diagrammed as follows, with a vertical arrow depicting the operation inherent in the system and arrowheads the successive interceptions of this operation, each resulting in a distinctive representation of universe time: 8

8

8 8

8 8 Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

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Lessons on the English Verb

Since we are here focusing on the representation of universe time, the tenses proper to each mood are not indicated. They will be discussed in the next lesson. This diagram shows that the construction of an image of universe time begins with a configuration of time as past-oriented, a representation suggested by common impressions of time bringing events into existence and carrying them out of existence. To permit the person of any verb to assume the function of subject, a view of time as a place for realizing events must be introduced. That is, to have a finite verb in English calls for a reversal of the past orientation of time, as in the “present” subjunctive. (For speakers who still use the “past” subjunctive, this mood still offers the possibility of representing certain finite verbs in past-oriented universe time.) The final phase consists of structuring this endless stretch of future-oriented time by introducing the present, thereby dividing it into past and nonpast. This three-phase process results in a double contrast in discourse. The contrast between a nonfinite mood and two finite moods arises from the need to reverse the orientation of universe time and so permit person in the role of subject to be represented in time for any verb. The second contrast, that between two moods of virtuality and a mood of reality, arises from introducing the unique instant, the present, to create two time-spheres. Considered from the point of view of these two contrasts, this theory provides the basis for explaining observations of mood expressing events as conceivable, possible, and real. It also permits us to confront the problem of nonfinite and finite forms and particularly to analyze verb compounds, as we shall see in later lessons (10–15). Furthermore, in showing that each mood is related to the others in a coherent fashion, the theory brings out the fact that, as in the case of the system of aspect, the component moods together constitute an operative system, the particular position of each mood in the system making possible its grammatical contribution to the verb. For our concerns here, however, the main value of this theory is to show how this “other time,” universe time, is represented in English, thus providing a description of the second phase of chronogenesis. We are now ready to undertake a discussion of its third and final phase in the next lesson.

LESSON FOUR

Chronogenesis III: Tense

TENSE

We saw in the first lesson that tense is the common denominator of all descriptions of the verb but that there is little agreement among grammarians concerning the tenses of the English verb. This is hardly surprising in view of the way many grammars describe tense. For example, in his well-known late-eighteenth-century grammar, Lindley Murray introduces the enumeration of tenses by nothing more than “tense, being the distinction of time” (58). In his school grammar popular during the nineteenth century Goold Brown (80) is a little more explicit: “Tenses are those modifications of the verb which distinguish time.” And Henry Sweet brings out the notion that tense is a matter of grammar, not of lexical means of expression like the adverb yesterday, when he says (1891/1955, 97): “Tense is primarily the grammatical expression of distinctions of time.” All such descriptions agree that tenses express time in different ways but they do not bring out what determines these differences, namely that it is the way time is represented – both as event time and as universe time – that gives rise to the observed distinctions in its expression. The basic principle involved here – no expression without representation – must be kept in mind if one hopes to discern the underlying system. Jespersen (1954, 4: 1) seems to be alluding to this problem when he defines tense as “the linguistic expression of time relations, so far as they are indicated in verb forms.” Since any relation involves two terms, it is a matter of discerning what two entities tense relates, as Comrie makes explicit in his definition of tense discussed above:

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“Tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time, usually to the moment of speaking.” It is significant that this definition occurs in his book on aspect, since dwelling on “the time of the situation,” event time, as what is represented by aspect, helps bring out a difference between it and the “other time.” We have seen, however, that he fails to recognize mood as the grammatical system for representing this “other time” and as a consequence universe time is not clearly discerned in his study. This is why Guillaume’s 1929 book Temps et verbe (Time and Verb), with its subtitle Théorie des aspects, des modes et des temps (A Theory of Aspects, Moods, and Tenses), constitutes a major breakthrough in our understanding of the verb as a part of speech: “This gives a set of verb forms which are all temporal in nature. Aspect, mood, tense do not, as traditional grammar teaches, refer to phenomena of different natures, but to the internal phases of a phenomenon with a single nature: chronogenesis; in a nutshell, aspect, mood, tense represent one and the same thing considered at different moments of its own characterization” (11).1 For the first time three subsystems of the verb – aspect, mood, and tense – are presented in terms of one parameter, the representation of time, and integrated into a single operation, chronogenesis, the forming of a composite time image. This became possible when, on the basis of his initial assumption that language consists of tongue and discourse, potential and actual, he realized that the category of mood is itself a dynamic system, a system consisting of a mental process or operation that the mind can intercept at the point corresponding to the particular representation of universe time required by the sentence being constructed. On extending to aspect the insight that a grammatical category is dynamic, he realized that it too is a system making available an operation whereby the mind can reach the position within the system of the particular aspect called for by the sentence. Similarly for tense. Thus he soon saw how the three systems, coming into operation one after the other, constituted a single phenomenon that produces one complex representation of time. With this representation of time in mind, he was then able to explain both the uses of the different tenses of the French verb and their striking parallelism of semiology in the indicative. Furthermore, the realization that the time image produced by chronogenesis is what characterizes a verb led Guillaume to contrast the verb as a time word with the substantive as a space word and so to develop a theory of the parts of speech.

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Thus the discovery of chronogenesis led Guillaume to propose that a grammatical system, which consists of two or more morphemes disposed in an orderly fashion, must be operational to permit the mind to get to the position occupied by the morpheme’s meaning required for the verb being constructed. For example, in the system of aspect, to reach the after-event, the position signifying ‘transcendence’ or ‘result phase,’ the mind must project itself beyond the position signifying ‘immanence’ or ‘accomplishment phase.’ He realized that each position in a system is meaningful and that for any mental system, any psychosystem, to be able to oppose abstract grammatical notions in a coherent fashion the notions it contains must be disposed in such a way as to be thinkable one after the other. That is, a system’s morpheme-notions must be disposed in an orderly sequence; otherwise there would be no opposition. A grammatical system being operational in this way, it takes time, operative time, for the mind to actualize one of the morphemes, which arise successively, one after the other, in the operation. Recognizing the time involved here – or better the microtime, since it is a matter of the extremely short time required for a preconscious mental operation – gave Guillaume the measuring stick, the parameter for analyzing systems in tongue: he sought indications in usage revealing where a given morpheme arises, early or late, in the operative time involved in its system. What he had discerned for mood and aspect thus led him to a general principle for all psychosystems.2 In the present lesson, then, we shall complete our outline of chronogenesis in English by describing how tense brings together an event formed by aspect and a representation of universe time provided by mood, the result of combining the two being observable by all in discourse. To make this description as clear as possible we will focus on an event in the immanent aspect, observing how it relates to each representation of universe time to produce the tenses of that mood. There is no need to repeat this description for the tenses of an event in the transcendent aspect because they are the same as those in the immanent aspect, with one exception, the past participle. TENSE IN THE INDICATIVE

Relating an event to universe time divided by the present represented as a limit calls for two tenses, the past and the nonpast, to situate the

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event in one or other of the time-stretches. This involves relating the span of event time occupied by the event to an equivalent span of universe time in one of the time-stretches so that the event is seen in universe time at that place. Most commonly, events in the nonpast tense are located in a span at the very beginning of the nonpast timestretch, as in We need some bread. This verb can be diagrammed as follows to depict how a state’s existence at the moment of speaking is represented: need 8

8 Nonpast Nonpast

Past Past

In the past tense, the event is situated before the present, as in: needed needed 8

8

Past Past

Nonpast Nonpast

Tense does not, of course, indicate where in the time-stretch the event is located, though other elements in the context or situation may specify this. Thus, in When they arrive, I’ll tell them, arrive situates its event in the nonpast and when indicates that the speaker locates it somewhere beyond the moment of speech. The nonpast being an endless stretch consisting of the span corresponding to the present of speech and the time beyond that stretching into the future as far as one wishes to imagine, its tense can situate an event anywhere in this time-stretch, and so there is obviously no need for a future tense. The many grammars that propose a future tense have failed to distinguish clearly between the two objects of observation, grammatical sign and meaning expressed. In English there is no semiological data for a future tense, no inflexion on a finite verb that expresses a time-stretch beyond the present of speech.3 That is to say, there is no evidence that the future is represented as a separate time-stretch in chronogenesis. In French and other Romance languages there is a future tense situating events beyond the present, but in these languages the grammatical present is represented as a span of time in which events can be situated, not merely a limit as in English. Indeed, the two-tense system is a result of the limit-present of English and has prompted the development of verb compounds to represent happenings already in progress at the moment of speech or whose possibility is all that exists at that moment. Even will + infinitive, the verb compound most frequently proposed as a

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future tense, consists of an auxiliary in the nonpast tense combining with a tense of the quasi-nominal mood. From this description it can be seen that tense in the indicative necessarily involves referring the event to the grammatical present. For this reason these tenses are sometimes called “deictic,” a term meaning ‘showing’ or ‘pointing out’ usually applied to the demonstrative pronouns. Just as this and that point to or depict a position relative to the speaker’s in space, so the tenses of the indicative indicate a position relative to the speaker’s, but in time. Tense here has also been called “absolute” because it necessarily refers the event to the grammatical present. This term is useful because it brings out a contrast with another type of tense where this reference is not obligatory, “relative” tense. The opposition is described by Comrie (1985, 58) as follows: “The difference between absolute and relative tense is not that between the present moment versus some other point in time as reference point, but rather between a form whose meaning specifies the present moment as reference point and a form whose meaning does not specify that the present moment must be its reference point. Relative tenses thus have the present moment as one of their possible reference points, but this is a problem of interpretation rather than of meaning.” That is, thanks to other elements in the context, we can often “interpret” where to situate the event expressed by a relative tense. In light of our discussion of universe time in the previous lesson, we can discern a difference of mood between relative tense and the absolute tenses of the indicative. Indeed, as Comrie points out elsewhere (1976, 2), “nonfinite verb forms have relative tense.” TENSE IN THE QUASI-NOMINAL

In the quasi-nominal mood the verb is nonfinite, i.e. cannot take a subject. It is commonly assumed in grammars that a finite verb is conjugated for person and that through this person represented within the verb itself, this intra-verbal person, the verb is predicated of the subject. Guillaume saw another function for person within the verb. Observing that we cannot experience or imagine a happening without someone or something doing or undergoing it, i.e. without some setting in space, he concluded that we cannot represent a happening as an event without some spatial support, some representation of person within the verb itself. That is, person is an

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ingredient of a verb required both for chronogenesis to complete its representing of an event in time and for predicating the event of the subject. What does this tell us about person in the nonfinite forms of the verb? The fact that without an auxiliary a tense of the quasi-nominal mood, an infinitive or participle, cannot establish a subject relationship with the person of a noun phrase might suggest that its morphogenesis provides no representation of person. On the other hand, the fact that these forms have nominal uses like subject, as in Hanging criminals is no cure, indicates that it does. But the participle can also be used in an adjectival function, as in a girl smiling her sweetest, a fact showing that person is represented in two different ways in its nominal uses. All this suggests that when the infinitive and participles are used as verbs, as components of a compound, the system of person is part of their morphogenesis and yet without an auxiliary they cannot take a subject, unlike the tenses of the indicative and the subjunctive. This problem will be discussed below when we examine the forming of verb compounds. For the moment the point is that we assume person is represented in the morphogenesis of the quasi-nominal tenses simply because a happening cannot be represented as an event without some support in space. In the quasi-nominal mood, tense is characterized by the fact that the event’s place in time is left undetermined, but this does not imply that there is no relating of the event to universe time in this mood. We cannot experience or imagine a happening without some setting in time, even if it is only a possible setting (as when making plans for the next rainy day), and so we cannot represent a happening as an event without providing it with a representation of universe time for it to be located in. However in this mood there is no distinction between different time-stretches in universe time, only an undivided, boundless expanse of time moving out of the future toward the past. As a consequence, distinctions like those found in the indicative are not represented and so are left to be actualized in discourse by syntactic or lexical means if the sentence calls for it. Each tense in this mood relates its event to a span of universe time, but, the location with regard to the present being undetermined, this includes as possibilities all places in time. That is, since its place in time could be anywhere, the event is not situated with regard to the speaker’s “now” and so has only a relative tense.

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The very term “relative” implies the next question: relative to what? The absolute tenses of the indicative refer the event with its event time to something outside itself, the grammatical present, usually a representation of the speaker’s “now.” The relative tenses of the quasi-nominal refer the event to something necessarily implied by the event itself: its own span of universe time wherever that may be. That is, they refer it to what might be called the event’s “now,” where it takes place (takes its place) in time. There are three possibilities for situating an event with regard to the moment of its coming into being: before it, astride it, beyond it. Or more precisely, since universe time here is represented moving out of the future toward the past, the event may be represented coming to the moment of its realization, passing through it, receding from it. And so there are three tenses in the quasi-nominal mood, the infinitive, the present participle, and the past participle. In a diagram: go go going going gone gone 8

8

The infinitive go is depicted here with a dotted line to indicate that it represents event time not yet accomplished. Being the form that designates an event reaching the moment of accomplishment, the infinitive can express the event as accessing its moment of accomplishment, as in They did record the concert. In this use (as we shall see in lesson 11) the event is represented from beginning to end reaching its place in the span of time represented by the auxiliary; that is, it is seen instant after instant as a real accomplishment. On the other hand, in one of its nominal uses the infinitive expresses the event as still removed from the place where things take place in time, as in They intend to record the concert. Here the accomplishment of the event ‘record’ is seen as merely possible, as not having arrived at the moment in time represented by the finite verb. It is the role of the preposition to to express this. These two realizations of the infinitive are carefully described and illustrated in Duffley (1992). The point I want to make here is that the infinitive always represents event time as a real or possible accomplishment but depends on something else in the sentence to indicate its place in time with regard to that of the indicative verb.

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The past participle gone is depicted in the above diagram with a solid line to indicate that it represents event time already accomplished. Like the infinitive its place in time is not self-determined. As will be shown in lesson 13, when used with auxiliary have the past participle event can be situated differently with regard to the moment in time where the subject is located by the auxiliary: at some indefinite time before it as in I’ve lost my keys, or immediately before it, as in discovery situations like I’ve found them! When we examine its use with auxiliary be (lesson 15) we will see that the past participle can even depict an event as accomplished without the subject being situated after its final instant. Although the participle always represents its event time as accomplished, its place in time, like that of the infinitive, is determined by other components of the sentence, not by its own makeup. In the above diagram the present participle going is depicted by a line partly solid, partly dotted, to indicate that it, too, like the infinitive and the past participle, represents all the event time, but of an event going through its accomplishment phase. Thus in It’s raining we understand an event partly accomplished already, partly yet to be accomplished at the moment of universe time designated by the auxiliary. That is, like the other two tenses of the quasi-nominal mood, the tense of the present participle is relative, not absolute as are the tenses of the indicative. To illustrate these tenses, typical examples like a month to go vs a month gone and going, going, going, gone have already been mentioned. The best illustrative example of all three forms I have seen is from a three-frame cartoon entitled “More Animal Grammar.” In the first frame a small gleeful rodent is perched on a cliff over the sea ready to leap, in the second it is falling through the air, and in the third there is just water splashing up and spreading out in rings. The three captions are: lem, lemming, lemmed. A detailed examination of nominal uses is found in Duffley’s 1992 work on the infinitive and in his recent (2006) study of the gerund-participle compared with the infinitive. This then is the theory of tense in the quasi-nominal mood. The terms “infinitive” and “participle” are appropriate to remind us of characteristics common to these tenses. “Infinitive” recalls that they are all nonfinite verbs, incapable of taking a subject, “participle” that they participate in forming verb compounds. The traditional way of qualifying the participles as “past” and “present” is also acceptable provided we remember this indicates positions related, not to the speaker’s place in time, but to the event’s moment of

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accomplishment, these being relative tenses, not absolute tenses as in the indicative, where place in time is related to the speaker’s now. In this respect, tense in the subjunctive mood can be seen to resemble tense in the quasi-nominal. TENSE IN THE SUBJUNCTIVE

In the subjunctive, tense is also relative because there is no representation of a grammatical present. On the other hand, subjunctives are finite verbs, an indication that person is represented in the verb not merely as a spatial support for representing the event but as capable of effecting incidence to the subject. This calls for a space of future-oriented time for situating the event. Because of this forward-looking view, and because universe time is not divided, one tense is enough to situate an event as a possibility anywhere in time without restrictions. Thus the subjunctive in a sentence like They suggested he leave can be diagrammed as follows: leave leave 8

8

The verb’s event time is depicted here by a dotted vector to suggest that it represents only a possible accomplishment since an event’s real accomplishment cannot be represented in time unless it is related to the present. As a consequence, a verb in the subjunctive presents its event as a possibility, something that may or may not take (or have taken) place. This explains why a subjunctive verb is not found in the interrogative – the interrogative in itself depicts an event as a possibility – and why the do auxiliary is not required to form its negative, as we shall see in lesson 10. Since an event in the subjunctive cannot be situated in a specific time-stretch by referring it to a representation of the present, it can only be situated relative to some other point of reference, usually the place in time expressed by the verb in the main clause. Thus in the above sentence we understand the leaving to be a possibility at a moment somewhere beyond the place in the past occupied by suggested, an effect of universe time oriented toward the future. On the other hand, to specify whether this moment is before the present of speech, contemporary with it, or beyond it would call for an adverb or some other lexical means. This is why a verb in the subjunctive is generally found in a subordinate clause, and why naming this tense the “present” subjunctive can

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be misleading, so it should perhaps be called the “future-oriented” subjunctive to recall its distinguishing characteristic. We do occasionally find the subjunctive in the main clause, in what is called its optative use, as in Heaven help him! Thanks to the movement of expressiveness in such uses the event is referred to the moment of speech but only as a possible accomplishment. This gives it the effect of a wish, something that can never be more than a possibility when expressed. The so-called “past” subjunctive is perhaps better called the “past-oriented” subjunctive to remind us that it is the orientation of universe time that distinguishes it from the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive. The example Were she here now, Mary would be able to tell us can be diagrammed as follows: leave were 8

8

The ‘contrary to fact’ or ‘irrealis’ effect of the example results from relating the event to universe time moving toward the past, time in which the subject cannot accomplish the event because an event necessarily unfolds in a forward-looking direction, from beginning to end. As pointed out in lesson 3, it seems to have been this incompatibility between ascending event time and descending universe time that has led to the restriction of this tense to certain auxiliaries and the copula, verbs of potency that express conditions making an event possible but that do not in themselves represent a happening. Because they are verbs of potency, auxiliaries attribute a conditioning role to their personsupport, but by relating the event to past-oriented time this tense makes it impossible for the person to exercise this role. As we shall see in lesson 7, this ‘contrary to fact’ effect is now expressed in the indicative mood of full verbs by representing an event in the past tense as prospective. Thus tense in the subjunctive expresses the chances, either positive or negative, of the event finding its place in time. This raises the question of what constitutes the dividing line separating the subjunctive and the indicative in usage. Following certain grammars, it was described above as a distinction between two ways of viewing an event: as a possibility or as a reality. This should be considered a first approximation requiring refinement, particularly in view of those uses of the indicative presenting an event as prospective (see below) and of the numerous lexical possibilities offered by

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the modal auxiliaries. In lesson 8 an examination of usage will help bring out the role of the subjunctive with greater clarity. Although the modal auxiliaries expressing somewhat similar effects have often been examined, the subjunctive as a mood of the verb in contemporary English has received little attention. No doubt the low profile of this mood – morphologically it is barely distinguishable from the indicative – is partly responsible for this situation. On the other hand, one cannot help feeling that Michael’s critical assessment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century grammarians – “their lack of the fundamental distinction between formal and semantic criteria” (373) – is also applicable today to explain this lack. In any case, the consequences of it are serious because it has led to important grammars of English discussing the verb without even mentioning mood as one of its categories. It is somewhat ironic that the most neglected category of the verb should have provided Guillaume with the clue allowing him to solve the problem of tense.4 THE THEORY OF TENSE

Our discussion has described the three sets of tenses of the English verb as they result from successive interceptions of the operation of chronogenesis. This description can best be summarized by diagramming the system of tenses for a typical verb, arrive (the past subjunctive, *arrived, considered obsolete, being omitted): arrive arrive arriving arriving

arrived arrived 8

8

arrive arrive 8

8

arrived arrived

Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

arrive(s) arrive(s)

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Lessons on the English Verb

This diagram shows that an ordinary verb has six tenses, three in the quasi-nominal, one in the subjunctive, and two in the indicative. Thanks to an impression common to tenses in different moods, there is an economy of inflexional signs for expressing these six positions (and as a consequence hearers often depend on syntactic factors to distinguish forms with identical signs). Thus the -ed of the past indicative signifies a stretch of already realized universe time whereas the same sign in the past participle signifies a span of already realized event time. In like fashion, the -ø inflexion of the nonpast indicative signifies a stretch of universe time to be realized and in the quasinominal the same sign signifies a span of event time to be realized, whereas in the subjunctive both event time and the event’s place in universe time are seen as to be realized. The diagram also brings out the operation of building up the time image from mood to mood, an operation that first represents past-oriented event time in past-oriented universe time, then future-oriented event time in future-oriented universe time, and finally, with the representation of the present on the horizon of time, two future-oriented time-stretches and two tenses of futureoriented event time. From this we can see that the operation of chronogenesis requires as lexical input an event with its event time represented by aspect and gives as an output an event configured for time through tense in the manner required for the verb’s intended use in the sentence. Systemically, then, there is an order in which the subsystems operate: aspect must first form the event, mood must then provide a general representation of time for containing it, and finally tense must relate the one to the other producing a word cum tempore.5 This manner of viewing tense permits us to give an orderly account of how various forms of the verb represent and express time. As a complex theory involving the conjugation of three systems representing time in three ways,6 it provides a description of the timeimage a verb imports into the sentence. Only if, and to the extent that, this description explains the time actually expressed by verbs in discourse can the theory be considered valid. The theme of subsequent lessons will be this confronting of theory and data, beginning with the simple form in the indicative. Since our discussion so far has dealt with the forming of the time image in the verb, there has been little discussion of person and voice, which are concerned primarily with the relation between the

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event and its spatial support. These two subsystems of the verb will be looked at in lessons 9 and 17. The other indispensable component of a verb, its lexical import, has not been discussed either. In the examination of usage to be undertaken in the next three lessons, however, it will become clear how the particular sense of a verb’s lexeme can condition the manner of representing time within the event.

LESSON FIVE

The Simple Form I: Activities

INTRODUCTION

So far we have seen that a verb represents time as both contained in its event and as containing its event, the two representations being combined to form a single image of an event in time, the result of chronogenesis. We shall now turn to the various ways this manner of grammaticizing an event is expressed in discourse, starting with the simple form and then going on to verb compounds. Examining discourse in this way will bring out the difference between representing time thanks to the systemic potential of the verb as a part of speech in tongue and expressing time by means of the verb combined with other elements in the verb phrase and in the sentence. Insofar as the system in tongue is concerned, each morpheme occupies a position from which it derives its constant mental configuration, its potential meaning (or significate). Like any potential, this meaning must be actualized to be used, and in most cases, if not all, it can be actualized in several ways, giving rise to different senses, different actual meanings or significates. Most grammar books give little more than a passing glance at the simple form of the verb, though they assume its meaning is known when comparing a verb compound with it.1 It is therefore important to examine the sign/meaning relationship in this most important of all verb forms in order to discern as clearly as possible its potential meaning before considering any compound form. To obtain a view of its meaning potential, which is not directly observable because it resides in the speaker’s preconscious mind, we must work back from the data, i.e. the senses or actual meanings the simple form expresses. Discerning in any given use the actual significate of a morpheme like

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the simple form, it will be recalled, requires careful discrimination, because it can be observed only in a sentence, where it has been combined with the lexeme of the verb and amalgamated with the meanings expressed by the other words and phrases to constitute the meaning of the sentence. That is, the first step is to understand the sentence, to be aware of what the speaker is expressing, in terms of the human experience constituting the message the speaker intends to convey. This is the essential starting point, because if we cannot observe the sentence meaning in this way we will not be able to discern what the verb itself expresses, what it contributes to this meaning. Assuming, then, that the sentence is understood, we cannot, in most cases, focus immediately on the verb itself because the import of the verb has been combined with other imports, both lexical and grammatical, in the verb phrase giving rise to the expressive effect of the verb phrase in that particular sentence. For example, when the meaning of an adverb or a direct object combines with that of the verb to give the meaning complex of the verb phrase, it requires great care in analysis to avoid attributing to the verb more than its share of the expressive effect resulting from the fusion of all the actual meanings involved. Thus, for example, it will be proposed below that considering washes to be a passive in Silk washes well neglects not only the physical sign but also, as Jespersen (1954, 3, 349ff) points out, an element in the expressive effect contributed by the verb. And even when the verb’s meaning can be isolated, it must be remembered that this, too, is an expressive effect arising from combining the lexical and the grammatical imports of the verb. Fortunately the technique of commutation provides a convenient means of observing the sense of a verb form in a given use. By substituting another form of the same verb into a sentence one can often highlight a difference of meaning and thus discern by comparison the actual meaning sought. This observing of the meaning expressed by a form in discourse is by no means an easy task. Only after two or more such actual significates have been discerned can the attempt to imagine the potential significate underlying them be undertaken. To begin with, then, we shall examine the simple form in the indicative because, being the source, both diachronically and synchronically, of the compound forms, it can serve as a basis of comparison for each of them. That is, we are going to analyze the only form arising from the system of the verb in tongue with a sufficient lexical and grammatical import to constitute a verb of discourse, capable of

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functioning on its own as a verb phrase. This characteristic of the simple form will become particularly significant when we come to deal with one of the most obvious yet neglected oppositions in the English verb, that between simple and compound forms. We begin by examining uses representing activities in the past, the type that is most easily observed. ACTIVITIES IN THE PAST

What first strikes most observers when looking at the simple form is its use in sentences depicting the subject accomplishing an activity of some sort, as in the following example: He yawned.2 The sentence tells us that the subject carried out the various phases involved in a single act of yawning – opening the mouth, inhaling, perhaps making a noise, closing the mouth – and so this type of event is usually called “dynamic.” Considered from the point of view of time, yawned expresses the total event time as realized from the beginning, at a certain point in the past, to the end, at a later point in the past. This can be diagrammed as follows: yawned yawned 8

8

Nonpast Nonpast With this beginning-to-end view of event time, then, the event is seen as a whole, unrolling at rapid cadence, i.e. with no interruption or distinction of phases, to a point where there is no further possibility of development within the event. This corresponds closely to the description Comrie (1976, 16) gives of perfectivity as one means of viewing (i.e. representing) a situation (i.e. a happening): “perfectivity indicates the view of a situation as a single whole, without distinction of the various separate phases that make up that situation.” To describe this type of event we will adopt the term perfective, rather than the more usual “dynamic,” in order to focus on what is grammatical in the verb – a representation of event time to include all the phases of the event – instead of the expressive effect of the verb phrase as a whole. The term “perfective,” however, is not used here to designate an aspect since the immanent aspect in English is not limited to verbs expressing perfective events, as will be seen in lesson 12.3 Past Past

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Thus what characterizes this use of the simple form is that the successive phases of the event are represented with the subject carrying them out right to the end. In the speaker’s intended message this corresponds to an impression of the total duration of the happening. In terms of event time, this involves representing the successive moments of the event to be situated in the past or the nonpast when the verb is predicated of the subject. That is, predicating the verb of the subject entails situating the subject in universe time so that it is seen accomplishing the event from beginning to end. We can express this beginning-to-end view of the event in a more abstract way by means of the following formula, where M1 stands for its first moment, M2 the second moment, and so on to the nth moment, the sum of which constitutes the totality of the event, expressed by 1: M1 + M2 + . . . . . . . . . . + Mn = 1 Experiential situations in which the impression of a happening’s total duration may arise are numberless, but it is worth mentioning a few ordinary examples to give an idea of what might suggest that the final limit of the activity is reached, that the event is represented from beginning to end. In the above example, the perfective expresses a single realization of the process of yawning itself, one opening and closing of the mouth. In cases like I drew a circle.4 I wrote the letter. where the notion of drawing or of writing itself involves no terminal point, it is the direct object that represents what brought the happening to an end. In other cases the effect of the subject going through the whole event to the end is brought out by a lexical representation of the event time: I slept for three hours. Where both the direct object and a timespan are expressed, either the one or the other may represent what set the limit of the happening, depending on the situation the speaker has in mind: I read the letter this morning. I read Shakespeare this morning.

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The fact that it might be more usual to say some Shakespeare in the latter example emphasizes the point here since one could not, obviously, read the whole of Shakespeare in a single morning. Where, as so often happens with invented examples, one is not aware of the imagined speaker’s situation, there may be ambiguity, as in the following example from a grammarian (Palmer 1965, 79): I painted the house this morning. But here, whether a speaker wants to indicate that the subject painted the whole of, say, a doll’s house, or that the painting lasted throughout this morning thus evoking the whole of the morning’s activity, there is an impression of completion in the speaker’s purposed message that calls for representing the event as ‘perfective.’ In an example like the following, taken from an historical account, the happening is represented as complete although its duration is not specified: Settlers gradually spread across the continent. Depending on the rest of the context, spread here could be understood as depicting the complete spreading to the other side of the continent, or the spreading throughout the period under discussion. In the following description of a river in the Canadian prairies the impression of ‘perfectivity’ is more subtle: Where the snow-white of alkali edged the course of the river, a thin trickle of water made its way toward the town low upon the horizon.5 Made depicts the course of the trickle of water, not obviously to the distant town, but to the point where its way is lost from sight. (Edged, depicting a state, provides a different means of expressing ‘perfectivity,’ to be discussed in the next lesson.) In other cases, the time involved in the activity may be very short: She spotted the plane at 10:53. This is an example of what Vendler (103) calls “achievements,” i.e. events that “occur at a single moment.” The simple form can even

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represent something that, on the level of our perceptive possibilities, does not have any duration. For example, the happening described in The power went off at midnight. can in no way be perceived, even through a slow motion film, the only thing striking our awareness being the difference between two states, one following the other. And yet when this change is represented as an event it must be imagined with a minimal duration; otherwise it is unthinkable, inconceivable. However brief the event time involved, it is represented here as actualized from beginning to end. An objection to this interpretation has been raised claiming that an example like He left before I arrived. “is counter-evidence to the simple form (left) being immanent,” i.e. situating the subject within the event carrying it out. It is true that at the moment of the arriving the referent of he is after the leaving, but this is the meaning expressed by the sentence as a whole, once the temporal clause has been made incident to left, and the whole predicate made incident to he. What we are focusing on in the present discussion is the relation between a verb and its subject: the chronogenesis of left situates the leaving in the past and incidence to the subject depicts he accomplishing it; the chronogenesis of arrived situates its event in the past with I accomplishing it; the import, both grammatical and lexical, of before establishes the syntactic link between the two clauses and the sequence of the events in the past time-stretch to give the resulting sentence meaning. In the following sentence the sequencing of the first two events requires no lexical indication other than and: Moscow rose and formed a Soviet of its own and presently most of the other cities followed suit.6 Because rose represents a beginning-to-end accomplishment of its event we understand that the forming occurred after it, Moscow being depicted at these two successive moments in time.

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Each of the above examples expresses a single occurrence, but the same beginning-to-end representation can be used to express a repeated occurrence: He walked to work all summer. They watched each program in the series. We understand that the walking to work coincided in time with the summer, occurring, presumably, each day he went to work. As for their watching, the period throughout which it was repeated is implied by the fact that a tv series has a beginning, a certain duration, and an end. Here too the role of the simple form is to represent the full stretch of event time required for the subject to accomplish all the phases of the event. In general, one can understand that any happening carried out in the past can be represented as perfective because we can readily represent the span of past universe time, long or short, containing it. The same is not true of an occurrence that is contemporary with the moment of speaking, which is a relatively short span. Sweet (1898/1958, 100) evokes the problem as follows: “It is evident that an occurrence of which we speak in the present must be incomplete at the time, for if it were completed, it would no longer belong to the present.” This is true for most occurrences, and so another form of the verb, the progressive, is required to represent an activity going on but not complete in the moment of speech. However this is not true of all happenings going on in the present of speech, as we shall now see. CURRENT ACTIVITIES: WHEN SAYING IS DOING

Grammars often state that a happening going on at the moment of speaking is represented by the progressive. While this is very often the case, there are several types of event where it does not hold. It will throw new light on the simple form to examine examples where it represents an activity going on in the present of speech and so situates its event in time at the very beginning of the nonpast. The first such example is refuse in: “This is a war, Grossbart. For the time being be the same.” “I refuse.” (cited in Gordon 1982, 104)

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In this use the verb refuse has a remarkable characteristic, namely, the uttering of the sentence realizes the happening represented by the verb. For this reason verbs in this use are called “performatives.” Since saying the sentence brings about the happening, it follows that the happening starts when the act of speech begins and is over when it ends. That is, the whole event is lodged within the present of speech, and is therefore seen as perfective in that first short span of the nonpast. Another typical example of this use is: I resign. This can be depicted in a diagram as follows: resign resign Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

Other examples of performative usage are: I move we adjourn. I swear to tell the truth. I wish you a good evening. Again I remind you of courtesy toward the witness.7 Can you be sure – I ask this in humility – that you … .8 There is a surprisingly large number of verbs whose lexeme lends itself to use as a performative.9 This use is restricted for the most part to first-person subjects since only the one speaking can realize such events. There are, however, cases where one can asseverate for another. Thus, when playing cards, one normally says I pass. but if helping a novice one might say: He passes. Or again, even though the speakers represent themselves in the third person, one can consider as performative the use in formal invitations such as Mr and Mrs Joseph Smith request the pleasure of …

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because writing and communicating the invitation carries out the requesting. Thus besides verbs evoking spoken discourse those evoking written discourse can have performative uses: I write the adjective with a sneer.10 We write as the new British offensive east of Ypres is developing. (Poutsma, 325) In the last example, one gets the impression that the “present of writing” extends beyond the moment of actual consciousness to take in the time required to write the news article, and so the expressive effect is not unlike that observed in a different use of the simple form – “foreseen events” – discussed in a later section. CURRENT ACTIVITIES:

“INSTANTANEOUS”

EVENTS

Another use in which the event’s total accomplishment seems to occupy the same stretch of time as the act of language is found in commentaries of extremely rapid actions, giving what has been called “instantaneous” events. This is frequent in sports broadcasts where a commentator tries to describe actions as they occur. Because they often occur so rapidly, he is confronted with the occurrence as a whole and represents it as perfective by means of the simple form, as in the following examples: He shoots! he scores! Walker ducks! Such events have been described as “having no duration” (Leech, 15), “not even duration of a very short period” (Comrie 1976, 42). These descriptions raise a problem: how can a commentator perceive a happening without any duration? How can one represent an event without some duration, without some time, however short, between its beginning and its end? As was pointed out in the section on past activities, the happening represented in The power went off at midnight is not perceivable, but even here, to represent and so conceive it, we must represent it with a minimal span of event time. The problem seems to arise with the notion of ‘instant.’ If, as the OED says, an instant is “an infinitely short space of time,” then an instantaneous event includes a space of time, a stretch of duration, no matter how

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short it may be, and this is what the verb represents in such uses. Besides, a slow-motion playback reveals that these happenings do in fact require time, which is represented by the simple form as a very short span of event time located at the very beginning of the nonpast time-stretch. In the following television commentary of a race, the verb motion provides another example of this use: They’re off! No – that was a false start. The starter motions them back. As Close (1959, 60) observes: “The viewer sees the act of motioning completed before his eyes.” These uses are not the same as performatives since the speaker must see an action before representing and expressing it. However, when there is a rapid succession of occurrences, the commentator gets the impression that the action and the expressing of it occupy the same moment of live consciousness and so represents it as perfective. But this is not always the case in sports commentaries. Close (1962, 75ff) notes the tendency to use the simple form in describing a football match, whereas the progressive is more frequent in describing a boat race. This suggests that, when the action is rapid, the speaker sees it as perfective in the present of speech, but not when it is slower. That is, the commentator’s impression of the moment governs usage. Thus during an ice hockey game one often hears: He goes into the corner. However, as we will see in lesson 12, sometimes the progressive is used to suggest an event not felt to be complete during the moment of speaking. Indeed, it is interesting to observe usage in a live broadcast from this point of view, as in: … but the Flames pick it up and clear it down the ice. That’s Nilsson stopping, waiting … Nilsson, beautiful moves at the line … Derlago slides it into … Coming in … Closing in. Centre it. Scramble. They score! (Gordon 1982, 105) Those actions that strike the commentator as complete in the instant he observes them (pick, clear, slides, score) are represented by

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the simple form; those that are not perceived as complete are often expressed by a present participle. There are of course many variations possible, for example in a slow-motion playback, but what seems to be constant in this use of the simple form is the speaker’s impression of a complete happening in the present of speech. CURRENT ACTIVITIES: FORESEEN EVENTS

Another type of comment on current activities occurs in live broadcasts of ceremonial occasions like a state wedding. One frequently hears the use of the simple form to refer to events unrolling at the moment of speaking, as in: The Earl of Spencer walks with Her Majesty the Queen. (cited in Gordon 1982, 109) The bride and groom remove through the choir to the High Altar. (Ibid., 108) Here, the tempo of the happenings is slow so that the whole action is not accomplished during the act of utterance. The difference between this type of commentary and that of a sporting event is that the ceremonial occasion develops according to a plan. The commentator, seeing the start of an action, can foresee its term and so represents its total accomplishment by means of the simple form. This adds a certain impression of dignity to the description because it suggests that the action is not contingent on the decisions and accidents of the moment but is the outcome of ritual and tradition. In the following example from a play, the almost ceremonial effect of the simple forms adds to the dignity of the linguistic context, which contrasts with the situation – the scene involves dumping a thug’s body into a river – and thus contributes to the play’s atmosphere: This is the burial of Shadow, then: feet first he dips, and leaves the haunts of men!11 The simple form is often found in the patter of a magician to express a current action as a foreseen event, as in: I take a coin. I wrap it in a handkerchief.

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Having practiced the act beforehand, the magician can foresee its total accomplishment as real and so, confronted with a perfective image, uses the simple form. Similarly, when a recipe is being displayed on television, one sometimes hears comments like I add two cups of flour and fold in gently. (Huddleston and Pullum, 128) as the demonstrator begins and then hums a tune while completing the activity. In such cases it seems that the speaker represents a span of universe time including the moment of speaking and extending beyond it to include enough time for the whole event to be situated in the nonpast. The following remarks are interesting in this respect: “If I, a native user of English, wished to report an act performed now, at the moment of speaking, I should, I think, instinctively use the Simple Present … ‘I put my pen down at this point, get up and walk over to the window.’ What have I said? That came out quite naturally as I went through the motions. As far as I can understand the working of my own mind, I chose that tense [sic] because I wanted to relate acts completed (at the moment of speaking), not to describe myself engaged in unfinished activity” (Close 1959, 59). This impression of completion arises not because the actions themselves are necessarily complete in the time of speaking (the third action, walk, may very well extend over a longer period) but because the speaker is able to represent the total accomplishment of each as a reality, without any impression that its further development, if any, is merely possible. The whole event can thus be situated in universe time, at the beginning of the nonpast, where it coincides with the present of speech and may extend beyond it. It may be an element of certainty in the intended message that eliminates any impression that the event may not be carried out to the end. This provides the basis for representing as real the whole event, for situating it in a present span that extends beyond the actual moment of speaking. In sentences like the following, the event is represented as perfective at the moment when its realization begins and so takes the simple form: Here comes the bus. There they go, into the stretch! Away it flies.

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In such sentences the adverb poses the term toward which the action is tending, be it fixed (here) or fleeting (there, away). The perception of the beginning of the action permits the mind to represent the whole (or as much of the action as is useful or visible in the case of a fleeting term) in the reality of the present span because for the speaker, the happening will certainly unroll as foreseen. Thus, for example, when the bus comes into view it may take two or three minutes for it to reach the speaker, but the possibility of an interruption, of it not coming to the stop where one is waiting, is not envisaged. This use to represent foreseen happenings as perfective events can be contrasted with other uses of the simple form. For an observer of snow geese on the tidal flats of the St Lawrence River, the tide gives the same impression of something foreseen and calls for the simple form recedes in: The tide recedes and in multitudes that defy counting, white birds stab their beaks into mud that glistens brown and sleek.12 Compared with the slow, uninterrupted movement of the receding tide, stab expresses an equally long foreseen event made up of countless short actions. On the other hand, both defy and glistens express a quite different type of event, a type to be examined in the next lesson. Finally, an example of a foreseen event that may stretch over a week or two: Now, in late November, I watch the geese trail off to the South in the slate sky.13 The expressive effect of watch here is not one of habit (‘every November I watch them’) but rather that of watching over a period of a week or more, since it is known that, once the first few flights of geese leave, they will all be heading south soon. The use of the simple form in journalism “seems to invite … readers to pretend that the actualization is taking place at the moment of reading” (Gordon 1986, 106), as in the following description of humpback whales when they appear off Cape Cod: Suddenly the mushroom-shaped blow of a humpback is spotted. Passengers on the lower deck scramble for binoculars and cameras as the giants approach … a second whale 50 feet long, rises full-form from the sea. Each partner in turn repeats

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the other’s movements in one of the most superbly choreographed natural shows on Earth … the dancers surface in unison, peer inquisitively at the audience only a few feet away … flash their flukes … and bid farewell.14 CURRENT ACTIVITIES: IMAGINED EVENTS

When commenting on a written text, as in summaries, chapter headings, stage directions, captions for photographs accompanying a text, and the like, speakers (or writers) have to represent an activity they already have in mind, not something arising from live experience, as in the following examples: Summary: What is the story about? It is about a young man who goes to London and makes his fortune. (Sweet 1891/1958, 101) Chapter heading: A married woman deserts her home … I pack … George and Harris pack … We retire to rest.15 Stage direction: She takes up her hat, puts it on, and walks across the room to the fireplace with a fashionable air.16 Being familiar with the sequence of incidents involved (goes, makes; deserts, pack, retire; takes, puts, walks), the speaker/writer recalls them in summary fashion, running through the stretch of time required for their realization. The totality of the event can thus be called to mind in the present of speech (or writing) without any impression of an incomplete development. In the following examples of stage directions, the contrast between verb forms here brings out the perfectivity of the events expressed by the simple: He is reaching for the bottle, but Gabby stops him.17 He is returning to his old subject but the wine distracts him.18 Hildy sails his hat and coat into a corner and is removing his overcoat as the curtain falls.19 The longer, incomplete events expressed by the progressive are interrupted by the beginning-to-end events situated in time by the simple form (stops; distracts; sails, falls). In the following stage direction on the other hand, the verbs express a sequence of events: He taps a pipe on it, blows through the pipe, feels in his pockets for tobacco, then speaks.20

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Examples like this show that the simple form signifies the complete accomplishment of ‘dynamic’ events, that it is “marked for” perfectivity as well as tense, but the situation is not the same for ‘stative’ events, as we shall see in the next lesson. In a narrative the simple present can have a similar effect, because the narrator is free to imagine the whole event within the limits of the imagined present: Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady’s elbow, puts on his spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp. (cited in Leech, 12) This example expresses the events arising one after another, each one being completed before the next one begins. Similarly in Anderson fiddles again with her beads and then there is a large pop. The beads scatter all over the floor. the beginning-to-end view provided by fiddles and by scatter (and the copula with its complement pop) carries the narrative through successive episodes of the story (again to be contrasted with verbs representing a state). Photo captions like the following are similar to examples just discussed: Surrounded by attractive and admiring ladies of the aristocracy, Rasputin takes tea and expounds his views on religion and politics.21 This is typical for photographs accompanying a text because in the text can be found what precedes and what follows the instant depicted. This gives the impression of the photograph summarizing the whole episode and calls for the simple form. Where, however, a photograph is isolated so that it does not illustrate a link in a chain of events, it usually does not strike one as showing a complete event, and so the progressive form is generally used. Thus, commenting on a personal album, one would tend to say Here, you’re kissing the bride.

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because only an instant from within an isolated happening is shown. On the other hand, a video of a wedding might call forth the comment: Here, you kiss the bride. As the event begins, the speaker, who has already seen the sequence, has a mental preview of the whole unrolling toward the future as a foreseen event. It is perhaps fitting to end this section on imagined activities in commentaries with an example from a modern play that gives an impression not unlike that of listening to the chorus in classical drama: Time pauses here and high eternity grows in one quarter hour in which to live.22 The use of pauses and grows here strikes one as both a stage direction thrown in by one of the actors and the description of a ceremonial occasion, the resulting impression serving as a reminder that the expressive effects to which the simple form can contribute are endlessly variable. CURRENT ACTIVITIES: FROM PROCESS TO RESULT

The ability of the simple form to capture an occurrence striking the speaker as completely realized in the moment of actual consciousness can be further illustrated by several isolated examples where the expressive effect is one of moving from some process into its result. For example, running into a colleague on a second occasion within a short time prompted me to say: We meet again! For two people to meet under such circumstances involves merely becoming aware of the other’s presence. The time required is obviously very short and this impression is captured by representing the happening leading to the result as complete in the present of speech. When adding up a number of items, it is quite common to express achieving the resulting total by means of a simple form, as in: That makes exactly fifteen dollars.

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The expressive effect here is that the addition of the final item brings the total into being, the time involved being that required to calculate the total amount. Whether the calculating be instantaneous or more lengthy, the simple form represents the movement from the adding process itself to the resulting sum. The use of the simple form in That does it. whether as an expression of exasperation or on completing something, arises from a similar impression in the speaker’s experience: seeing something as either the last straw or as the final touch involves a transition from the build-up to the resulting situation, and the verb expresses this transition as effected. One gets the same sort of expressive effect from a comment heard on TV just after the last point of a tennis tournament was played: With that serve, he takes the title for the sixth time! OBJECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

It has been objected that a sentence like The story continues is counter-evidence to the simple form giving a beginning-to-end view of the activity. One may well get the vague impression of an ongoing process with neither beginning nor end because of the lexeme of the verb (which presupposes prior accomplishment but does not represent it) and the fact that the sentence is out of context. Once imagined in context, however, the sentence would likely express the sense of “to carry on, take up, resume (a narrative etc.) from a point of suspension or interruption” (oed). That is, the verb would depict the total process of starting up again, of proceeding from the state of suspension into the next part of the narrative. On the other hand, the sentence might be imagined as part of the summary of a chapter in which case one would understand the sentence to depict the story continuing throughout the chapter. Other interpretations involving a new episode, a length of time, etc. are possible but in all the scenarios I have been able to imagine (outside of a ‘stative’ reading) there is an end implied or expressed. The term of the ‘continuing’ is made explicit in examples like:

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They continued on for a quarter of a mile. (Webster’s Third) The broad beach continues all the way along the promenade. (Ibid.) The beginning point here is the place (in time or space) assumed by the speaker. Similarly for the following example, but here the end is merely implied, and so the example is ambiguous in this respect: The boat continued downstream after discharging the passengers. (Ibid.) From the point of view of someone on the boat, the verb would imply a continuation until the next stop, but from the point of view of a discharged passenger it would imply a continuation until the boat is out of sight (as in Away it flies discussed above). Thus the event time in each case is represented extending from the point in space or time assumed by the speaker to a term that may or may not be expressed. This ends our discussion of the simple form used to express activities. It gives them a beginning-to-end representation and situates them in a time-stretch of the indicative. Observing this use in the nonpast is particularly instructive because when compared with the progressive, which is more frequently used to express activities in the nonpast, it provides a good test for the ‘perfective’ hypothesis advanced for the simple form. On the other hand, in the nonpast it is more common for the simple form to express states rather than activities, as in We need some bread. Because the simple form here does not express a beginning-to-end view of the duration, this use appears to raise a problem for our hypothesis as presented in this lesson, a question to be examined in the next lesson.

LESSON SIX

The Simple Form II: States

STATES

We have seen that when the simple form expresses an activity it contributes to a ‘dynamic’ effect because it represents the activity’s full span of event time, all the different phases of its development from beginning to end. Thus an impression of ‘completeness’ characterizes the simple form in this use. The term “perfective” is used here to designate this grammatical import, which remains constant whatever the expressive effect of the particular sentence. This amounts to proposing a hypothesis for the underlying or potential meaning of the form. It has, however, long been recognized that this is not the only type of event expressed by the simple form, that it is also used to express states, thus giving rise to an effect of something static. This raises a problem for our hypothesis as just presented because the simple form does not represent the full span of event time when it expresses an ordinary state like: I know the answer. All the verb tells us here is that the state exists at the moment of speaking, having presumably begun at some point before that and presumably to continue for some time after that. That is, the verb know expresses neither the beginning nor the end of the state of knowing, and so we must conclude that it does not represent and situate in universe time the full duration of the happening. We can

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diagram this representation of a moment somewhere in the middle of the event, that coinciding with the present of speech, as follows: know know 8

8

Nonpast Nonpast Past Here the moment of the state represented as existing in universe time is depicted by the short arrow situated at the beginning of the nonpast. The presumed existence of the state before and after that moment are depicted by dotted lines to indicate that these portions of the event time are not represented by the verb. This diagram might also represent the verbs in the following sentences: Past

The air smells of jasmine. She seems tired. He is asleep. And, of course, this same image of event time can be situated anywhere in the past by means of the past tense of these verbs. To understand what permits the simple form to provide both beginning-to-end and moment-in-the-middle representations of event time, we must examine the difference between a process or activity and a state. A happening that involves no change or development is perceived as a state whereas one involving various phases of development is perceived as an activity. A state, therefore, is “like-parted,” as Quirk et al. (198) aptly put it, and so the same situation, the same phase, must be represented in the successive moments of its event time. A typical activity, on the other hand, is not “like-parted” and so, to represent it, different sets of conditions constituting different phases must be depicted in the successive moments of its event time. In the previous lesson, this view of event time was summarized by the following formula to indicate that it required the accumulation of all the phases of an activity to make up the whole event: M1 + M2 + . . . . . . . . . . + Mn = 1 States, on the other hand, can be summarized by a different formula to indicate that there is no accumulation, that they are single-phased, that whatever phase or situation is found in the first moment of the event is the same as that found in the second and so on to last moment:

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M1 = M2 = . . . . . . . . . . = Mn = 1 The point here is that the total lexical content of a state – whatever is involved in ‘knowing the answer,’ ‘smelling of jasmine,’ etc. – is found in each of its moments. This contrasts with an activity or process, where the contribution of every moment is required in order to have its total lexical content. It is important for an understanding of the simple form to see what the difference between an activity and a state, commonly recognized by grammarians, entails in terms of the lexical and the grammatical import of a verb. An activity is developmental, many-phased, whereas a state is non-developmental, single-phased. When the simple form expresses an activity it depicts its total duration, but when it expresses a state it usually depicts only one moment of its duration. The difference in representing event time is clear, but there is something common to the two: the relation between lexeme and event time. In both cases, the verb’s total lexical import can be situated in universe time with the event time provided by the simple form because just one moment of a state’s existence suffices to situate it in time. Thus to carry out its role as a tense the simple form always situates the lexical import as a whole in time, but it does this in two ways, depending on the nature of this import, depending on whether the happening is represented as an activity or a state. To bring out this crucial difference concerning what is situated in time, we shall adopt analytical terms to designate the manner of representing the happening. To designate the representation of a happening with the same phase persisting throughout its duration, the term monophase event will be adopted; to designate how a happening involving different phases is represented, the term metaphase event will be used. The well-known terms “state” and “activity,” or “stative” and “dynamic,” are of course valuable to speak of the type of happening arising in our experience or the expressive effect achieved in the sentence. They do not however call to mind how the two types of event represent happenings and so are less precise for discriminating between the two in certain cases, as we shall see in the next section. Describing the manner of representing happenings in this way permits us to understand why both types of event are expressed by the simple form. In each case, whether it be the one phase of a monophase event or every phase of a metaphase event, the simple form provides enough event time to permit everything involved in

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the event to be situated in universe time. In both uses of the simple form, therefore, there is an impression of totality, of something complete, of a ‘perfective’ event. It should be noted, however, that applying the term “perfective” to monophase representations involves an extension of its meaning: while usually used to designate the complete duration of a happening, it is here used to designate the duration required for realizing the complete set of conditions making up the lexical content of the verb. Thus in spite of their different ways of representing event time, both metaphase and monophase events are formed as perfectives by the simple form. It should not be thought that this is merely a semantic adaptation of a technical term to accommodate the hypothesis proposed for the simple form. Considering states to be perfective in the way just outlined is based on an element of experience so common that it generally goes unnoticed: if a happening involves no change, cannot have different phases, it cannot be seen as incomplete. That is, there is no such thing as an incomplete state, part of a state. To have a vague idea of the answer or to know the answer in part, to smell faintly of jasmine, to seem slightly tired, to be half asleep – all these are not partly actualized versions of the states expressed in the above examples, but different states. From this it follows that a state cannot undergo any change whatsoever, that the least change gives rise to another happening. As a consequence when something experienced as a state is represented by a verb, the event is monophastic and so is complete in each of its instants. In brief, the perfectivity of the simple form is not a matter of how much of the event’s duration is represented but of providing sufficient event time to accommodate all the lexical import of the verb and situate it in universe time. THE DURATION OF STATES

Two examples of the copula will illustrate the point just made. In the first, the sentence suggests an extremely long event thanks to the nature of what is designated by the subject: The Earth is round. The point here is that, however long an event the sentence may suggest, we do not get a ‘dynamic’ expressive effect, the impression

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of the subject moving through the event from beginning to end. Rather there is a ‘stative’ effect, an impression of the event existing at the moment of its duration that coincides with the present of speech. This can be depicted by the following diagram: is is 8

8

Nonpast

Past

Nonpast

Past

In the second example, thanks to the complement we know that the happening did not exist prior to the present of speech and will no longer exist after it: It is exactly midnight. Here, although the sentence evokes an extremely short event, we do not get the expressive effect of an instantaneous action starting, going on and finishing in the present moment, but of a condition existing at the moment of speaking, a ‘stative’ effect that represents neither the event’s coming into existence nor its going out of existence. In a diagram: is is 8

8

Past

Nonpast Nonpast Past One occasionally finds the simple form used to evoke the first instant of the state’s existence, as in the following example, where the first use of was, quite commonplace, contrasts with the other two uses:

At first there was nothing … Then the buck was there. He did not come into sight; he was just there … already running.1 Here one gets the feeling that the author is exploiting the simple form to express a very striking impression, that of the buck ‘being there’ though a moment before it was not there. Examples like this bring out the fact that a monophase event cannot represent the coming into existence of the state, a moment involving change, but only the first moment of its existence. This can be diagrammed as follows: was was 8

8 Nonpast Nonpast Something similar is expressed in the following: Past Past

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And then suddenly I knew! (Vendler, 112) Here the verb expresses the first moment of knowing, of being aware of something. This is to be contrasted with And then suddenly I realized that …, which would evoke the movement into the state of knowing, a short metaphase event. These examples show how other parts of the sentence, and the lexical import of the verb itself, contribute to bringing out what the speaker has in mind, since the verb’s grammatical import is far too general to make explicit any of the particularities mentioned here. Other examples of sentences giving the effect of an endless state, of an ‘eternal truth’ as some grammarians characterize it, are: Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. Light travels faster than sound. Time marches on. Again, one has no suggestion of the whole duration of the event from beginning to end but rather of the situation at the moment of speaking. And yet one might hesitate to call the verbs in the last two examples “statives” because the notions of ‘travelling’ and ‘marching’ imply movement. On the other hand there is no hesitation in considering them monophase because the same set of circumstances persists from instant to instant throughout time. Similarly in the following example, which describes the uninterrupted functioning of a hydroelectric plant: The water shoots down the pipe and drives the turbine. Although the expressive effect here is one of a ‘long-term state’ rather than an ‘eternal truth,’ it is that of an event involving no change or development. Again it is hardly appropriate to speak of “statives” because of the lexical import of shoots and drives, but there is no problem considering these events to be monophase because the analytical term brings out the type of grammatical representation rather than the expressive effect. In the next two examples, the verb also expresses a ‘long-term state’: The Nile rises in Central Africa. The St Lawrence flows past Quebec City.

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Although these states are not part of the constitution of the universe, they are inherent in our conception of the subject and so we get the expressive effect of something permanent. We find something similar with human subjects: She has blue eyes. He resembles his father. These sentences suggest something permanent, lasting as long as the subject exists. But in She has blue fingernails. He resembles a bandit in that hat. the expressive effect is rather that of a temporary situation of the subject. The point of all these examples is to bring out that the simple form actualized with a monophase representation expresses existence at the moment of speaking, whereas other elements in the context or situation may give indications as to the actual duration of the happening. Two more examples will serve to illustrate this. The following use of the simple form might be felt to be less appropriate than the progressive as a commentary of a football game: The Eskimos trail by ten points. The impression of a stable situation, a temporary state, arose because the comment was made at half-time and no change can occur before the second half begins. Finally an example arising at the end of a novel: … and may the deep sea where he sleeps now rock him gently, rock him tenderly to the end of time.2 Any suggestion of a metaphase representation for sleeps here, of a possible change of phase between now and “the end of time” would be quite out of context. Thus, unlike activities, stative happenings contemporary with the moment of speaking can be represented by the simple form and situated in time regardless of the fact that their duration is not seen as complete.

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The same can be observed of states at a given moment in the past, as in an example already cited: Where the snow-white of alkali edged the course of the river, a thin trickle of water made its way toward the town low upon the horizon. Here edged depicts the existence of the alkali border at the moment of the narrative. In the past, the simple form can also express the full duration of a monophase event, as in: He was in hospital for three days. Here obviously the event is also seen as perfective. HABIT AND CAPACITY

The expression of habit is perhaps the use most frequently attributed to the simple form in the nonpast. We find this use with an ‘eternal truth’ effect, as in: The sun rises in the east. And of course it is found in sentences suggesting a far less lengthy happening: Fred still walks to work. The expressive effect characterizing this use is that of the subject’s disposition to carry out the activity periodically (every morning for the sun, every working day for Fred). This can be contrasted with a metaphase use expressing ‘repeated occurrence,’ as illustrated in the previous lesson (He walked to work all summer). When depicting a happening as a habit, it is not a question of representing the whole series of occurrences but rather of representing the conditions governing their occurring. That is, the ‘habit’ effect here is to be understood not as the actual realization of the activity on each occasion it occurs but rather as the set of conditions required for it to happen, the subject’s tendency or propensity to realize the activity periodically. And this predisposition, which exists at every moment for the subject, is in fact a durable state, so that the above

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example could be said of Fred even if he is momentarily ill, or on holiday. To express ‘habit,’ therefore, calls for a monophase representation, which gives no indication of the event’s beginning or end in time, though this may well be suggested by the nature of the subject (e.g. the sun) or some other element in the sentence (still). To help make this way of considering habit clearer we can compare it with a similar but not identical use of the simple form: She speaks Greek. The boat sleeps five people. Here the verbs are close in sense to can speak/can sleep because they have an expressive effect of ‘capacity.’ There is however no indication of periodicity, no suggestion that the capacity is actualized under certain circumstances as in the examples expressing ‘habit.’ Since a capacity is also a longstanding condition of the subject, it is a state and so calls for a monophase representation to declare its existence at the moment of speaking. In both ‘capacity’ and ‘habit’ uses the simple form represents conditions permitting numerous actualizations of the event. In the next use to be examined, it represents conditions permitting only one actualization of the event.

‘FUTURE’

USE

In this use the simple form expresses an event whose realization is fixed for a moment in the future, at a moment beyond the present of speech, as in: Exams begin on Monday. The appointment takes effect on April 1 next. The expressive effect here has been characterized as “a scheduled event,” “an unalterable arrangement,” “a fixed plan,” and the like. Examples such as The sun rises at 5 o’clock tomorrow. (Leech, 59) Next Christmas falls on a Thursday. (Ibid.) also express an event to be realized at a specified moment in the future, but here there is no suggestion of anyone planning or

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scheduling it so the expressive effect is rather that of an ‘inevitable’ event. In either case, whether the event is seen as ‘scheduled’ or ‘inevitable,’ there is, according to some authors, an expressive effect of ‘certainty’ accompanying this ‘future’ use. Characterizing a use by means of a common expressive effect does not explain it because an explanation must be based not on a consequence like an expressive effect but on a prior condition: the representation of the event. Besides, one of the best studies of this use points out that in a sentence such as Exams begin on Monday, I think. the ‘future’ use does not depend on the expression of ‘certainty,’ but rather on an impression of “complete determination” of the moment when exams begin (Wekker, 87). The same author describes this view as follows: “The main condition on the use of the simple future present is that the future event or activity must be felt to be completely determined by facts or circumstances that already exist at the moment of speaking” (82). The point here is that the speaker has the impression of the complete set of predetermining conditions already existing at the moment of speaking. This analysis of course makes one think of the uses just examined, ‘habit’ and ‘capacity,’ where the predisposition and ability are attributed to the subject. Here similar preconditioning factors are attributed to the subject but with an important difference: they provide for only one actualization of the event. This can be shown by an example like the following, where the first comes expresses a ‘future’ event, the second a ‘habit’: The garbage truck comes the day after tomorrow, and you mustn’t forget that it only comes on Wednesdays.3 And in the following example the verb expresses a ‘future’ event, but the adverbial afterthought indicates that it can also be considered ‘habitual’: School starts the Tuesday after Labour Day, as usual. Without as usual here, the listener would not know if the speaker was expressing the event as ‘future’ or ‘habitual.’

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In some uses, especially where legal dispositions are involved, it is not always clear whether the event is seen as ‘inevitable’ or ‘scheduled.’ For example You come into your money when you are twenty-five. might call to mind the making of the will, or simply the present legal arrangement. Similarly in Rizzo, who under the city charter could not seek another term, leaves office in January.4 the city charter, or the subject’s own decision, could determine the leaving date. On the other hand, in I am fifty-one next year and the only thing I ever had happen to me was seeing a man stop a runaway horse. the event is certainly ‘inevitable’; the remark of a grammarian (Erades, 6) brings out the completeness of the predetermination: “If the attainment of the age of fifty-one were represented as dependent on some contingency, the use of the present tense would be impossible. The interpolation of God willing, if my health keeps, or some such expression would necessitate the use of shall be.” The following example is the only one that has come to hand involving a past tense: On Wednesday next he sailed for Australia from San Francisco; sailed, that is, if he escaped destruction in Larry Blaesdale’s car – or if nothing else happened to him. (Schibsbye, 71) Without more context, one almost has to do a double-take on sailed since one tends to interpret it in the first clause as expressing the realization of a past event but on reading the rest of the sentence must reinterpret it as ‘was to sail,’ i.e. as a predetermined event. Representing the complete predetermination of an event thus calls for a monophase representation of the set of conditions governing the realization of an activity. However the fact that a speaker must have the impression that some happening is completely predetermined imposes certain restrictions on this use. For example, we

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would not normally say *I have a bad cold next Monday or *It rains tomorrow morning because we would not normally perceive such happenings as scheduled or inevitable. These and many other observations help corroborate that it is not the future realization of the event but its present predetermination that calls for the ‘future’ use.5 We will return to the question below in the discussion of the progressive. VERBS OF MENTAL EVENT

Teaching grammars sometimes state that certain verbs, for the most part those expressing a mental event, are not used in the progressive as in: I quite understand. Although these verbs do also occur in the progressive, as we shall see in lesson 12, it is important here to understand why they are used so frequently, almost exclusively in some cases, in the simple form to express something taking place at the moment of speaking. The general reason is that they represent a state of mind, usually the result of some mental process, conscious or unconscious. Thus in the above example, often heard as a conversation filler to express an attitude of sympathy, speakers manifest their mental state. Similarly to say I think you should sell. might be the advice of someone, an opinion or state of mind reached after carrying out an analysis of the market. And in I believe we should leave immediately. believe expresses an opinion based on an assessment of the situation. The same expression of a mental result arises when the verb evokes the way something strikes the speaker’s mind, as in: It appears that I made a mistake. You seem tired. Or it may be more an emotional state of mind resulting from some experience, as in:

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I hate the smell of gasoline. She likes this wine. Even hesitate in the following example seems to express more of the mental state of indecision than the actual temporal delay involved: I hesitate to apply for it because of the risk involved. If one says I agree. as a conversation filler like “of course” or “yes” the verb would be understood to express an attitude of concurring, a state of mind: ‘I am in agreement,’ ‘it is my opinion as well.’ On the other hand if one says this at the conclusion of a negotiation, the verb would be understood as a performative like those seen in the previous lesson: ‘I hereby give my consent.’ This would constitute a different sentence expressing a very different message. Many verbs can express a mental state of one sort or another, but perhaps the group most frequently commented on are the verbs of perception. In their usual use, they indicate a result of the act of perception, a mental image or percept: I see a fly on the wall. He feels a slight pain in his left arm. A verb of perception may also express a conclusion drawn from the way something strikes our senses: It feels like it’s going to rain. That sounds like a bad accident. Like most verbs to do with perception, sound can express a more intellectual sense, and so the last example might also express the conclusion I draw if that refers not to the noise of a loud crash but to what someone has just described. Perhaps the most frequent example of this is when we say I see in the sense of ‘I understand.’ In all such cases the verb expresses a monophase event with its full lexical import situated in the present of speech.

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This will suffice to give a general view of verbs expressing a mental event. We will return to them in lesson 12 to examine their use in the progressive form. MONOPHASE OR METAPHASE?

It is not always an easy matter to discern whether the simple form represents a metaphase or a monophase event because not infrequently a verb that usually expresses an activity is used with a ‘stative’ expressive effect. This occurs particularly in contexts involving a description. The following passage gives two examples of it: See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk … 6 In the first sentence floats expresses an event already in existence at the moment of see and persisting in time beyond that moment. That is, floats appears to express a monophase event. Pushes on the other hand evokes its short ‘dynamic’ event from beginning to end. Finally the sentence containing shines suggests the first moment of an event that presumably continues throughout a part of the day at least. Thus on the basis of whether we get a momentary or a beginning-to-end view of the event, we can distinguish monophase floats and shines from metaphase pushes. See, however, arises from a representation of event time that is different from both of these, one to be discussed in the next lesson. A second passage – exemplifying how a verb, usually felt to be ‘dynamic,’ can be given a monophase representation – is taken from the description of a stage set: The rain still falls through the street lamps. The Two Natty Young Men In Serge And Gray are leaning against the masonry in a ray of light concentrating on a game of chance. Each holds in his hand a packet of ten or fifteen crisp bills. They compare the numbers on the top notes and immediately a bill changes hands. This goes on … 7 The interesting verb here is falls, which expresses an event that had already begun (still) and extends as a sort of unchanging background

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throughout the time occupied by the other events. Much the same can be said of holds, whereas compare and changes both represent short metaphase events. Similar expressive effects arise from the following descriptive examples cited by Charleston (1960, 228): It still snows. I think I hate snow … I am in the sitting-room downstairs. The wind howls outside, but here it is so warm and pleasant. Now the dark is coming back again; only at the windows there is a white glare. My watch ticks loudly and strongly on the bed table, as though it were rich with a minute life, while I faint – I die. The use of the simple forms snows, howls, ticks for an event going on at the moment of speaking gives a suggestion of an unchanging process providing a sort of background to other events. The use of faint and die here also gives the curious effect of monophase events because it would not make sense to understand the speaker carrying them out from beginning to end. There are, of course, times when one hesitates in interpreting a sentence, as in: And looking back, I am not sure that it did. That is why I debate the matter. With debate, does the speaker intend to express an habitual event or an indecisive state of mind? And in I shirk the lunch party. one gets more the suggestion of a mental attitude than a physical evasion. Much research remains to be done on how the simple form, especially in descriptive contexts, is exploited to represent happenings usually considered processes as monophase events. The few examples given here will perhaps suffice to pose the problem and show the importance of an analytical terminology to distinguish the grammatical contribution of the simple form from the lexical import of the verb. What has been clearly established for the simple form is that most ‘dynamic’ expressive effects arise from representing the full span of

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event time so that the subject is depicted carrying out the event to its end, whereas ‘stative’ effects result from representing one moment of the event’s duration so that the subject is depicted actualizing that moment. These two manners of representing event time in turn arise from the way the speaker perceives the happening: as a process involving change or development or as a situation remaining the same from one instant to the next. As examples like Time marches on show, even lexemes evoking an activity can represent either type of happening. That is, these two expressive effects of the simple form result from depicting the happening as monophase or metaphase by means of the lexeme and providing it with enough event time for its accomplishment. In both cases the event is ‘perfective’ because, through its tense, the verb situates this total lexical import in universe time. The above examples serve to highlight a more general question: granted the distinction between monophase and metaphase events, how is it expressed? What makes it discernible in discourse if both are expressed by means of the simple form? The question obviously concerns hearers, not speakers, who are aware of the happening they experience as either a process or a state and represent it as such. The hearer, unaware of the speaker’s intended message, confronts a sentence with the resources of tongue, including the lexeme’s potential of being actualized as either metaphase or monophase and the simple form’s potential of situating either the whole of the event’s duration or just a moment of its duration in universe time. To discern which possibility the speaker has actualized, the hearer calls on the linguistic context (cf. I accept! vs I accept whenever I can) and may, especially for written texts, have to appeal to the extra-linguistic situation, including prior knowledge of the speaker, of what is being talked about, and so forth. The answer to the question thus implies that the hearer evokes the lexeme as a potential and seeks clues to determine which of the two possibilities the speaker has actualized. It also allows for cases where the sentence, for want of sufficient clues, remains ambiguous for the hearer (but not the speaker of course). Considering the hearer’s role from the point of view of actualizing a potential meaning in this way also throws light on the hearer’s attempt to reconstruct the speaker’s intended message, the process usually called “reference” – a topic that cannot be pursued here.

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The analysis presented so far provides a basis for explaining most uses of the simple form, as I have pointed out elsewhere,8 but there remain a certain number of uses that this analysis has not explained. An examination of these in the next lesson will bring the simple form into clearer focus by showing that it offers yet another way of representing event time and relating it to its place in universe time, a third manner of representing an event as ‘perfective.’

LESSON SEVEN

The Simple Form III: Prospective Events

PROSPECTIVE EVENT TIME

We have seen that the expressive effects of the simple form described as ‘dynamic’ and ‘stative’ can generally be explained on the basis of a metaphase or monophase representation of the event’s duration. There are, however, several uses calling for further attention because their expressive effect is different from those described in the previous two lessons. One of these uses is exemplified by the following: You take the first street on the left, go three blocks, turn right and then you’ll see the cathedral. Direction-giving of this sort has been variously classified by grammarians as involving habit, futurity, an imaginary present, and command.1 However, none of these quite fits the expressive effect because there is no suggestion of a disposition to repeat the activity, of total predetermination, of imagining the moment of speech somewhere else in time, or of imposing the action. The three simple forms in the above example all express a metaphase, beginning-to-end view of the event, and yet they cannot be classified as current activities because none of them situates its event’s accomplishment in time at the moment of speech. It seems then that some use not yet examined is involved here. To understand what it is, we will call on the representation of event time as in the two preceding lessons on metaphase and monophase events. This is a general parameter because to represent

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any happening as a verb necessarily involves representing the duration involved in the state or process. Here, then, we want to determine how the event time of the three activities of ‘taking,’ ‘going’ and ‘turning’ is represented in the above example. What distinguishes this use of the simple form from those examined in lesson 5 – performatives, rapid actions, foreseen activities, etc. – is that it does not represent the subject as actually involved in the accomplishment of the event. That is, the person addressed may set off to follow the directions immediately or at some later time, or may not do so at all. The event is represented as a prospective accomplishment for the subject, not as an actual accomplishment situated in time. To portray this in a diagram we can depict the event time by means of a dotted line from beginning to end: B B

EE

This is intended to contrast with diagrams depicting the event’s accomplishment as actual by means of a solid line, as in the preceding lessons. One may well wonder in such cases, where it is purely prospective or imagined, if any event time is really represented. Since all grammarians consider these to be verbs and since all verbs express an event, it is inevitable that that necessary element of an event, event time, should also be represented. Furthermore the expressive effects of the uses to be discussed here give a clear indication that both speaker and hearer understand happenings with duration. In the above sentence, for example, we understand events in sequence, each one to be completed before the next one is undertaken. The speaker not only envisages the three events as arising one after the other but, more important, since their accomplishment can only take place after the directions are given, situates the first event take in universe time somewhere beyond the present of speech. Thus the three verbs in the above example can be diagrammed as follows: take take Past

turn turn Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past

go go

Since by definition a prospective event is not yet real, it cannot, like performatives and other current events, be situated in the first moment of the nonpast, the moment of reality. It must be situated somewhere beyond this moment, beyond the moment in universe time when an event can be actually realized.

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This manner of analyzing direction-giving can be confirmed by an ordinary sentence like: I hope the weather is fine tomorrow. Here obviously hope expresses the present state of mind of the subject wherein the state is fine is regarded as an eventuality, not a reality at the moment of speaking. As a consequence, its event time is understood to be represented as prospective. This permits us to explain why a sentence like the following might be ambiguous for the listener (not for the speaker, of course): I hope the weather is fine in Stockholm. Without any indication of the context or situation is fine might be interpreted as an actuality or as an eventuality. That is, if the speaker has in mind ‘now,’ the event time of is would be represented as real, as in: is is 8

8

Nonpast

Past

Nonpast

Past

On the other hand, if the speaker has in mind something like ‘when we get there next week’ the event time of is would be represented as prospective, as in: is is Past

Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past

Only in the latter case could is be replaced by will be. The possible ambiguity of this example thus confirms that there are two different ways of representing the event time of is, as a current state or as a prospective state. OTHER PROSPECTIVE EVENTS

Analyzing direction-giving in this way gives us a basis for examining several other uses. One such use is in either-or sentences: Either that alligator goes or I go!

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Here, too, the events are seen as eventualities situated beyond the present of speech occupied by the uttering of the sentence. There is on the other hand a difference between this and direction-giving. Grammarians have pointed out that this example gives an impression of something “fixed and inevitable,” of “total commitment” on the part of the speaker, and for this reason it has been classified as embodying a ‘future’ use. This interpretation, however, is not satisfactory because the accomplishment of neither event is seen as ‘totally predetermined,’ the hallmark of the ‘future’ use of the simple form. What is felt to be inevitable here is the choice between the two alternatives, a choice that the intonation may well suggest is impending. If, therefore, we analyze these events as prospective, their status as imminent, mutually exclusive possibilities on the horizon of time is quite understandable, and the choice leading to the accomplishment of one event and the non-accomplishment of the other is felt to be ‘inevitable’ because of the either-or conjunction. Sometimes in this type of sentence the first member of the conjunction is not required: You show up for work tomorrow or you’re fired. Tomorrow expresses lexically that ‘show’ is situated outside the present moment, but there is a big difference between this use and a ‘future’ use with its ‘totally predetermined’ effect. In fact, with show here we feel an expressive effect close to a command. This brings us to one of the most common effects of representing event time as prospective in the simple form: the imperative use. Imperative sentences can give rise to a considerable range of expressive effect from commands to mere suggestions. What is common to all is that they “refer to a situation in the immediate or more remote future”2: Write soon. Come back again next year. That is, these sentences involve events whose accomplishment is situated as a possibility in time somewhere beyond the moment of speaking. Their event time is thus represented as prospective to allow for both eventualities, their accomplishment and their nonaccomplishment.3 In a use that is syntactically similar to an imperative, the simple form gives rise to a very different expressive effect:

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Make a move and I’ll shoot. Here, rather than inciting the addressee to undertake the action, the sentence constitutes a warning against doing so, and yet make represents its event as prospective as does a verb in an imperative sentence. What makes the difference is the second clause, which expresses a consequence of carrying out the event in the first clause. Since the consequence, getting shot, is something to be avoided, the expressive effect is that of a warning, whereas in an example like Come back again next year and we’ll do some kayaking. the prospect of doing some kayaking is something to encourage coming back. Other types of sentence expressing a condition-consequence relationship also call for representing event time as prospective. Thus in Whoever opens the door will get a surprise. opening the door, depicted as a prospective event sometime in the future, is presented as the prerequisite for having a surprise. The following example is taken from a car ad showing a wide expanse of desert: Your car breaks down here, you’re dead.4 The crisp concision of the ad is permitted by the prospective event time in both the conditioning and the resulting events. Here, of course, a quite similar message, but without the same effectiveness as in the ad, could be conveyed by an ordinary conditional sentence introduced by if. In a typical conditional sentence like If the plane gets in on time, we won’t miss our connection. the accomplishment of ‘getting in on time’ is expressed as a possibility. That is, the event in the protasis is represented as prospective in sentences of this sort. However this is not the case for all ifclauses. For example, in If we are broke, we still got our money’s worth.

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if has the sense of ‘even though,’ ‘granted that,’ and are expresses a state existing at the moment of speaking, not an eventuality. That is, the event time of are here is not represented as prospective, to be realized at some future moment perhaps, but as effective, realized in the first moment of the nonpast. In such cases if does not introduce a clause expressing a prerequisite, and so the relation between the two events is not that of condition-consequence. Usage in if-clauses is a complex question that has yet to be researched in detail from the point of view of the representation of event time, and so it will not be explored further here. It is, however, closely connected with another use of the simple form, that found in: When the plane gets in we’ll phone. Here we are told that once the getting in, a prospective event, is accomplished, the phoning will take place. That is, sentences of this type express a condition-consequence relationship because the adverbial clause determines the place in universe time for realizing the event in the main clause. The following example presents the same relationship between the clauses: Tell me when you are ready. Here too we are told that the moment for carrying out the prospective event ‘tell’ depends on the moment somewhere in the future when the prospective event ‘being ready’ is realized. On the other hand in Tell me when you will be ready. the relationship between the clauses is quite different. The whenclause no longer has the adverbial function of situating the telling in time but rather a nominal function, that of expressing the content of the message to be told, the direct object of tell. It has yet another function in: The Queen will visit the new town in May, when she will open the new hospital.5 Here the when-clause characterizes May, an adjectival function, and so does not determine the moment of visit. If however in May were

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omitted, the when-clause would have an adverbial function, establishing the condition-consequence relationship, and so require the simple form: The Queen will visit the new town when she opens the new hospital. This distinction between the simple form and will + infinitive in when-clauses is sometimes quite subtle and provides a good means of comparing the two forms.6 The various expressive effects of these examples – a sequence of events, a distinction between monophase and metaphase representations, an incitation to carry out the event, a condition-consequence relation depending on the realization of the prospective event – all show that the event is represented with its event time as prospective. Moreover each of these prospective events is situated somewhere beyond the present of speech, the moment of reality, but the verb cannot indicate where in the future. A more lengthy citation about a photographer preparing his camera at dawn illustrates the prospective use in inner dialogue and brings out the versatility of the simple form: He took out the Nikon loaded with Kodachrome and screwed it onto the heavy tripod … . Red color coming up, sky brightening. Lower camera six inches, adjust tripod legs. Still not there. A foot more to the left. Adjust legs again. Level camera on tripod head. Set lens to f/8. Estimate depth of field, maximize it via hyperfocal technique. Screw in cable release on shutter button. Sun 40 percent above the horizon, old paint on the bridge turning a warm red, just what he wanted. Light meter out of left breast pocket. Check it at f/8. One-second exposure, but the Kodachrome would hold well for that extreme. Look through the viewfinder. Fine-tune levelling of camera. He pushed the plunger of the shutter release and waited for a second to pass.7 The switching between past narrative (took, screwed, wanted, pushed, waited) and inner dialogue (lower, adjust, level, set, estimate, maximize, screw, check, look, fine-tune) is quite effective here. In the inner dialogue, one gets the impression of someone telling himself what to

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do next, a sort of imperative, especially for longer events like estimate and fine-tune, whereas for a short event like check it may well be a ‘current activity’ use (cf. lesson 5) carried out as he thinks of it. Of interest here as well is the use of finite verbs without a subject, a possibility we will look at in lesson 9. The ‘prospective’ use of the simple form is also found in the past tense. It involves the same representation of event time, but the moment of reality in universe time beyond which the prospective event is situated is obviously not the moment of speech but some prior point of reference in the past. PROSPECTIVE EVENTS IN THE PAST TENSE

Prospective events with their affinity to universe time in the offing are far more common in the nonpast than in the past, but we do occasionally find the simple form with prospective event time situating an event in the past. This is the case of was in the following comment from a hockey broadcast: Had he received the pass he was in the clear. Here the speaker represents the monophase event ‘being in the clear’ as a possibility, albeit unrealized, at the moment in the past he is speaking about, the equivalent of would have been in the clear. Quite obviously no part of the event can be seen as accomplished in time and so we understand that the speaker has represented its event time as prospective, situating it as a consequence beyond the non-realized condition of receiving the pass (itself dependent on what precedes in the commentary for its place in time). A similar use occurs in the next example referring to a child playing with the door of a car going down the highway: If the door had flown open, she was gone. This use is not limited to the apodosis of a conditional sentence. In the following example from a biography, began, with the sense of ‘would begin,’ expresses an eventuality in the past: He [Darwin] was no longer sick, only ‘growing old and weak,’ and dreading the day when his intellectual powers began to fail.8

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Here too the event is represented in past time but it is situated beyond the point reached by the narrative, the moment occupied by was, and so it is seen as a yet to be accomplished possibility. In a diagram: began began was was 8

8

Nonpast Past Nonpast Past We can see in this use a parallel with what was observed in the nonpast: when the event is represented with prospective event time it is situated somewhere in the past time-sphere beyond the moment of reality represented in past universe time by some other event. We also find the simple past with prospective event time even when there is no point of reference in a past verb depicting a prior moment of real accomplishment in the past. In this case, the prospective event is envisaged beyond any past moment, beyond the past time-sphere itself, and so comes to express its event as an eventuality in the nonpast, as in:

A nation which stopped working would be dead in a fortnight. (Jespersen 1954, 4: 116) Stopped is in the past tense and so cannot situate an event’s accomplishment in the nonpast. As a consequence, evoking an event’s eventuality beyond the past produces the expressive effect of something “counterfactual,” that is, an event that does not exist at the moment of speaking, or one which, in the eyes of the speaker, has little or no chance of coming into existence. The following sentence gives another example where the event’s accomplishment is dismissed in this way: “A peace which left Belgium’s wrongs unavenged,” he adds, “and which did not provide against their recurrence, would not be a real peace.” (Kruisinga, 28) Here the expressive effect is that of events (left, did not provide) whose realization after the moment of speaking (adds) is evoked as a possibility to be avoided. In the following sentence, came expresses an eventuality that is to be prepared for even though it is unlikely (cf. the different nuance with come): The committee suggests that there should be voted in advance a standing fund, on which it would be possible to draw when exceptional works came on the market. (Schibsbye, 71)

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As a prospective past, the simple form can express something contrary to fact, as in: I wish I knew. As the object of a wish, the speaker wants to represent the ‘knowing’ as an event that does not exist at the moment of expressing the wish. Thanks to its prospective event time, knew depicts the event as possible and because of its tense it can situate the event as a possibility anywhere beyond the past time-sphere, even the moment of speaking. The contrary to fact expressive effect therefore is produced by evoking in the present of speech a theoretically possible but nonexistent state of mind. This is particularly common in if-clauses: If I knew the answer I would tell you. This is depicted in the following diagram: knew knew Nonpast

8

8

Past

Nonpast Past The event can be situated beyond the moment of reality in the nonpast, as in:

If we missed our plane we would call you. Here the effect is of something quite unlikely, “remote possibility,” rather than contrary to fact, an effect to be contrasted with the use of the prospective nonpast, as in: If we miss our plane we will call you. Thus a verb in the past tense with prospective event time is capable of situating its event at or beyond any moment of reality in the past, or simply beyond the past time-stretch itself, i.e. at or beyond the moment of reality in the nonpast. As such it can give rise to the expressive effect of a ‘contrary to fact’ or ‘improbable’ event in the indicative, the mood of reality. This brief outline may suffice to suggest how the prospective use of the past indicative has been able to replace the “past” subjunctive (cf. Jespersen 1954, 4: 113f).

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THE SIMPLE FORM IN TONGUE

Examining the simple form from the point of view of the duration of a happening has shown that it depends on the way the speaker perceives a happening, on whether it is perceived as an activity or a state, since the relation between its successive instants is not the same for both. An activity calls for a metaphase representation where there is development (or at least the possibility thereof) from one instant to another; a state calls for a monophase type of event time where there is no change or development from one instant to the next. The manner of representing event time also depends on whether the speaker perceives the happening’s accomplishment as real or as prospective since the relation between the event and the subject is not the same for both. To depict an event as real, the subject is represented actually accomplishing the event; to depict an event as prospective, the subject is represented in a position to accomplish the event. The interplay of these two conditions gives the simple form four ways of expressing an event once the verb has been made incident to the subject. 1 To express the effective accomplishment of a metaphase event, it must be represented with the subject carrying the event through each of its phases to the end. This view of event time can be diagrammed as follows: B B E E The solid arrow here depicts the beginning-to-end accomplishing of the event by the subject, the chevron symbolizing its final position. In the resulting sentence the subject is thus understood to have realized the whole event either in the nonpast (I refuse) or the past (He yawned). 2 To express the effective accomplishment of a monophase event, it suffices to represent the subject actually accomplishing any moment of the event and ready to accomplish the next moment. Here the solid arrow depicts the moment accomplished by the subject and the dotted lines possible stretches of duration before and after that moment, either in the nonpast (I know the answer) or the past (It was cold out).

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3 To express the prospective accomplishing of a metaphase event, it must be represented with the subject ready to carry the event through each of its phases to the end, as in: B B

EE

Here the dotted arrow depicts a beginning-to-end view of the duration as prospective, a representation that puts the subject in a position to carry out the activity, either in the nonpast (You take the first street on the left …) or the past (… dreading the day when his intellectual powers began to fail). 4 To express the prospective accomplishing of a monophase event, it suffices to represent the subject ready to accomplish any moment of the event, as in: Here the short dotted arrow depicts the possible existence of the state at the moment of its duration corresponding to the place it is referred to in universe time. This puts the subject in a position to realize the event as a whole in that moment either in the nonpast (I hope it is fine tomorrow; I wish I knew) or in the past (Had he received the pass he was in the clear). These appear to be the only ways event time is expressed by the simple form in the indicative. It remains to discern the conditions permitting this variation in sense in order to work out the potential meaning of the simple form. The situations calling for either a monophase or a metaphase event are as varied as the happenings arising in a speaker’s intended message. What determines the type of event time is the way the speaker perceives the happening in a particular situation and represents it by means of the lexeme. It is therefore a characteristic common to all verbs to depict the event as either a state or an activity of some sort. Consequently the possibility of representing event time as monophase or metaphase is not a distinguishing feature of the simple form. The situations calling for a prospective event – direction giving, choice, imperatives, etc. – are quite varied and are not necessarily expressed by the simple form. This indicates that the capacity to depict the subject either as realizing the event or as merely in a

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position to realize it is a characteristic common to verbs in the indicative, the mood of reality. The possibility of representing event time as real or prospective is not therefore a distinguishing feature of the simple form. Thus like other verbs in the indicative, the simple form positions the subject for accomplishing both types of event, but it does so in a particular manner: it puts the whole event at the disposal of the subject. The simple form makes available to the subject sufficient event time to accomplish the total lexical import of the verb. This is why we have described it as perfective. Subsequent lessons will show that this manner of representing the event distinguishes the simple form from the progressive, which cannot express a perfective, and from the transcendent compound, which cannot express the carrying out of the happening, and from the do + infinitive compound, which does not establish the same subject-event relationship. Furthermore, on examining the different verb compounds, we will see that this distinguishing characteristic of the simple form puts the subject in a relationship of control over the event, a relationship usually designated as the active voice. This then is what appears to constitute the potential meaning of the simple form: the means for representing all the event time required for the subject to carry out the happening as represented by the lexeme. AN OBJECTION

Analyzing the use of the simple form in English in the previous three lessons has resulted in our proposing an abstract potential meaning to explain what has been observed in usage from the point of view of the system of chronogenesis. Some observers of language, more accustomed to describing usage as they find it than to seeking the causes for, or better, the general preconditions permitting a given use, question the validity of this type of result, and even the whole complicated process of analysis leading up to it. For example the question has been raised (private communication) about the “empirical difference” between the above hypothesis and “the null hypothesis that the simple forms don’t categorize the event in terms of ‘completude’ at all. That is, what evidence would decide between them?” Without some suggestion of an alternative representation of event time for the simple form, a “null hypothesis” amounts to proposing that the simple form is “unmarked” for

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event time, that a representation of event time is not part of the meaning it brings to the sentence. This is the position of those grammarians who consider that the simple form does not express an aspect, “the internal temporal constituency” of an event. A first difficulty with this approach is to explain how an event can be conceived without some representation of duration, of time. From the point of view adopted here, proposing a use of the simple form without event time in this way – like the previous proposal of a subjunctive without universe time – would eliminate something common to all verbs, an element on the basis of which all verbs can be compared. As a consequence, this would prevent any understanding of the verb as a time word incorporating a systemic representation of time, such as that described above in lessons 2, 3, and 4 on chronogenesis. There is a considerable difference between the two hypotheses, the one attempting to explain the diversity of meaning expressed by the simple form, the other merely accepting it, a diversity that will appear even more clearly in lessons 10, 12, and 13, comparing the simple form with verb compounds. As for the “empirical difference,” it can best be seen when distinguishing the meaning expressed by the simple form as compared with the progressive (lesson 12),9 unless of course the notion of “empirical difference” reduces the evidence to what can be observed of the sign. That view, as has already been pointed out, is reductive to the point of leaving out at least half the evidence, that part of the data arising from observing meaning. The results of analysis in psychomechanics have also been objected to because of their abstractness, and even as being “metaphysical,” implying that they are so abstract that they must be based on philosophical principles foreign to the science of language. It is true that notions like ‘perfective’ (or ‘completude’), ‘immanent,’ ‘incidence’ and the like are abstract (i.e. ‘drawn out of’) because they are general notions derived from what is expressed in particular sentences. On the other hand, to deal with the simple form, a grammatical form general enough to categorize every imaginable verb in English, there seem to be two possibilities: attempt to describe its very general meaning by using abstract terms, or renounce any such attempt. For those who, like Guillaume (2003, 202), consider that meaning is the necessary condition for the existence of language, the latter option would amount to abandoning the scientific study of language.

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The advantage of objections such as these is that they oblige us to retrace the steps of the analysis from observation to theory in order to see if the results are soundly based since, as Guillaume liked to point out, “science lives not on truths, but on proofs” (1984, 124). The hypothesis concerning the potential meaning of the simple form presented here was obtained by first observing the meaning expressed by a considerable number of examples in order to distinguish the contribution of the simple form from that of other elements in the sentence, a process of analyzing the sense observed in order to draw out, to abstract, the component that characterizes each use, because that component can never be observed on its own, isolated in a verb. The next step was to try discern the unity of the simple form’s meaning, to get a view of it in tongue where it exists as a potential permitting each of the observed actualizations. This step called for a further effort to move from what is directly observable in order to imagine what can never be observed, what is conceivable and conceivable only. One is reminded here of what a physicist said of quantum theory: “Grasping quantum reality requires changing from a reality that can be seen and felt to an instrumentally detected reality that can be perceived only intellectually” (cited in Augros and Stanciu, 14). Although no instrument, nor even any introspection, can detect the potential meaning of a form in tongue, we must accept it as really existing if we are ever to understand how we as speakers can so readily language our unique, personal experiences. Language is more than meets the eye (or ear), more than “a set of sentences,”10 since it includes the potential for producing words and sentences. Moreover, considering tongue a real, albeit hidden, part of language provides a view of language as somehow orderly and so understandable, the postulate of any science concerning its object. This postulate is the basis for assuming that in language the link between a sign and its meaning is somehow coherent. Applying this theoretical approach to the problem we are working on here amounts to showing that the various observed senses of the simple form can be derived from the same potential in tongue and so coherently connected with the same sign. Thus we try to conceive of the potential meaning of the form as a single operational unit providing what is required to produce what is observed, the different senses expressed by the form. In this way, by adopting this method of analysis we can explain why they are all expressed by the same

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form of the verb, thus taking into account all the data, both what is “physically visible,” the sign, and what is “non-physically visible,” visible only to the mind’s eye, the meaning expressed. These are the steps involved in our analysis. There are two ways for judging whether a hypothesis like that concerning the simple form is sound or not. The first is its capacity to confront other data, other examples, and explain them satisfactorily, a never-ending challenge for any theory. The second is its coherence with the meanings proposed for other forms of the verb analyzed on the same basis. That is to say, if all three components – a monophase or metaphase lexeme, event time, and the positioning of the spatial support – are in fact necessary, they will provide a basis for examining other verb forms and comparing them with the simple form. The theory of the simple form cannot be substantiated without this comparison. Since all other forms in the indicative are compounded, we are here confronted with one of the most striking oppositions in the system of the verb. English is noted for the number of verb compounds it has developed: besides the passive and the transcendent (often called the perfect) found in other languages, we find the progressive, the transcendent progressive, and the do + infinitive construction, not to mention the modals. Granted that this opposition between simple and compounded forms is both obvious and characteristic of English, it is, to say the least, curious that grammarians have not addressed the question of the grammatical basis of such a fundamental, easily observed contrast. That is, even though they readily accept that the verb in a sentence may be made up of one word, or more than one, it is by no means obvious what this clear semiological difference signifies from the point of view of grammatical meaning. The question is important because the contrast is one of the “formal and semantic criteria” presented by the verb so should not be neglected. We shall attempt to address this question in lesson 17, after examining in turn the different compounded forms: do + infinitive, the progressive, the transcendent, the transcendent progressive, and the passive. This will involve analyzing the compounded forms to see the meaning import of each part, auxiliary and nonfinite form(s), and then trying to understand the process of compounding that unites the different imports into a single verb of discourse. Proceeding in this way will permit us to see first how the simple

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form contrasts with each of the compounded forms and will ultimately provide a view of the basic opposition involved. Before undertaking this task, however, we must examine two other questions: the simple form as it appears in the subjunctive (lesson 8), and a category that, although common to all verbs, does not provide a representation of time, whether they be simple or compound, namely the category of person (lesson 9).

LESSON EIGHT

The Subjunctive

INTRODUCTION

According to a recent study on mood and modality, the subjunctive in English “has virtually disappeared” (Palmer 2001, 4) whereas a recent grammar (Huddleston and Pullum, 999f) states: “in spite of suggestions that have been frequently made that the subjunctive is dying out in English, this construction is very much alive, with attested examples like I would stress that people just be aware of the danger suggesting that its distribution is increasing.” Conflicting views on the subjunctive are by no means new. They were current in grammars up to 1800, and even throughout the last century. The first step toward clarifying the present situation is to understand what has brought this situation about. Elsewhere (1964) I have cited various scholars who consider that the subjunctive is “gradually dying out,” “moribund,” “fossilized,” “extinct,” that it “has very little vital power left,” that it “has disappeared.” The main argument supporting this view seems to be the following: “By a subjunctive we understand a system of verbal forms existing by the side of another system (the indicative) and used to express a variety of modal relations … Needless to say, English does not possess such a system …” (Kruisinga and Erades 1960, 643). As a consequence, “it is clearly a contradiction in terms to speak of ‘subjunctives not distinguishable in form’” (Visser 1966, 787). This has led to different interpretations of uses like that he go: “the infinitive form” (Ota, 110), “the base form” (Allen 1966, 162), “the modally marked form” (Visser 1966, 786ff; but cf. “the futural present,” 700), “the bare infinitive” (Palmer 1974, 129), “an imperative,

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acknowledging a degree of polysemy in that mood” (James, 129), “the plain form” (Huddleston and Pullum, 994). Basing one’s view on the absence of a distinct set of inflections for the subjunctive may appear to offer the advantage of being clear-cut but it provides no grounds for explaining the different functions of a form – how for example the basic or plain form go can be either nonfinite or finite and how, as a finite form, it can take he as a subject in certain circumstances but not in others. Other scholars base their view of the subjunctive on what the verb expresses: “a certain attitude of the mind of the speaker or writer towards the contents of the sentence,” as Jespersen (1954, 7: 623) defines a mood. On this basis he distinguishes the indicative, the subjunctive, and the imperative. Nesfield (54, 64) distinguishes the same three moods and adds one, the infinitive, a fact suggesting the need of some criterion determining which “attitudes of the mind” are pertinent. Not taking into consideration the means of expression permits Sweet (1891/1955, 2: 107–17) to propose as the moods of English the subjunctive, the conditional (with would and should), the compulsive (is to …), and the permissive (may). Considering modal auxiliaries and other expressions of attitude as moods in this way opens the door to many more such distinctions, Khlebnikova (xi) mentioning one author who proposes fifteen moods for English, another sixteen. Proposals of this sort make it obvious that it is not possible to distinguish the different moods of English – to determine what constitutes a grammatical mood as opposed to a lexical means of expressing something quite similar – without some criterion in the means of expression. Even distinguishing the imperative as a mood must be questioned on this basis, as we shall see later in this lesson. It seems then that the analysis proposed by Michael (435) for former centuries is applicable to the situation in contemporary studies: “Mood could not become a self-consistent category until the distinctions between form, syntax and meaning had been more clearly realised.” There is a problem of method here: grammarians are not applying the same “semantic and formal criteria.” In discussing his terminology, Visser (1966, 788) brings this out: “The terms mood, mode and modus are avoided in this study for the same reasons as ‘subjunctive’ and ‘indicative’: in some grammars they refer to the modality of the utterance, in others to the form of the verb, in others again to both.” Unfortunately,

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avoiding the terms does not avoid the problem regarding the verb, and certainly does not solve it. In an attempt to clarify this situation, we will first examine the “present” subjunctive, or to be more precise, the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive by recalling the means of expression (the formal criteria) that have permitted some grammarians to recognize a special use of the verb, distinct from both infinitive and indicative, and by describing what the subjunctive expresses, the semantic criteria. This will provide the opportunity for giving a sufficient number of attested examples to suggest the range of usage and justify the term ‘future-oriented,’ all of which will provide a test of the theory of the subjunctive presented previously. We will then examine the “past,” or rather, ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive. This will permit us to discern the problem of method at the basis of the present situation and propose a theory of the subjunctive in English based on clearer criteria. THE

‘FUTURE-ORIENTED’

SUBJUNCTIVE: FORMAL CRITERIA

The Inflexion of the Verb On the strict basis of the verb’s physical form, the only means of recognizing a verb (except to be) in the subjunctive is its use with a third person singular subject but no -s inflexion, as in: I demand that the committee reconsider its decision. (Quirk et al., 156) She insists that he take the eight o’clock train. (Huddleston and Pullum, 996) In the two grammars these are called “mandative” uses because the verbs in the main clause, demand and insist, express an event calling for the actualization of the event in the subordinate clause. This is probably the most common use of the subjunctive, arising both in oral and written discourse: If it is obligatory that a man pay … (heard during a business meeting) The only requirement of a radio amplifier is that it increase the signal level, without changing the character of the signal.1

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Here it is the notions expressed by obligatory and requirement that depict a condition bearing on the actualization of pay and increase respectively. In the following example condition implies a ‘mandative’ notion: The condition that the range of the quantifier include the present is closely connected with the question of the presuppositions of present perfects.2 Here condition represents a requirement for any quantifier if it is to fulfill a certain syntactic role. The expressive effect of the main clause may be only slightly ‘mandative,’ as in: “I don’t believe that anyone ever intended that he have to endure such …” (heard on TV ) Is it too much to expect that the school, at the very least, reflect the culture of the community it is located in?3 Here the notions of ‘intending’ and ‘expecting’ express little more than a desire for the actualization of have and reflect. The effect of the main clause may even be just the opposite of ‘mandative,’ as in: God forbid that he do so. (conversation) The notion ‘forbid’ calls for the non-actualization of the event of do. In this example forbid is an example of another use (sometimes called the optative) where the subjunctive is morphologically recognizable. This use arises in a main clause to express the wish that the subject actualize the event attributed to it. Other examples are: God grant it might be the last. (Visser 1966, 798) Heaven help him. (conversation) Thy kingdom come. God send the kitchen door be shut. (cited in Khlebnikova, 126) This use is very limited and considered in grammars to consist of “more or less established phrases” (Jespersen 1954, 7: 635) tending to become formulaic expressions. However the fact that such

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sentences arise in conversation and are readily understood with different verbs indicates that this use of the subjunctive is still alive. Examples involving inversion are also fairly rare: Come what may, we will go ahead with our plan. (Quirk et al., 157) Suffice it to say that we won. (Ibid.) Examples like the following indicate that even here the subjunctive cannot be considered to be a meaningless type of expression: The years had turned Sir Gregory into a man of portly habit; and as portly men do in moments of stress, he puffed. But, puff he never so shrewdly, he could not blow away that paragraph [in the newspaper announcing bad news].4 According to Huddleston and Pullum (1000) the use of the subjunctive in conditional or concessive clauses is “fairly rare” and “verges on the archaic,” as in: The inventor may, if he live in London, or visit that city, search the files of the Patent Office. (Zandvoort, 87) Though everyone desert you, I will not. (Ibid.) Again, however, there are uses like the following where the subjunctive is still felt to be a living form since alight contributes something to the expressive effect of the clause that other forms of the verb would not: For now had come that moment, that hesitation when dawn trembles and night pauses, when if a feather alight in the scale it will be weighed down.5 The ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive’s only other manifestation by means of the verb’s inflexion is with the verb to be. Here be rather than is can be found in each of the uses mentioned above; thus in a ‘mandative’ use: In a joint statement released May 6, the Anglican and Catholic bishops have asked the provincial government to ensure that existing closing laws are applied strictly but fairly, and

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that the number of retail establishments permitted to open on Sunday be kept to a minimum.6 in the optative use: Grammar be hanged! (Visser 1966, 798) in the use with inversion: Achieving the optimum blast design for a particular rock mass type, be it in mining or quarrying, can be an expensive and time-consuming procedure. (Huddleston and Pullum, 1001) Far be it from me to … and in a conditional clause: It meets with continuing hostility from those who see themselves as fostering and guarding serious art, whether it be in the theatre, in fiction, or on television. (Huddleston and Pullum, 1001) As we shall see in examples below, the same form of the verb, be, is found with all subjects regardless of their person. No “Backshifting” of Tense The second means of recognizing a verb in the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive is its capacity to situate the event without reference to the grammatically represented present. Hence, in examples where the main verb is in the past tense in order to situate its event before the present, the verb in the subjunctive imposes no such constraint on its event: I demanded that the committee reconsider its decision. She insisted that he take the eight o’clock train. There is nothing to indicate what moment the speaker had in mind for the events represented in the subjunctive: whether the ‘reconsidering’ was to take place as soon as the demand was made or at some later time, perhaps after the above sentence was uttered; whether for example he was to take the eight o’clock train yesterday or later today. All

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the subjunctive tells us is that reconsider and take situate their events somewhere in time after the place in the past occupied by demanded and insisted respectively. In the following example, on the other hand, the subjunctive situates its event even beyond the moment of writing: Miss Dorothy L. Sayers has passed to us your letter of June 22nd and has asked us to thank you for your suggestion that she come over to Holland to lecture next Autumn or Winter. (Zandvoort, 86) Here, the suggestion, made in the letter of June 22nd, concerns the actualization of come later in the year, after the moment of writing the sentence. In his chapter entitled “The Modally Marked Form (The ’Subjunctive’),” Visser (1966, 846–7) gives a large number of examples of this use “to give an idea of the spread of the construction in recent times.” Typical of these are the following: The Board of Agriculture has now issued instructions that special editions of the one-inch Ordnance Survey maps be supplied to the public. The Lord Chancellor put the motion that the House go into Committee on the Education Bill. The neatness with which he had arranged that she go with her brother. She urged that he write and accept the post. Among the examples Visser gives, several are described as “modally zero form”: Then Lin suggested we run over to the Troc for a few drinks. The Boches were very insistent that you return to the revue. On that Sunday morning, we had suggested that the two boys take their soccer ball down to the school. A motion … instructed the General Council to take all possible steps to ensure that British contributions to space communications remain under public ownership. Apparently what leads Visser to characterize run, return, take, and remain “modally zero” is the fact that they do not have a third person singular subject, and so the lack of -s ending is not an indication

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that they are “modally marked.” On the other hand, notwithstanding the lack of inflexional evidence, there is the evidence of no “backshifting,” of no constraint on the “plain form” situating an event in the past time-sphere. Furthermore he gives the following example where the parallelism of function between “marked” be sold and “zero” buy is manifest: It was she who suggested that it be sold and they buy a machine with which to make a living. Moreover the fact that he does not label the following example “modally zero” – perhaps an oversight – suggests that it is the way go situates its event with regard to the event in the main clause that leads him to categorize it as a subjunctive: Decency required that I go to see him. These considerations make it evident that, regardless of the inflexional evidence and the person of the subject, there is a syntactic possibility or function available to verbs in the subjunctive that is not available to verbs in the indicative. And if, as Visser and others claim, the use of the ‘mandative’ subjunctive is increasing, it will be important to see what this involves. But first we will complete our survey of how to recognize the subjunctive in usage. The subjunctive is occasionally found after so that, on condition that and lest when the verb in the main clause is in the past tense: Extraordinary precautions were taken so that no stranger be allowed in the city. (Huddleston and Pullum, 1000) Madame Claire agreed to this, on the condition that when she came for him again at six, she stay for half an hour. (Jespersen 1954, 7: 162) Loath though he was to encourage his employer in any way lest he get above himself, Joss was forced to drop a word of approval. (Visser 1966, 700) I was in mortal terror lest I drop one of my shoes. (Jespersen loc. cit.) Again we see that be allowed, stay, get, and drop depict events whose realization before the moment of speaking is seen, each in a

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different way, as a possibility: as an intended outcome (so that) of the precautions, as an outcome of a constraint on the agreeing (on condition that), as a possible outcome to be avoided (lest). Granted the capacity of the subjunctive to situate its event after the main verb but before the present of speech in this way, we can understand why Visser describes these as “futural presents,” and why Huddleston and Pullum (993) consider the subjunctive to be “tenseless.” Negation without Do Auxiliary The third characteristic of usage permitting the recognition of the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive is the capacity of forming a negative without do auxiliary, as in: It is very unusual that you have such reduced morphology and that this not create problems. (conversation) “It is in Joe’s best interests that he not attend,” Dr. Martin said. (reference lost) Here both -ø inflexion with a third person singular subject and negating the simple verb by means of not indicate that create and attend are in the subjunctive. In the following example, the ‘mandative’ notion in the main clause combined with do-less negation manifests that accept is in the subjunctive: It is vital that they not accept the offer without first taking legal advice. (Huddleston and Pullum, 994) Added to a ‘mandative’ notion and the means of negating is the setting of the main verb in the past without any “backshifting” in the subordinate clause: They insisted that we not eat meat. (Quirk et al., 157) All four manifestations are observable in the following example: The specialists’ prognosis was that she would die in coma or of bleeding. I prayed very hard that she not die in either of those ways but die if she must die, clear-eyed and aware.7

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The verb to be raises an interesting problem here since, except in imperative usage, it does not take auxiliary do to form a negative. The distinctive indication in the following example with the copula is of course the form be, but also the position of not: We are recommending that the distinction between a specialized and a general program not be a distinction between highstandard (honour) work and lower-standard (non-honour) work, and not be the same as the distinction between a four-year and a three-year degree program.8 In general, not precedes a verb in the subjunctive but follows the copula in the indicative. The same holds for the auxiliary of the passive: It is only natural that when, like while, not be found with verbs of never-changing state. (from a student’s paper) He had asked that they not be moved when he left the last time.9 Occasionally, however, not comes after be as in: It would be a pity if this need were not met, but it is essential that the part-timers be not in a large majority.10 … with the same proviso as was made above for entry into second-year specialist programs, namely, that Basic courses be not required in more than two subjects.11 … and thus afraid to speak up lest they be not heard or heeded. (newspaper article) Our examination of verb negation in a later lesson will throw some light on this variation of the position of not. This completes our examination of the three “formal criteria” permitting the recognition of the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive as opposed to the indicative. To recognize another mood that is often opposed in grammars to the indicative, the imperative, we can try the same tests. The first test, no -s inflexion, is not applicable since the imperative is not found with a third person subject. Only one verb in English, to be, has a distinct form for the imperative but this can hardly be considered a basis for saying that all verbs have an imperative mood. This may however be sufficient reason to consider

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that to be is formed as a subjunctive in imperative usage (like the imperative of the French verb être, ‘to be’). The second test, no tense “backshifting” after a main clause with a past tense, is not applicable either since the imperative is always the main verb in a sentence. The third test gives the same results as the indicative: every verb used in the imperative, even to be, forms its negative by means of do auxiliary: Don’t forget it. This is why, in these lessons, the imperative is not considered to be a separate mood. Rather, because of its expressive effect it is considered to be a particular way of using the nonpast indicative (and perhaps the subjunctive in the case of to be). THE

‘FUTURE-ORIENTED’

SUBJUNCTIVE: SEMANTIC CRITERIA

It remains to discuss the semantic criteria for discerning the subjunctive, a far more delicate task. Strictly speaking, the meaning expressed by the subjunctive is always dependent on the morphological and syntactic criteria already discussed, since some sign (even ø under certain conditions) or combination of signs is required to express meaning. Thus when a verb could be understood as either indicative or subjunctive, it is often the meaning expressed elsewhere in the context (by a ‘mandative’ verb for example), or even the situation, which indicates to the listener that the speaker has formed the verb in the subjunctive. So rather than “observing,” it is perhaps more precise to speak of “discerning” the subjunctive by what is expressed, since it is not recognized by what first strikes the reader or listener, the morphological and syntactic signs. We have seen that Visser classifies the example Decency required that I go to see him, not as “modally zero” but as “modally marked” (a subjunctive). Since I go in itself could be understood as either indicative or subjunctive, we are led to examine other elements in the sentence to find the reason for considering it a verb formed in the subjunctive. The main verb situates in the past a ‘mandative’ notion, a precondition, calling for the actualization of go. That is, because of its lexical import required situates at some subsequent moment in the past the actualization of go, not as a reality but merely as a possibility (perhaps I went, perhaps not). This of course calls for ‘go’ to be interpreted as a subjunctive, since a nonpast indicative verb cannot represent a possible event in the past time-sphere. Here then it appears to be the notional relationship perceived between the two

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events that leads a reader to interpret go as a subjunctive and that had prompted the writer to give it that mental form when constructing the sentence. This is apparently what Zandvoort (87) has in mind when he says “The opposition subjunctive – indicative may be felt potentially in other persons than the third singular if the conditions are otherwise the same.” He gives the following example: As we passed through Pevensey he suggested that we stop and have a look over the castle. Quirk et al. (157) discuss a case where the use of the subjunctive “depends on meaning”: She insists that he is guilty of fraud. We insist that he be admitted to hospital immediately. They point out that when insist “introduces an indirect statement, the indicative is used, but when it introduces an indirect directive, the subjunctive is more likely.” The contrast here is between representing the situation as “something to be perceived” and “something to be brought about,” as James (28) puts it. That is, because in the first example it has the sense of ‘assert,’ insists depicts the subordinate event as a reality existing at the same moment in time as the insisting, whereas in the second example insist with a ‘mandative’ sense depicts the subordinate event as a possibility to be realized at a subsequent moment (immediately in the example). As observers, we can check this by substituting insisted in these sentences: the indicative would require a past tense, was guilty, but the subjunctive would not change (no backshifting) because it has no inherent reference to the present. However the point I want to make is that the speaker forms the subordinate event, and the hearer interprets it not by a grammarian’s syntactic or morphological tests but according to the way it relates to the sense of the main verb, what Guillaume called the “viewing idea” because the speaker views the dependent event through it. Huddleston and Pullum (994f) discuss a similar case: The nuns insisted that their young ladies wear stockings. They point out that “wear … must be the plain form [the subjunctive] because if the subordinate verb were tensed [indicative] backshifting

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would be required.” They point out, however, that the example as it stands is ambiguous since it could be understood as “The nuns emphatically asserted it to be the case that their young ladies wear stockings.” In this interpretation of course, insisted would not have a ‘mandative’ sense since it would affirm as real the wearing of stockings and so wear would be in the indicative (cf. … that each young lady wears stockings). Taking insisted in a ‘mandative’ sense, on the other hand, would require the wearing to be actualized, not affirming it as real, and so wear would be in the subjunctive (cf. … that each young lady wear stockings). They mention (999) that suggest, it is important and a number of other verbs and adjectives can also express both ‘mandative’ and ‘non-mandative’ viewing ideas with the same effect of the verb in the subordinate clause. Thus they describe (996) the example: I suggest you go and see a doctor. as ‘mandative,’ because “I’m advocating compliance in a relatively tentative way.” From a temporal point of view, this implies evoking the other events as possibilities at a later moment and so go and see are in the subjunctive. On the other hand, the example: I suggest she doesn’t like us very much. is ‘non-mandative’ since “I put the proposition forward as something that may well be true” at the moment of speaking. This calls for representing the not liking in terms of present reality, and so the verb is in the indicative. Again the point I am making is that, in each of these cases, the speaker is aware of the relation between the two happenings and, through chronogenesis, forms the dependent event in consequence: in the indicative if the dependent event is viewed as a reality, in the subjunctive if it is viewed as a possibility. Thus for the speaker – and even for the grammarian in cases where the morphological and syntactic indications do not make it clear whether the subordinate verb is indicative or subjunctive – the meaning one attributes to insist, suggest, etc. provides the conditioning factor. That is, the temporal relationship between the two events, the viewing idea and the viewed idea, determines the mood. When the subordinate event is understood as coinciding in time with the main verb, it is formed with a tense of the indicative referring it to the present and situating it in the appropriate

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time-sphere. When the subordinate event’s actualization (or nonactualization) is understood as a possible consequence of the main event it is formed by the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive situating it in time at a later moment, i.e. referring it to the place of the main event, not to the present. These comments on the semantic criteria confirm traditional accounts of the subjunctive as the mood of possibility or potentiality, as opposed to the indicative, which is seen as the mood of reality or fact. Furthermore they take us back to the theory of mood proposed in lessons 3 and 4 in order to explain how the subjunctive can produce its characteristic expressive effects. THE ‘FUTURE-ORIENTED’ SUBJUNCTIVE: UNIVERSE TIME AND EXPRESSIVE EFFECTS

It will be recalled that the theory of mood is based on different ways of representing universe time during the operation of chronogenesis. It was proposed that the so-called “present” subjunctive depicts universe time as a boundless, unbroken stretch oriented toward the future. Any event situated in this time is seen as a possibility since it cannot be referred to the reality of a represented present. In each of the examples we examined above it was clear that the subjunctive situated its event with reference to the place of the event in the main clause, or, in the optative use, to the present of speech. This shows that the subjunctive is not “tenseless” since it does situate an event in time, and this is the defining characteristic of tense. On the other hand it also shows that the subjunctive is quite independent of the grammatical present, evidence that the time in which it situates its event, universe time, has no representation of the present and so must be an unbroken stretch. That is, tense in the subjunctive is not absolute as in the indicative, but relative – relative to the main verb’s place in time. And the fact that it situates its event beyond its point of reference in the direction of the future shows that this unbroken stretch of time is future-oriented. In this way, the evidence examined so far confirms the theory proposed and by the same token shows that the theory can explain both ‘mandative’ and other less common uses. We have yet to observe another fairly common use whose expressive effect is not, at least at first sight, ‘mandative.’ We can begin with an attested example:

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I would stress that people just be aware of the danger. What is interesting here is that the notion ‘stress’ is not primarily a ‘mandative’ notion, one calling for the actualization of an event. It is on the basis of attested examples like this that Huddleston and Pullum (1000) consider that the subjunctive’s “distribution is increasing.” Even less ‘mandative’ in effect is the main clause in the following: It is important for Jill’s welfare that she get the apple.12 Such roundabout scrutiny almost implies that children’s books be considered something less than literature.13 He is concerned that his reader learn the use of … 14 As in the previous example, the subjunctive in these examples situates the subordinate event in the aftermath of the main verb as something whose existence is desirable or at least to be expected even though the ideas of ‘stress,’ ‘importance,’ ‘implying’ and ‘concern’ do not entail bringing something into existence (in the same way ‘recommend’ or ‘demand’ do). It is the effect of the subjunctive’s future-oriented time that permits these viewing ideas to be interpreted in this way. The following example as it stands is ambiguous in this respect: It is in the public interest that all the universities of the Province have a clear idea of what their sister institutions are doing … 15 The viewing idea ‘in the public interest’ does not entail the actualization of something, and nothing else in the sentence indicates whether the subordinate verb have is in the indicative or the subjunctive. However, granted the whole context of the example – the report of a committee making recommendations – it is obvious to the reader that ‘having a clear idea’ depicts a possibility, an objective to be attained, not the present situation. That is, the writer situated have in the future-oriented time of the subjunctive, not the present-centred time of the indicative. In some cases the dependent event is situated in the offing of the main event simply as an outcome of it. It is logical that they be used for this purpose.16 It is appropriate that each of the tutors of the college be able to guide the students. (from a college bulletin)

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It is only natural that when, like while, not be found with verbs of never-changing state. (example given above) The scientist is as concerned as anyone with certain values to which I have referred … . It is a matter of professional responsibility, even narrowly construed, that he be so.17 Here the happening represented by the verb in the subjunctive exists at the moment of speaking, and so it is not a question in these examples of bringing it into existence. Rather the viewing ideas in the main clause do little more than depict one of the reasons or motives for the event’s existence, and this calls for adopting a mental position outside its existence, prior to it. That is, if ‘logical,’ ‘appropriate,’ ‘natural,’ ‘a matter of professional responsibility’ are seen as preconditions occupying the reality of the present, the outcome or consequence of these notions must be seen beyond it by virtue of the fact that a consequence always comes after its condition. This temporal relation between condition and consequence is perhaps more clearly expressed by the following examples: We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our civilisation. The essence of education is that it be religious.18 What must nature, including man, be like in order that science be possible at all?19 So it seems to make sense that a passenger do most of his travelling through U.S. airports.20 These sentences express something like ‘granted the nature of education, it follows that it must be religious’; ‘from what assumptions about the makeup of nature and man does it follow that science is possible’; ‘granted that it makes sense, it follows that … ’ Again we see that the relationship between the viewing idea in the main clause and the viewed idea in the subordinate clause calls for the subjunctive, whose relative tense refers to the main verb and not to the represented present, even though the happening it represents exists at the moment of speaking. This adopting of a mental position prior to an already existing happening is occasionally found when the precondition is negated, as in:

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There is no necessity that the human mind work in a given fashion. (conversation) It is not the mark of a wise man that he know many facts that few of us know. (college bulletin) In a similar way, we sometimes find the subjunctive with preconditions that bring out the unlikelihood of the event’s existence, even though it does exist: Isn’t it a precedent that this kind of disputed territory be administered by the U.N.?21 It is amazing that there be a garden here.22 Is it not dangerous that they be here? (reference lost) Although this type of use is fairly rare since it is more common to use an infinitive in such cases (for … to be), or even an indicative, these examples are of interest since they may be indications of the “increasing distribution” Huddleston and Pullum mention. In fact, the following pair, heard during the same conversation, indicate that there may be only a nuance of meaning separating the subjunctive and the indicative in this type of use: It is quite sufficient that there be some things that change. It is quite sufficient that there are some things that change. This contrasts with ‘mandative’ viewing ideas, where the distinction of meaning expressed by the two moods is often quite clear, as in: Congress … passed the following resolution: that the President be and is hereby requested to invite negotiations. (Jespersen 1954, 7: 161) With the subjunctive the requesting is represented as possible, while the indicative represents it as really carried out in a sort of performative usage coinciding with ‘passing the resolution.’ Finally, several ambiguous examples where the subjunctive event can be understood as representing either a happening yet-to-berealized or a happening existing at the moment of speech but seen as a consequence:

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… and it is a matter of equity that our staff and students be allowed to participate in … 23 … he does not even require that the “reinforcing stimulus” impinge on the responding organism; it is sufficient that it be hoped for or imagined.24 It is essential that we require that only a single symbol be rewritten in converting x to y.25 It may already be the case that ‘staff and students are allowed to participate,’ that ‘it is hoped for or imagined,’ that ‘we require’ and that ‘only a single symbol is rewritten.’ On the other hand it may be the case that at the moment of speaking none of these situations is yet actualized. A more complete knowledge of the context generally makes it clear which expressive effect the speaker has in mind. Whichever it is, we understand that the subjunctive situates its event after that of the viewing idea, be it beyond the moment of speech (calling for the subsequent actualization of its event) or in the notional chronology involved in the condition-consequence relationship. These examples suffice to show that the subjunctive is commonly found with ‘mandative’ viewing ideas but is also found with what might be called ‘judgmental’ ideas.26 In all cases it situates its event beyond the place of the viewing idea in time. This also applies to less frequent uses, as in a conditional clause: The agent also, ah, expressed himself willing, subject to higher consent, to supply Ricardo with quick-expiry documentation, George … In the event, George – an event not yet realized, you follow me – that Ricardo’s information prove to be of value … 27 or in a temporal clause: … until the event be complete. (from a personal letter) or as an optative: God love him. (conversation) As in more frequent uses, the reference is to a place in time beyond the moment in time from which the subjunctive event is viewed,

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and for the optative, beyond the speaker’s viewpoint in the present of speech. In our attempt to sort out the formal and semantic criteria for determining the mood of a verb, the most pertinent example given the above is the following, where we saw that have could be understood to be either in the subjunctive or in the indicative: It is in the public interest that all the universities of the Province have a clear idea of what their sister institutions are doing … Another example of this is: The saints preserve us. This could mean either ‘the saints habitually preserve us’ or ‘may the saints preserve us,’ two very different sentences, one a statement, the other an optative. In both examples the formal criteria are ambiguous, and in such cases, like the reader or listener, we depend on semantic criteria. We turn to the wider context (a report making recommendations) or the situation (the speaker confronting a difficulty) in an attempt to understand what the writer or speaker had in mind to express.28 The realization that have and preserve in these examples represent their event as a possibility permits the grammarianobserver to conclude that both are in the subjunctive. That is, when the signs do not indicate which meaning is being expressed, the observer has recourse to other means for discerning the speaker’s meaning. In each case the aim is to understand the meaning expressed by the verb in order to understand the sentence. A mood is therefore ultimately identified on the basis of the meaning expressed by the verb, but this meaning must lie within the range of what the sign can signify. This brings us back to the more general view of a grammatical form as a sign linked to a grammatical significate. Thanks to its position in the system of mood, the subjunctive has a potential meaning: universe time represented without the present. Identifying a subjunctive involves recognizing the meaning of a finite verb in a given sentence as expressing an event situated in “presentless” time. This is why it is essential for a grammarian to have the system of mood in mind when examining usage. We have seen that all the uses in our brief survey arise from a representation of universe time as an unbroken, boundless stretch

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ascending toward the future. Most of the above examples are taken from US and Canadian dialects, which are noted for a more frequent use of the subjunctive. Since, according to the grammars, usage varies from one dialect to another, this survey cannot be considered complete if only because an examination of different dialects of English is called for, a task that cannot be undertaken here. It remains for us to examine briefly the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive before turning to the question of methodology this lesson raises. THE

‘PAST-ORIENTED’

SUBJUNCTIVE

It has already been pointed out that the clearest evidence on the level of the signs for the existence of a ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive in contemporary English is found in cases involving inversion, as in: Were he to ask me, it would be different. In a conditional context with inversion it is not possible (at least in my dialect) to replace were with was, whereas in other contexts where were occurs with first or third person singular subjects was can generally replace it and in fact is far more common. Thus in examples like He returned in five minutes and announced that he would accept the throne only if it were offered to him by a constituent assembly.29 She looked as though she were fainting. (Zandvoort, 87) the morphological evidence indicates a subjunctive. On the other hand the fact that was in its ‘prospective’ usage (… if it was offered to him …) is more common in such uses with if and as though raises the question whether most speakers today make a distinction of meaning here, whether they interpret were here as a subjunctive. Replacing she by they in the last example (They looked as though they were fainting) would obliterate the morphological evidence, the distinction of sign between subjunctive and indicative, as in the last two examples discussed in the previous section. And as in those two examples, this should leave as though they were fainting ambiguous, open to two interpretations, if in fact speakers can still get a subjunctive reading from were here. However, there is only one interpretation of

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the sentence with a third person plural subject, not two, a fact suggesting that the past indicative in its ‘prospective’ usage is able to render much the same expressive effect as the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive. That is, with they there is neither semantic nor formal evidence permitting us to distinguish the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive, a situation quite different from that of the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive. This calls into question the use of were with first and third person singular subjects: should we conclude that were in examples like the above is an archaic sign (like thou) expressing an indicative? Or should we conclude that it is still a subjunctive situating its event in past-oriented time, but that this results in an expressive effect indistinguishable from that of the past indicative used to express a ‘prospective’ event? It may well be that different dialects, or even different speakers, have systematized this use of were differently. All that seems clear is that in cases of inversion, found with all subjects but only with auxiliaries and the copula, the distinction between ‘past-‘ and ‘future-oriented’ subjunctives is still attested both by form (Were he here, he would … vs Was he here?) and by meaning (Were they here they would … vs Were they here?). Thus in view of the conflicting evidence from other uses, we will examine only the use involving inversion, as in: There are other articles to which, did time permit, we might draw attention. (Curme, 327) Had I had any inkling of this, I would have acted differently. (Huddleston and Pullum, 753) The cabin pressure is automatically controlled. However, should it reduce, an oxygen mask will fall … (flight attendant’s announcement) Could he have cast himself in the part of Mr. Copthorne, the villain and apostate, he would not have attempted to run away from his captors. (Huddleston and Pullum, 970) Inversion here serves “as a marker of a conditional,” not an interrogative clause (cf. Could he have cast himself in the part of Mr. Copthorne?). That is, there is a difference between subjunctive and indicative insofar as meaning expressed is concerned. Where the interrogative clause would question the reality of the event, the subjunctive clause expresses ‘irrealis,’ the non-real (or highly unlikely) possibility of the event. Once again, when the

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morphological and syntactic evidence is ambiguous, the semantic evidence permits us to distinguish which mood is involved. In this respect, then, the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive resembles the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive: both represent their event as a possibility. Furthermore the fact that it presents its event as a condition of the main event, to give a “remote conditional” clause (Huddleston and Pullum, 753), is significant since it indicates that it depicts something in relation to the main clause. That is, like the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive, the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive situates its event in time by referring it not to the present, but to the place of the main clause event, a manifestation of the way universe time is represented in the subjunctive. Unlike the other subjunctive tense, however, the ‘pastoriented’ subjunctive in cases involving inversion situates its event prior to the main event, on the past side of it, as a precondition of it. Thus for example, the reducing of cabin pressure is envisaged as a remote possibility that, if actualized, would be followed by the falling of the oxygen mask. As in the ‘mandative’ and ‘judgmental’ uses discussed above, the subjunctive is involved in a condition-consequence scenario, but here it depicts the condition, not the consequence as in those uses of the ‘future-oriented’ subjunctive. It may well be that, where the ‘past-oriented’ subjunctive event does not express a condition of the main event, the distinction in sense expressed by subjunctive and indicative is lost (cf. I wish he were/was happier). In light of the representation of universe time proposed for each tense of the subjunctive there is nothing surprising in its syntactic manifestation: the tense situating its event in past-oriented universe time depicts its event on the past side of the moment it is referred to, just as the tense situating its event in future-oriented universe time depicts its event on the future side of the moment it is referred to. And since in both subjunctives universe time is represented as an unbroken horizon, not divided into time-spheres by the present limit, the moment referred to is not the present, a constant, but the event in the main clause, a variable differing from one sentence to another, so that in both ‘past-‘ and ‘futureoriented’ subjunctives the tense is relative. CONCLUSION

This completes our survey of the subjunctive. The uses examined support the theory of this mood and its tenses presented in the

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discussion of the system of mood: the subjunctive represents universe time as a boundless, undivided stretch that can be oriented either toward the past or toward the future. That is, the subjunctive can be discerned, but not defined, in terms of a set of inflexions or syntactic characteristics or of the expressive effect of a clause or an attitude of the speaker or in some combination of these observable features. The subjunctive mood is a grammatical category, a mental form imposed on the lexically represented event along with an aspect30 and a tense. It is an abstract representation of universe time permitting the situating of a particular event in time through one of its tenses with, as consequences, the different features of usage we have been observing. That is, the subjunctive is part of the mental conjugation of the verb where it is opposed to the quasi-nominal and the indicative. It is therefore part of the system of mood, which is itself part of the greater system of the verb. I insist on the need to view mood as a system because I want to show not only that this is what has been lacking in other approaches to mood in English, and at the basis of the conflicting views mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, but also the missing link in reaching a systemic view of the verb as a time word. One result of adopting a systemic point of view is the realization that mood, like aspect and tense, is a general form found in all verbs because a verb cannot have tense – cannot situate an event in universe time – if universe time is not represented. A very practical consequence of regarding the verb in this manner is that the observer will look for the mood of every verb; determining the verb’s mood will be part of the analysis of any verb, along with determining its aspect and tense. It will therefore no longer be possible to ignore mood when treating the verb in a grammar, or to reduce a mood to a matter of inflections or syntactic distinctions. On the contrary, these semiological features will be seen as manifestations of a position in the preconscious system of tongue and will incite observers to seek what motivates them, to wonder why, in the case of the subjunctive, there is no backshifting of tense, no -s inflexion, no auxiliary do when the verb is negated. We have already explained that there is no backshifting because, granted the representation of universe time in the subjunctive, tense is relative. On the same basis we will propose an explanation of the other formal criteria in lessons 9 and 11 on person and on do auxiliary. Only when viewed from a systemic point of view can such disparate

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and apparently unconnected bits of data be seen as evidence of an underlying coherence, the order of a grammatical system. Unless observed through a theory of the subjunctive – the word “theory” itself comes from a Greek root with the sense of ‘viewing’ – the data of discourse remains disorderly and no understanding ensues. As Valin (1996b) demonstrates clearly, a theory provides a mental lens for viewing data, and this, I insist, is what is lacking in former approaches to mood in English. To illustrate this I want to draw a parallel with a similar situation in another science. Gerald Holton (83–9) tells the story of the first two men who, in 1609, looked at the moon through a telescope. Thomas Harriot’s sketch of what he saw shows a jagged line dividing the dark area from the illuminated area, but he “didn’t know, and he made no comment on, why it was a jagged line.” Some four months later Galileo began observing the moon and interpreted the jags in the dividing line as mountains and craters on the surface of the moon. What was it “that gave Galileo and Harriot such different eyes initially, when they first observed the same object”? Part of the answer lies in the theory through which they viewed what they saw, the Aristotelian or the Copernican worldview. Harriot “saw, but the current theories of the moon’s perfection made it difficult for him to understand what he saw.” Galileo on the other hand showed a “greater readiness to consider a Copernican universe, in which planets and satellites can all be similar.” A year later, after reading Galileo’s book, Harriot observed the moon once again. “Having been converted to a new way of looking, having abandoned his old presuppositions, he now saw something quite different in the same old moon.” Holton concludes: “This case was an exemplar of scientific research: hard data plus solid skills of mathematics and praxis, plus theoretical preconceptions, all working together in the theatre of the mind. And in this mix, the visual imagination has often been crucial.” The point I want to make here is obviously not that a grammarianlinguist needs skills in mathematics. In the study of psychosystems, psychosystemics as Guillaume calls it, the “solid skills” required are those of observing differences, sometimes quite subtle differences, in the means of expression and the sense expressed. For example, as noted above, insist in its ‘mandative’ sense takes a dependent event represented as a possibility, but in its ‘assertive’ sense a dependent event represented as a reality. Hitherto many grammarians and linguists have had “different eyes” in observing such uses and, content

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with understanding the meaning of the sentence, have either not been aware of, or simply ignored, these distinctions of word meaning, these data. Being able to discern these distinctions of sense was however just the first step; they had then to be related to the inflexional and syntactic differences observed. This called for abandoning “old preconceptions” concerning mood and viewing the semantic and formal data in light of new “theoretical preconceptions.” Guillaume’s theory permitted us to interpret the difference between the two types of event dependent on viewing ideas like insist in grammatical terms: we visualized two different ways of representing universe time that would give rise to the observed expressive effects and so were able to explain the difference in terms of mood, in terms of the way time is represented. Finally in this process of trying to understand, Holton brings out the importance of the “visual imagination” to grasp the abstract relations involved. The diagrams used here are a means of making what is imagined visible to others. It is therefore of crucial importance to be aware of one’s preconceived ideas concerning language, and more particularly concerning the word, when observing language. To make sense out of the data it is necessary to examine the presuppositions with which we approach the object of observation and ensure that they are solidly founded, that they are “theoretical preconceptions” whose bases are explicit and justifiable. This is particularly important in English for observing mood since, as a necessary ingredient of a verb in all its uses, its visible markings have been reduced to a minimum, so that, lacking a theory of mood based on a representation of time, an observer may well see the irregularities, the jags in the morphology and syntax proper to each mood, but will not be able to understand and explain them. By the same token, this highlights the importance of Guillaume’s contribution in proposing a theory of mood as a temporal component of a time word, the first such theory to be proposed.

LESSON NINE

Person in the Verb

THE PROBLEM

In the previous four lessons we have examined the temporal makeup of the simple form in the indicative and subjunctive moods, its representations of event time and universe time that are combined to make a “time word” in order to designate something in the speaker’s intended message as a happening. Although this is the distinguishing characteristic of a verb as a species of word, it must also assume a syntactic role in the sentence, and in the case of a finite verb this is always the role of predicating its meaning of the subject, which represents the spatial entity or setting in the speaker’s intended message supporting the happening represented by the verb. That is, the subject is the verb’s external spatial support,1 the non-temporal support outside the verb to which the verb’s import is made incident. It is traditional to consider that this applying of the predicate – the verb with its object, adverbs, etc. – to the subject is effected by the category of person. And so grammars point out that the verb agrees with its subject in person, that it is conjugated in the “first person” (the one speaking), the “second person” (the one spoken to), the “third person” (the one or the thing spoken of), an order imposed by the speaking relationship. This threefold category of person is clearly manifested within the verb in Latin, where inflexions correspond to six different ways of representing the spatial support to which the import of the verb is applied. Thus the six endings of a typical verb – amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant – represent respectively the three ordinal persons, each in two versions, “singular” and “plural.” The fact

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that these distinctions are expressed by similar inflexions in the different tenses of the indicative and the subjunctive is a clear indication that person is represented in this way within the verb in Latin. The role of person as a spatial support for the verb is brought out by the fact that the Latin verb can be used as such, without any explicit pronoun subject. That is, amo, amas, etc. on their own express both subject and verb, whereas we must translate each of these forms with two words – I love, you love, etc. This suggests that the relation of predication can be established within the verb in Latin but not in English, where a representation of the support person outside the verb is required.2 This is a clear indication of some general difference in representing person within the verb and so points to the problem confronting us.3 In contemporary English little evidence is provided by inflexions. In fact, the only ending linked with person in the verb is -s, usually considered to signify ‘third person singular.’ On this basis it is often assumed that the verb in English, like the verb in Latin and some other languages, agrees with its subject: “As is well known, English has a rule of person-number agreement whereby a verb has to agree in person and number with the np (Noun Phrase) immediately preceding it” (cited in Reid 1991, 191). The status of -s is, however, quite different from that of the Latin -t. As just noted, amat makes sense on its own, but not loves, without an appropriate representation of ordinal person outside the verb in a subject. Furthermore, unlike the Latin inflexions, the -s inflexion is not found in the subjunctive mood or in the past tense of the indicative,4 and even in the nonpast tense it is absent from the modal auxiliaries. Moreover, outside of be,5 there are no inflexions for first and second persons in English, and this poses a dilemma for the traditional interpretation, which considers that intra-verbal person is a threefold system, that the verb itself is conjugated for first, second, and third persons. The fact that there is no indication on the level of the signs of a system of that nature constitutes a fundamental objection to this interpretation. To counter this objection, could it be proposed that ordinal person in the English verb is a binary system, as expressed by the opposition on the level of the signs between -s and -ø? There are other such binary systems in English, that of tense in the indicative as expressed by -ed vs -ø, for example, or that of number in the substantive, expressed by -ø vs -s. This proposal for the verb, however,

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would raise a serious difficulty: if -s is the sign of ‘third person singular nonpast indicative non-modal’ then -ø is the sign of everything else – third person plural, first person and second persons both singular and plural in all finite verbs, as well as third person singular in the past tense and in the subjunctive and even in the nonpast modal auxiliaries. Attributing such a variety of meanings to the same sign, -ø, would presuppose that they are all derived, as actual meanings, from one potential meaning, but it would be difficult to imagine a position in the system of ordinal person that could give rise to a potential meaning permitting all of them. Besides, we shall see that there are other, less frequent uses of the -s inflexion with first and second person subjects. All this leads one to question the usual interpretation of -s as simply a person marker governed by some sort of agreement rule. And since this inflexion is the sole basis for assuming that each finite verb expresses a position in the ternary system, we are led to call into question the very idea that the finite verb in English is conjugated for ordinal person. Are we justified in thinking that the verb is conjugated for first, second, third person because it takes as a subject some noun or pronoun involving ordinal person? Could it be that this traditional view of the verb has been unjustifiably imported from the Latin grammarians? Is ordinal person still a category of the verb in contemporary English? In order to discern the status of person as a category in the verb, we will first glance at the notion of ‘person’ itself and its manifestations in the pronoun and the substantive. PERSON AS A GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY

The term person calls for a comment. It is of course used here not in the sense of ‘a human being’ but rather to designate a grammatical category. It derives from the Latin persona meaning ‘mask,’ i.e. what actors wore in classical theatre to indicate their roles. Thus in speaking of first person as the one speaking, second person as the one spoken to, and third person as the one or the thing spoken of, grammarians have understood the different roles assumed by the subject (or object, etc., if the pronoun has another function in the sentence). However since only human beings (or personified nonhumans) speak or are spoken to, there is a danger of confusing the two senses of person here, and thinking that the personal pronouns

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constitute a grammatical system for representing human beings.6 In fact their role is to express ordinal person, i.e. grammatical person distinguished for its rank or order in the speaking relationship momentarily established by a given act of speech. This can be seen by contrasting personal pronouns like I, you, and she with other pronouns like this, some, and both. The latter can express only one rank, third person, designating what is spoken of, be it human or not. Personal pronouns (except you and it) also differ in expressing a distinction between the function of subject and other functions: I vs me, he vs him, etc. To make it clear that it is grammatical person, not human person, that is represented in all pronouns and substantives, the equivalent expressions “spatial support” and “support person” will be used here whenever useful. These expressions have a further advantage, that of stating explicitly the constant function of the category of person, namely providing an abstract representation of space as a support to be characterized by an import of meaning. One of the best illustrations of person playing its syntactic function of support is, as we have seen in the previous section, when it provides a support in the subject for the meaning import of the predicate. This establishing of a relation between predicate and subject is also a good example of the dynamics of syntax, which always involves relating the meaning of one word or phrase to the meaning of another. This mental operation, which is undertaken whenever a syntactic link is established in constructing a sentence, is called incidence because it always involves an import of meaning being made incident7 to, being made to “fall upon,” a support. We are familiar with the incidence of an adjective to its support: in a big apple, for example, big is often said to “modify” or “describe” the substantive because its lexical import is made incident to the lexical support, the lexeme, of apple. When the verb is made incident to the subject, however, the result is not quite the same. In The boy ate the apple, the predicate is not said to “modify” the subject but to attribute an event, some activity or state, to the boy, i.e. to the spatial support provided by the noun phrase. There is, however, more than this involved because in the resulting sentence we understand the subject to be the agent, or at least the setting, of the event’s accomplishment. That is to say, besides attributing an event to the subject, the verb situates the person of the subject in time as the support of the event’s coming into being at that moment. There

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are of course other ways an operation of incidence can be carried out, one of which we shall see when we come to examine verb compounds.8 The point being made here is that person, whether in the pronoun, the substantive, or the verb, will be considered as the grammatical representation of a spatial support to which an import can be made incident. Insofar as the personal pronouns are concerned, the interesting thing about looking at person as a support for meaning is that it suggests something constant behind the various “masks,” some basic spatial support actualizable in different persons. Guillaume made the point that lying behind each of the ordinal persons is the subject of discourse.9 He pointed out that I designates not only the speaker but also the individual being talked of, and you (as a subject pronoun) designates not only the one(s) spoken to but also the one(s) being talked of. Likewise, he, she, and it (as subject pronouns) designate some individual or thing outside the speaking relationship (neither the one speaking nor the one(s)spoken to) as well as who or what is being spoken of. That is, each one of these subject pronouns expresses not only ordinal person but also a sort of basic person, a spatial configuration common to all subjects (pronouns or noun phrases) since all subjects depict what is spoken about. This person common to all subjects consists of an abstract grammatical representation of the space occupied by whatever the speaker has in mind to talk about as the subject of a sentence. Guillaume calls this constant, basic configuration of the spatial support cardinal person, a term that brings out the contrast with ordinal person and its different ranks or “masks” portraying the momentary role played by cardinal person in the speaking relationship. A few examples will perhaps help to make this abstract notion of person more understandable. Every subject can be classified according to its place in the speaking relationship established by the sentence. Thus in I see and You need rest the subjects represent different positions within that relationship, whereas in The books were on the table and Time flies the subjects represent positions outside it. Notwithstanding this difference, the four subjects, and the infinity of other possible subjects, all represent something in the speaker’s intended message, something the speaker wants to talk about. All the possible things one may wish to talk about, varied though they may be, have this in common: they necessarily occupy a place in the speaker’s momentary experience. (We cannot

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talk about something we are not aware of at the moment of speaking.) This place, the space occupied but not what occupies it, is represented by cardinal person. As such, cardinal person is one of the most general and most abstract of language entities, one that cannot appear on its own but only as a spatial support for something else. In summary then, ordinal person represents a variable of the subject, its place with regard to the speaking relationship, whereas cardinal person represents a constant, the place in the intended message occupied by whatever is depicted by the subject noun phrase. This basic distinction between ordinal and cardinal person, which remains to be developed further in a study of the noun phrase, will throw light on our main concern in this lesson, the relation between verb and subject, and help bring out what permits the subject to relate the sentence, once it is constituted, to its referent. PERSON IN THE VERB: A HYPOTHESIS

It should now be clearer why a verb requires the representation of person. A necessary condition for even thinking a happening is to have someone or something occasioning it, or at least providing a spatial setting for it. (To take obvious examples, we can never imagine running or being ill or being photographed as happenings without someone or something running or being ill or being photographed.) This spatial entity or setting supporting a happening finds a purely formal configuration within the verb itself, a grammatical representation as person. In the indicative, this intra-verbal person is positioned with regard to the event, and then situated with the event in time, in the past or in the nonpast wherever the span of event time is located, as the support of the event’s accomplishment (real or prospective) at that moment. Confronted with the fact that there is no morphological or syntactic evidence that the verb is represented with an intra-verbal spatial support (as opposed to the subject, the extra-verbal support) in the form of either first or second person, it is difficult to adhere to the idea of a full personal conjugation for the verb. But if these two persons are not represented, can one imagine a system limited to third person? And this only sporadically expressed by -s? Since person is an inherent part of the system, the question is: how is it represented in the English verb?

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Guillaume observed that in French the subject, and particularly a subject pronoun, always makes ordinal person explicit outside the verb, but he also saw clearly that retaining some representation of person within the verb was required for representing the lexeme as a temporal entity, to provide a spatial support for the event. And so he concluded that since Latin there has been an historical tendency to export the expression of ordinal person from the verb to the subject. That is, since ordinal person need not be represented within the verb, it tends to be represented just in the subject, leaving the verb with only what is “necessary and sufficient” for a time word.10 Considered in this light, it would seem that English has carried the historical tendency even further than French. The reduction of inflexions and the inconsistent role of -s in expressing ‘third person singular’ provide a sufficient basis for proposing that person as represented within the English verb has been reduced historically to a minimum, to what underlies the three ordinal persons. What is fundamental to all ordinal persons – first, second, and third – is a representation of the space occupied by what is being talked about, i.e. cardinal person, which depicts a stretch of space in the intended message but does not situate it with regard to the speaking relationship. Hypothesizing in this way that intra-verbal person in English has been reduced to cardinal person would permit us to explain why there is no personal ending in the subjunctive or in the past tense of the indicative or in most of the nonpast tense: they all incorporate the same edition of intra-verbal person, a spatial support with no distinction of ordinal person. Our hypothesis thus reflects the morphology of all verb forms in English except those with the -s inflexion. THE

-S

INFLEXION AND AGREEMENT

To deal with the -s inflexion we will first examine cases of usage where the widely accepted rule of agreement does not apply. Two studies give a good selection of examples of this phenomenon, sometimes called “discord,” Juul drawing on British usage and Reid (1991) drawing on US usage. Grammar books often mention this type of usage as the effect of a “collective” substantive, as in: We, therefore, decided from the day we took office, that the strength of the nation must come first, that when its strength

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was assured then, and only then, could we let up, and that this people are mature enough, when the final choice has to be made, to recognize this. (Juul, 36) It is usually pointed out that this apparent discord between the subject this people and the verb are arises with substantives designating a group when the speaker wants to bring out the multiple individuals rather than the single group. Here, then, the expressive effect is that the persons are themselves mature enough, whereas with is the sentence would attribute the maturity to the national group as a whole. Similarly for the notion of ‘company’ in: This company are superbly managed and their products will continue to be in great demand. (Juul, 85) Juul presents a large number of examples of this type but makes little attempt to explain them. Reid (1991, 210ff) not only presents a number of uses of collectives, as in the following example, but discusses them to provide an explanation: Hence departments on different campuses associated with particular disciplines often resemble one another in the way the faculty organizes its work, the methods of training students, and the curriculum. Some believe that faculty have less reason for involvement in university business because they play very different roles on campus, have different sets of interests, and are more preoccupied by individual professional pursuits. He brings out the respective expressive effects here as follows (212): “the notion ‘faculty’ is categorized as one (by both organizes and its) as part of a message about the way whole departments resemble each other, while categorized as more than one (by both have and they) as part of a message about the way individual faculty members differ from each other.” Leaving aside for the moment the suggestion that it is the verb or pronoun that “categorizes” the substantive’s notion for number, one can appreciate how well the expressive effects are brought out here. Reid discusses a number of similar examples in this way, all of which provide evidence for his claim that a given verb form is

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used, not because of an agreement rule, but to express what the speaker has in mind: “to characterize and distinguish the intended message” (369). This claim finds even stronger support in other cases involving two verbs, one with -s, the other without it, but where the noun phrase subject is not repeated before the second verb, as in the following example (238f): The Copenhagen school, and particularly Hjelmslev’s glossematics, is generally very poorly known in this country, and thus, no doubt, deserve a volume of their own. Reid pertinently remarks that “the message the writer wishes to convey touches first on the unitary and then on the composite nature of the ‘school’” because ‘being poorly known’ applies to the school as a whole whereas a volume would reflect the views of different scholars. He concludes: “the notion ‘school’ undergoes a transformation as the Occurrence [= event] shifts from one that highlights its unitary aspect to one that highlights its collective aspect.” Another example of the same thing is given by Juul (102): The company market Vogue and Butterick paper patterns and, in addition, through a subsidiary markets sports wear. Market gives us the impression of individuals in the company accomplishing the event whereas markets indicates that the company as a unit, probably by some legal arrangement, operates through the subsidiary. Again we see that the role of the verb form is to “characterize and distinguish,” to represent and express, the speaker’s intended message. Since the notion of rule-governed agreement is so widespread, it is worth giving other examples to show that what the verb form expresses corresponds to something in the intended message and not to the grammatical number of the subject. There are cases of collectives where both options are not possible. Juul (105) points out that, although committee is a collective, consist would not be possible in: The committee at present consists of 10 educationists closely involved in different aspects of modern teaching methods.

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Because of its sense ‘composed of,’ the verb requires as a support a single entity. The contrary case arises with group in another example from Juul (105): Another group, mostly extroverts, brush their teeth in the hope they will be bright and shiny. Brushes (and its) would not be possible because the event of brushing teeth can only be carried out by individuals, and so the verb calls for a multiple support. Similarly for the following two examples from Reid (1991, 213): in the first, the speaker, introducing the persons involved, experiences them as individual parts of a whole: This afternoon our panel are three male singers. On the other hand, viewing the group as a whole does not call for a support for the verb that distinguishes the individuals, as in: Our panel of opera experts today is certainly a lively one. A final example of collectives is provided by the title of a book dealing with an ethnic group in Canada: How a People Die. The effect of representing the verb’s support as multiple is to suggest the group expiring one by one. With dies the title would have suggested rather the disappearance of a single entity, the group itself. It is perhaps more common to find this so-called “discord” between verb and subject in uses involving quantifiers like the following: The last few years has seen the advent of enclosed antique supermarkets. (Juul, 145) The expressive effect here is that of a single period of time, whereas in The last few years have seen the creation of an ever increasing army of enthusiasts. (ibid.) the suggestion is that of a gradual creation over successive phases. Again, assuming the speaker views the verb’s support to be unitary (has seen) or multiple (have seen) would explain this difference. Subjects containing a quantifier often offer this

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double possibility because one can bring out the individual units or the resulting total, as in the following ad: Two drops deodorizes anything in your house. (Reid 1991, 194) In the next example, however, are as an alternative is hardly possible: Raising the school leaving age is the first priority, absorbing nearly half the extra money in the first two years. Extra teachers is the next major item. (Juul, 159) The expressive effect is ‘the hiring of extra teachers,’ indicating that the speaker has perceived the extra teachers not as individuals but as a whole, as an item in the budget, and so the verb requires a support grouping the individuals involved in a single space. One of the clearest examples of how the verb conforms to the way the speaker conceives the entity or entities referred to by the subject is provided by the following pair: Bread and butter is nourishing. Bread and butter are nourishing. Conceiving bread and butter as a piece of bread with butter on it calls for representing the verb’s support as unitary, a single thing, hence is. Conceiving bread and butter as two different foodstuffs calls for representing its support as binary, hence are. In like manner, because the notions of two ‘plural’ substantives can “form one conception,” as Jespersen (1933/1966, 217) puts it, the support of is is represented as unitary in: Galloping horses and thousands of cattle is not necessary to cinema; I call that photography. (Reid 1991, 194) Juul (184) gives the following example from an ad in a periodical: The Games Parks, the palm-fringed beaches and the immense business potential of East Africa is now less than half-a-day from London. The writer clearly perceived the various attractions of East Africa as a single entity, a sort of package deal. Juul remarks that in a later number of the periodical the verb had been changed to are.

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This brief survey,11 which is representative of many other examples in the two studies, thus provides evidence that the presence or absence of -s in the verb is not determined by agreement with the grammatical makeup of the subject but by what the speaker wants to express, as Reid maintains. His study is much in the same line as the present lessons since, being based on a Saussurean approach, it aims at describing what the respective signs -s and -ø signify. He characterizes these meanings as ‘one’ and ‘more than one’ respectively. Having dispensed with agreement rules, Reid proposes that these meanings constitute a “Focus Number System” for the verb that permits you “to make your linguistic choices so as to reflect what you have to say” (1991, 197), a conclusion based on one of the “general principles of language … the goal-directed relation between meaning and message” (174). That is, the meanings expressed by -ø and -s help “to characterize and distinguish the intended message” (369). This is very similar to the approach adopted here, where, I have maintained, meaning represents what the speaker has in mind, the intended message, and is oriented toward constituting the resulting message drawn from what the sentence expresses. Both approaches are therefore concerned with what the grammatical morphology of the verb contributes to the meaning of the sentence. Where the two approaches differ, however, is the way they envisage the Saussurean concept of tongue as a system. Guillaume viewed tongue as a system of systems, each of the parts of speech, including the verb, constituting a system in its grammatical makeup. Proposing as part of the verb’s grammatical makeup a “focus number system” to explain the above uses would then entail examining all the other uses of the finite verb to see how the proposed number system functions there. This would raise the problem of explaining why there is no evidence of this number system in the modal auxiliaries or in the past tense or in the subjunctive (see the next section for this discussion). That is, from a systemic point of view, the fact that the proposed “focus number system” is apparently not operative in other uses of the verb remains to be explained. From the same systemic point of view, there is also a difficulty in the suggestion that it is not the substantive’s own number morpheme but a verb or a pronoun that “categorizes” the substantive’s notion for grammatical number (cf. the faculty example above).

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Reid’s suggestion, arising from adopting the hearer’s point of view, indicates the clues available to the hearer for interpreting how the speaker represented the notion ‘faculty.’ Adopting, as always in Guillaume’s approach, the speaker’s point of view and assuming that the substantive also constitutes a system, it seems obvious that the substantive’s notion is categorized by its own number system, and not by that of another word, as in the example where is has as subject galloping horses and thousands of cattle. Moreover, where the subject is not repeated before the second verb, as in the Copenhagen school example, it would appear contradictory to say that the same substantive is categorized grammatically as both ‘one’ and ‘more than one’ by different verbs. If then it is not the verb that determines the number of the subject and not the subject that determines the number of the verb – this seems obvious in cases where both -s and -ø verbs take the same subject – what is the relation between the verb and its subject? We will explore this problem on the basis of Reid’s crucial observation that the verb through -ø and -s characterizes something in the intended message. The first step will be to bring out what permits the verb to do this. Our view of the verb as a system led us to attribute the representing of different spatial impressions in the intended message to person, which is generally accepted by grammarians as a component of the verb. Granted the small number of verb inflexions, it was proposed above that intra-verbal person, a morpheme found in all verbs because it represents the spatial support of the event, has been reduced in English to cardinal person. As a consequence, it is the way cardinal person represents the space occupied by what is being talked about that determines whether or not the verb takes an -s in the examples just examined. That is, the hypothesis presented in the preceding section would lead us to explain the observed expressive effects in terms of the verb’s cardinal person, which represents the event’s spatial support in the intended message as ‘one,’ or better ‘continuate,’ in the case of a verb with -s and as ‘more than one,’ or better ‘discontinuate,’ in the case of a -ø verb.12 Thus the system of the substantive determines the number of bread and of butter in the above examples, while cardinal person in is represents the space these entities occupy as ‘continuate,’ in are as ‘discontinuate.’ And in sentences where -ø and -s verbs are found with the same subject, it can be seen that the speaker’s impression of the

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entity represented by the subject changes as the sentence construction progresses (cf. the expressive effects of the Copenhagen school and company examples described above). From all this it can be concluded that, although person in the verb represents the space occupied by the same entity as person in the subject, we can hardly speak of “agreement” here, since this term usually designates a relation between inflexional forms signifying the same grammatical categories and not a relation established by representing the same space in the intended message. As a consequence, it is only for certain grammarians that uses like Results is what I want! break an agreement rule, because in the eyes of the speaker the meaning expressed by the noun phrase subject and that expressed by the verb are quite coherent. This view of the relation between a verb and its subject can thus explain the various examples of apparent discord observed so far, as well as the far more numerous cases where grammarians consider that the formal rule is not broken. It remains to examine the problem posed by the fact that the -s/-ø opposition is restricted to the nonpast of the indicative. THE -S INFLEXION AND THE SYSTEMICS OF THE VERB

The hypothesis that the verb in contemporary English is not conjugated for ordinal person is based on the observable fact that there is nothing in the semiology of the verb to indicate that it is. Although the -s inflexion is closely linked with the third person singular, it cannot be considered simply a sign for a particular position in the system of ordinal person, like the -mus of Latin or the -ez of French, since its use is also conditioned by other factors: by type of verb (cf. he will vs he wills), by mood (cf. Heaven help us vs Heaven helps us), by time-sphere (cf. it cut vs it cuts). This brings into focus the rest of the problem here: to describe the meaning of -s permitting it to establish contrasts like these. The most fully developed explanation of its role is provided by Duffley (1996/1997), building on work done by Hewson and Joly, and the following comments are based largely on these studies, and particularly the latest. Joly (1973) points out that the third person signified by -s occupies a position outside the speaker-listener relationship instituted by the act of speech. Hewson (1975) brings out

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an interesting parallel between the three most frequent uses of the suffix -s in English. As a sign of the ‘plural’ in the substantive it expresses a discontinuate view of space obtained by going beyond the continuate view of space found in the ‘singular.’ As a sign of ‘possession’ in the noun phrase, the -s expresses for the entity possessed a position in space closely related to, but distinct from, that occupied by the possessor. And as an inflexion of the verb evoking third person: “Third person is the one who is not present: neither speaker nor listener but the one outside or beyond the speaker-listener relationship” (Hewson 1975, 87). Thus, in the system of ordinal person, third person occupies a position outside that established by first and second persons, and this is expressed by the -s inflexion. Duffley endorses this view but points out that it should be completed by a discussion of where the -s inflexion does not appear. He makes an important distinction in observing that the verb inflexion declares the intra-verbal support of the event – its cardinal person, in the hypothesis proposed above – to be outside the speaking relationship, but not outside the present of speech. As a consequence, the -s expresses not a temporal but a spatial exteriority, so that the event’s spatial support is situated beyond the speaker-listener relationship but within the time when this relationship is operative. For example in He wants more time, person within the verb is excluded from the speaking relationship but included in the present of speech so that when the verb is made incident to its external spatial support, the person of the subject can be seen sustaining the state ‘wants’ in the nonpast. That is, -s appears to express the spatial absence and temporal presence of the person of the verb. It follows that when the event, with its internal spatial support, is located by means of tense in the past time-stretch, as in She looked tired, there is no inflexion other than that of tense because its spatial support, cardinal person, is seen outside the nonpast and so temporally absent from the speaking relationship, which, obviously, can exist only in the present, during the act of speech. The sequence of operations involved here can be followed in light of the analysis of preceding lessons. By means of the system of aspect, the event time is first represented with its spatial support, a representation provided by cardinal person of the space occupied by what is being talked about. Once universe time has been represented by means of mood, the event with its spatial support is situated in time by means of tense. If it is the past tense of the indicative indicated by -ed, the spatial support’s

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exclusion from the nonpast, where the speaker-listener relationship is located, entails its spatial absence and so no *-eds is found. This helps us understand why the -s inflexion is tied not only to the third person but also to the nonpast time-sphere. For a similar reason, a verb in the subjunctive mood takes no -s inflexion. It will be recalled that in the subjunctive the horizon of universe time is configured as an unbroken stretch with no representation of the present. Since an event with its internal spatial support located on this horizon cannot, by definition, be situated in relation to the present limit, its support person cannot be situated in the nonpast and therefore is temporally absent from the speaking relationship. As in the past tense of the indicative mood, a third person subject of a verb in the subjunctive is both spatially and temporally absent and so cannot be seen functioning as subject in the time-stretch when the speaking relationship is operative. This shows why the -s inflexion is tied to the indicative mood. Likewise for the modal auxiliaries in the nonpast tense. Their spatial support does not situate an event in the present of speech, but merely a “state of potentiality for the real existence of the event expressed by the infinitive” (Duffley 1996/1997, 71). That is, the lexical import of the modals is “incapable of evoking real-world happenings” and so situates the subject “outside the sphere of reality” insofar as the event is concerned. Unlike other verbs, the modal auxiliaries keep the spatial support of the infinitive absent from the reality of the nonpast and so cannot depict a third person subject (or any other subject, for that matter) as operative with regard to the event in its span of universe time. As a consequence, even though the subject is situated in time at the moment when the speaking relationship is operative, i.e. in the present of speech as in He may leave tomorrow, it is not represented as a support for the infinitive event’s accomplishment at that moment, and so the -s inflexion is never found with these auxiliaries. This has been demonstrated in some detail in Duffley (1994), where it is shown that the determining factor for the occurrence of -s inflexion with the quasi-modals need and dare is precisely in their use as full verbs representing the ‘needing’ and ‘daring’ as “realities” (events in themselves), whereas its non-occurrence results from their use as modal auxiliaries representing ‘needing’ and ‘daring’ “as necessities or possibilities” of other events. Thus the -s inflexion is also tied to the accomplishment, actual or prospective, of the event.

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It appears then that the -s depicts a support person outside the speaking relationship but positioned where it can function as subject in the nonpast, absent spatially from the speaking relationship but present temporally. This hypothesis finds confirmation in a far less common use of -s in the historic present. As Quirk et al. (1457) remark, “In nonstandard speech, the reporting verb in narrative is often in the historic present”; for example: “Where did you put my coat?” he says. “I never touched it,” I says. What interests us here is the use of -s with a first person subject, a relatively rare use to make a narrative in the historic present even more vivid. As Joly (1973, 16) points out, such examples bring out clearly the distinction, within the first person subject, between the person spoken of (cardinal person) and the person speaking (ordinal person). To understand this, we can recall that when an event is represented in the past, the person spoken of is temporally absent from the speaking relationship. By means of the ‘historic’ use of the nonpast tense, however, the event is represented as though it were contemporary with the act of speech, so the -s occurs with he and is usually omitted with I. That is, because the event’s spatial support, its cardinal person, has been situated in the present of speech through the ‘historic’ use, the temporal distance between the ordinal person of the subject and the cardinal person of the event has been eliminated and so the -s occurs with he but not with I as in ordinary nonpast usage. When however the -s does occur with I, as in the above example, the person spoken of, cardinal person, is seen in the present of speech, but outside the speaking relationship, thus maintaining a certain distance with regard to the person speaking. And this corresponds with the expressive effect of such uses, where, as speaker, one has the impression of depicting oneself in a setting other than that of the speaking situation. This explains why the -s inflexion can occur even when the subject is not in the third person. In each of the uses discussed so far, it appears that -s is found when cardinal person is seen to be spatially absent but temporally present, i.e. outside the speaking relationship but providing an effective support for the event in the same stretch of time (nonpast verbs with third person singular subjects and occasionally the ‘historic’ use of

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nonpast verbs with first person subjects). And -s is not found when cardinal person is either inside the speaking relationship (nonpast verbs with first or second person subjects) or when cardinal person does not provide an effective support in the nonpast (past indicative verbs, subjunctive verbs, modal auxiliaries). This brings us to the last case to be discussed, that of ordinary nonpast verbs with a subject in the third person plural as in The students want more time. As a third person, the subject here is spatially absent from the speaking relationship and as subject of a full verb in the nonpast it provides an effective support for the event in the moment of speech. The fact that -s cannot be used here indicates that our analysis is not yet complete. Why is the inflexion not used with a nonpast verb whose subject is in the third person plural? It would appear that -s is tied not only to the speaking relationship and the nonpast tense but also to number, as the examples in the preceding section make clear. As I have shown in my 1982a study on grammatical number in the English substantive, an ordinary ‘plural’ substantive like students above expresses a discontinuate view of space since a number of spatially distinct entities, perceived as having the same nature, are represented by the same lexeme but depicted as occupying different places in space by the system of number. The cardinal person of the verb want, which represents the same space in the intended message as that represented by the subject the students, must therefore extend beyond the limited, continuate space of a single entity. That is to say, when, in the intended message, a happening’s spatial support consists of a number of entities, the verb’s cardinal person depicting the space they occupy must represent this space as discontinuate. One wonders if representing the spatial support of the event as multiple involves ipso facto “transcending the space contained in the conversational locus,” to borrow an expression from Duffley (1996/1997, 70), because the speaking relation exists in the here and now. Could it be that the very fact of representing discontinuate space as a support puts cardinal person outside the speaking relationship? If so it would mean that, even though a third person plural subject is temporally both present and effective, but spatially absent from the speaking relationship, it does not occur with the -s inflexion of the verb to express this absence because the multiple spatial support provided by cardinal person entails it. Although this suggestion concerning third person plural subjects is hardly convincing in itself, there are some interesting uses of the personal pronouns inviting reflection on the problem of number.

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They is occasionally used to refer to a single individual with the effect of leaving undetermined the gender of the person: Someone just called and they want you to call back. Should they be considered singular or plural here? Since it refers to a single individual it could well be considered singular, but the fact that it takes a verb without -s would suggest the contrary. This use reminds one of the use of we in sentences like the following (cf. Quirk et al., 350f): As we show in the next chapter … (referring to the writer) How are we feeling today? (referring to the person addressed, the patient) We’re in a bad mood today. (addressed to a colleague, referring to someone else, e.g. the boss) Although infrequent, these uses of they and we are like the ordinary use of you when it refers to one individual and takes are or a verb without -s. It will require an analysis of the system of personal pronouns to be able to explain these uses satisfactorily, but at first glance it would seem that in each case the spatial support of the verb is represented as a single space that is seen as part of a series of possible spaces, that is, as part of a discontinuum. It will require a much more complete analysis of the system of person, both ordinal and cardinal, to discern more clearly the relation between person and number in plural substantives and pronouns. Our attempt to explain the use of -s thus involves discerning where the space it represents is situated in time and in space with regard to the speaking relationship. Whether or not this will be confirmed by a more complete analysis of person in the pronoun and in the substantive remains to be seen. In the meantime, what we have discussed here should suffice to get us beyond the oversimplified view that the English verb is declined for first, second, and third person and that -s is simply the result of a verb agreeing with a third person singular subject. A TENTATIVE CONCLUSION

How about the role of person in the verb? Does cardinal person have what is “necessary and sufficient” to carry out its role? We have

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seen that person is required first of all to provide a spatial support for the event since one cannot represent an event’s duration in time without some spatial element to serve as a support. And since representing event time is a necessary condition for chronogenesis, for forming a verb, the capacity of person to represent a spatial support is of crucial importance. Obviously, cardinal person, by the very fact that it depicts the space occupied by what is being talked about, is quite able to fulfill this role. We have seen that person in the verb has another role to play: to provide a means for establishing the verb’s external incidence to the subject, where the sentence calls for a finite verb. For it to be made incident to the subject, whose import represents a spatial entity, the verb, whose import represents a temporal happening, requires a spatial component corresponding to something in the subject, and it is the role of intra-verbal person to represent this component. The subject also incorporates a representation of person, and usually far more than this when it is a full-fledged noun phrase, but even when its import is reduced to a minimum, as in the personal pronouns, the subject expresses ordinal person, which is based on a representation of cardinal person. That is, a verb can be made incident to its subject because the cardinal person in the verb represents the same space in the intended message as the cardinal person in the subject. This is why the verb, once made incident to the subject, identifies its person with that of the subject, which it situates in time. Thus cardinal person within the verb can provide the means for incidence to a noun phrase, predicating the event of the subject. Although person in the verb does not express a position with regard to the speaking relationship, this is achieved through the ordinal person of the subject and for this reason English, unlike Latin, requires a subject to be expressed. The minimal representation provided by cardinal person thus provides what is necessary and sufficient for intra-verbal person to fulfill its double role: as a spatial support for the event and as a means for effecting external incidence in the finite moods. This helps us to understand why a subject is required in English in most sentences, and also why the imperative does not require a subject: the intra-verbal representation is sufficient for the needs of discourse. That is, in the situation of a command, both the speaker and the person spoken to are able to identify, without any further specification, the place of the

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verb’s support in the speaker’s intended message. In lesson 7 we had a good example of this in the inner dialogue of a photographer setting up his camera; quite obviously in the special relationship of speaking to and about oneself, there is little need to identify the referent of the cardinal person. Similarly, at the end of a letter one occasionally finds something like Hope you are all well, followed by the signature, which makes the identity of the verb’s spatial support in the intended message quite clear. Like any hypothesis, the one proposed above is useful insofar as it helps us to understand the problem we are concerned with, the status of person in the English verb. Besides conforming more closely with the morphological evidence, proposing that the verb incorporates a representation of cardinal person avoids the difficulties entailed in the other possible explanations. The usual hypothesis – that the verb is conjugated for ordinal person – does not account for the lack of observable inflexions in most uses or for the syntactic requirement in Modern English to express a subject. Alternatively, it might be assumed that there is no representation of person in the verb, but this would account neither for the necessity of some intra-verbal spatial support in order to represent an event, nor for the need of some component in a time word permitting it to be incident to a space word, its subject. It seems then that the hypothesis presented here will be more fruitful as a basis for further reflection and investigation. Quite likely, a more definitive conclusion will have to await the description of the system of person in the personal pronouns, another field inviting further research. Recognizing the difference between basic or cardinal person, a formal representation of what is being talked about, and interlocutory or ordinal person gave rise to the hypothesis that only the former is represented in the verb in Modern English. This view distinguishes between representing space minimally as a support for the event within the verb and representing it more than minimally, with its ordinal person determined, outside the verb in the subject. Guillaume called the subject pronouns the “external morphology” of the French verb, thereby bringing out their role of completing its formal determination and recognizing that this minimal representation of person in the verb is the result of an historical development. He sees here a parallel with the development both of prepositions, which specify certain

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substantive functions outside the substantive itself, and of the articles, which represent outside the substantive that portion of its extension actualized in a given use. He calls these grammatical words the “external morphology” of the substantive. As we shall see in the next six lessons, all dealing with verb compounds, the development of auxiliaries in English seems to reflect a somewhat similar phenomenon.

LESSON TEN

What Does Do Do?

DO

+

INFINITIVE: ANALYZING A VERB COMPOUND

In examining the basic form of the verb, we considered only positive sentences for the simple reason that the simple form is not found in most negative and interrogative sentences. For such contexts the speaker resorts to a verb compound, do auxiliary + infinitive, which is therefore often considered a mere reflex of the simple form. Between the simple form and do-compound there is a very close relationship, so close in fact that there has been little effort to analyze the compound and there is not even a generally accepted name for designating it. As a consequence, grammars provide little help in discerning what the compound expresses in: I do not like this music. Do you like this music? as opposed to what was current up to the seventeenth century: I like not this music. Like you this music? The compounded form here is in fact a fairly recent innovation in English, a development that will remain quite unmotivated meaningwise unless we can see why it rather than the simple form is called for when the speaker undertakes to construct a negative or interrogative sentence.1

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The same cannot be said of the use of the compound in positive sentences like: I do like this music. Far from being treated as a mere reflex of the simple form in this use, do + infinitive has often been contrasted with it on the basis of meaning expressed and has been called the “emphatic” form because of the most common expressive effect of such sentences. But even here grammars do not attempt to relate this expressive effect to the meaning import of auxiliary and nonfinite form. That is, there has been little effort to analyze the compound into its component parts and show how their combination contributes to the meaning expressed by the sentence. Because it is not customary in contemporary grammatical analysis to treat verb compounds as the sum of their parts – that is, as the result of combining the imports of auxiliary and nonfinite form(s) – it is worth recalling here the grounds for this method of analysis, particularly since subsequent lessons will be based on it. Fundamentally it arises from the commonplace that we speak with words, and that words as we use them in a sentence are meaningful, consisting of physical sign and mental significate. Since speaking is a purposeful activity, words are used for the meaning they express, and no word would be used if it expressed nothing. From this it follows that, when a grammarian observes a verb compound, a verb of discourse consisting of two or more words, the obvious method of analysis will be to try to discern what each word contributes through its meaning (its syntactic possibilities) to the whole. Ultimately this amounts to taking the word seriously as the central unit of language, the cell of language (to borrow a metaphor from biology). The intriguing thing – perhaps I should say the wonderful thing, since scientific enquiry begins with “I wonder why” – about a verb compound is that it is obviously made up of two (or more) verbs and yet it functions in the sentence as one verb. To understand how two verbs, each constructed thanks to the system in tongue, can make one verb in discourse we will attempt to analyze the import of each component verb, keeping in mind that the meaning of a word is twofold, according to grammatical tradition since the Middle Ages, the synthesis of a lexical and a grammatical component. The grammatical components in each case will be familiar since they do

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not differ from what was presented in preceding lessons, but, in the case of the auxiliary, this will lead us to propose as a lexical import a meaning that is so abstract that it is not described in any dictionary, and so I hesitate to call it a lexeme. Here and in subsequent lessons, then, we will try to understand this wonderful thing, a verb compound, in its diverse forms in English. To explain the role of do + infinitive we will recall briefly the nature of the infinitive and its possible actualizations in discourse in order to see which of these is found in the compound. Do will then be examined to see how it resembles an ordinary verb in the simple form and how it differs, in an effort to understand what permits it to function as an auxiliary, i.e. to understand what do does. Finally, the compounding of infinitive and do will be described in order to understand how two verbs, resulting from activating the system in tongue twice, can combine to form a unit functioning as a single verb in the sentence. THE INFINITIVE

This verb form is well named because, as we saw in the brief sketch of nonfinite tenses in lesson 4, it lacks the determination involved in absolute (related to the present) tenses and the capacity to take a subject. That is, as compared with a verb in the indicative mood, its grammatical formation is left incomplete in this respect, not carried to a term. The very fact that its morphogenesis provides it with tense (relative tense) shows, however, that the infinitive is a verb because the category of tense involves representing an event with its event time coming to its place of accomplishment in universe time, here an endless, undivided stretch of descending time. In brief, even if its place in time is undetermined, the infinitive is a verb, a tense of the quasi-nominal mood.2 To understand what it contributes to the verb when compounded with do, we must recall briefly the different ways in which the infinitive represents event time. With regard to the other tenses of the quasi-nominal, we have already seen that it depicts an event as something not yet accomplished, but even with this particular view of event time two options are open, as Duffley has shown.3 For example, in a common use like I asked him to open the door immediately.

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the event open is provided both with an external spatial support, him (which is not its subject) and with a place in time with regard to asked. Because of the notion of ‘asking,’ open is situated in time subsequent to the place occupied by the finite verb – right after it in this example as the adverb indicates, but it could be tomorrow or anywhere after, depending on the speaker’s purposed message. This subsequence in time is expressed by to, a preposition representing movement toward a term. Here to expresses a movement through time, not through space, through the time separating the asking and the opening. As a consequence, although we know that the asking took place thanks to the verb in the indicative, we do not know if the opening was carried out or not. That is to say, the accomplishment of open is seen as potential; its event time is represented as prospective. The following diagram will summarize these relationships: open open 8

8 asked asked

to Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

The following example illustrates a different use of the infinitive: I saw him open the door. Again the object pronoun him specifies the external spatial support of the event open, and its place in time is determined by that of saw. Here, however, the infinitive event coincides in time with the place of the finite verb in the past time stretch. The sentence also tells us that the event open was actually carried out because of the lexical relation between it and saw: there would have been no ‘seeing’ if there had been no ‘opening.’ That is to say, the accomplishment of open is seen as real; its event time is represented as effective. This can be diagrammed as follows: open open 8

8 saw saw Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past Past Past

The diagram depicts in the past-oriented time of the quasi-nominal mood the realizing of open as taking place instant by instant in step with the unrolling of saw in the past of the indicative. As the subject

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of the finite verb progresses through the event time of ‘seeing,’ each instant of the infinitive’s not-yet-accomplished event time is seen arriving at its point of actualization with the result that the accomplishing of the event is expressed. These two editions of the infinitive, with either prospective or effective event time, can be made clearer by several examples involving minimal pairs, where to-infinitive and bare infinitive contrast. Thus in I sometimes had a dozen people to call. had, expresses a sense close to ‘obligation,’ which calls for the infinitive to be situated beyond had’s locus in time, i.e. requires the event time of call to be represented as prospective. On the other hand, in I sometimes had a dozen people call. had with a sense hard to describe – something approaching ‘experienced’ or ‘received’ – accepts call in its own locus in the past and so the sentence expresses the effective actualization of the infinitive event. A similar explanation applies to: She had a machine to correct the tests. She had a machine correct the tests. In the first sentence, had, in a ‘possession’ sense, expresses the correcting as a prospective event, whereas in the second sentence, where had has a ‘causative’ sense, the correcting is seen as effectively carried out in the past. Likewise, different senses of made in the following pair call for different versions of the infinitive: They made it to go fast. They made it go fast. The same distinction is found with a verb of perception: Did you ever see anyone to beat him? Did you ever see anyone beat him? This will suffice to illustrate the two ways of expressing event time in the infinitive,4 the point being that in any analysis of the infinitive

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these two possible ways of actualizing it must be kept in mind because the representation of event time, either prospective or effective, is part of the infinitive’s meaning import. Of course the infinitive also brings in the representation of a particular happening, its lexical content, as either a monophase or a metaphase event, and this, too, has its effect on how event time is represented, as we have seen lesson 6. That is to say, notwithstanding its descending universe time and relative tense, the infinitive does have much in common with the simple form of the indicative. In order to see how all its import of meaning, combined with any adverbs or other sentence components that characterize its event, is finally predicated of the subject, we must now turn to the finite part of the compound. DO: LITTLE OR NO MEANING?

The most common opinion of grammarians who have commented on do auxiliary is that it has no meaning. To this effect, it has been called an “empty” verb, a “dummy carrier,” “an ‘empty’ or ‘dummy’ operator,” “completely meaningless.”5 This view, which seems to be based on the fact that do expresses no event of its own, fails to take into consideration the nature of a word. Meaning is an essential component of any word because a word’s primary role is to express meaning. Furthermore since it can express only what it has represented, a necessary prior condition for the existence of a word in discourse is that it represent something. As a consequence a word without meaning is like water without hydrogen – an impossibility. Maintaining that do cannot not have meaning entails of course the responsibility of describing its meaning, showing what it represents. As in the case of the simple form, a view of its meaning can be obtained only through comparing different uses, and we will compare three distinct uses of do to throw light on its meaning as an auxiliary.6 The first use presents a well-known problem to learners and teachers of English as a second language. When used as a main verb, not an auxiliary, do usually expresses the very general sense of ‘bringing about,’ ‘carrying out,’ ‘performing,’ ‘executing’ activities of various sorts, as in to do the cleaning, to do the beds, to do a dive, to do history, to do Paris, etc. Students of English sometimes get the impression that do here is so general that it simply provides a framework for the event, a representation of the most general conditions required for whatever activity is implied by its object. General though it may be, however,

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this sense of do is not broad enough to extend to all activities, whence errors like *I did a mistake in esl classes and fine distinctions of meaning like that between to make a dive and to do a dive. Indeed, it seems that the semantic field covered by verbs like French faire or Spanish hacer is divided between make and do in English, but it is not yet fully clear how to distinguish them in every use, and in particular how to describe exactly the type of activity designated by do. Keeping in mind this limitation of the field of application of full verb do, it is of considerable interest to observe do in its second type of use, where it functions as a suppletive verb,7 as in: The report proposed reorganizing the company and they did so right away. One gets the impression here that did expresses the time involved in ‘reorganizing the company’ and that so, often found in the suppletive use, evokes the various phases involved in the particular activity. What is interesting here is that do in this use has a wider field of application than in the full verb use just examined. That is, do so can supplete not only for all the activities expressed by full verb do + object but also for those expressed by make + object, as in: I was so nervous about making a mistake that I nearly did so. We asked him to make dinner and he did so. Such examples make it clear that the meaning of do in suppletive uses is more general than in its full verb uses. From this we can conclude that in suppletive uses its meaning is more abstract by virtue of the fact that the element of meaning (whatever it is) limiting full verb do to a certain type of activity has been withdrawn so that suppletive do can cover the whole field of activities. This process of abstracting or withdrawing some element of meaning, which is at the basis of Guillaume’s theory of auxiliaries, is called dematerialization to recall that it operates on a word’s material significate, the lexical component of its meaning. Thus, thanks to its dematerialized meaning, suppletive do has a greater range than full verb do. And yet, even though semantically depleted in this way, do is still limited in its range of application because it cannot function as a suppletive for all events, as Quirk et al. (878–9) point out. That is, while we can say

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I asked her to learn the poem and she did so. where did so suppletes for learn the poem, it would not be acceptable English to say: *I asked her to know the poem and she did so. The limitation arises because of the difference between learn and know, the former expressing an activity, the latter a state. This brings out the fact that do cannot supplete for monophase events, only metaphase events, and suggests that its lexical content, dematerialized though it is, still retains an element of meaning limiting it in this way. When we turn to the third use of do, we see that this limitation is no longer found because as an auxiliary it is, as mentioned above, used with all full verbs, monophase8 or metaphase. From this we conclude that the element of meaning limiting it to activities is no longer present, that auxiliary do is even more dematerialized than suppletive do, which is more dematerialized that full verb do. Thus we are led to propose that the residual material significate of do auxiliary is something general enough to be common to all events, namely a representation of duration, of extension through time. Emptied to this extent, do can bring in no specification concerning the type of event to be represented. This proposal makes sense because if an auxiliary is obtained by an historical process of dematerialization, then the meaning that remains when the process has been pushed to its limit must be an element that was present from the beginning. And an impression of duration is a necessary component if a lexeme is to be formed as a verb. On the grammatical side, this minimized lexical import of the auxiliary is treated like the lexical import of any finite verb: it is provided with a spatial support (intra-verbal person) and a grammatical representation of the event time involved in the particular use – monophase or metaphase, prospective or effective – which is related to ascending universe time by means of tense. Thus its span of duration is made available to the spatial support to exploit, but, being emptied of any particular activity or state, do does not provide anything for its person to accomplish in this stretch. It is, in this respect, incomplete as a verb: it does not represent an event. For this reason, do auxiliary cannot function on its own as a verb in a sentence. It is not “completely

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meaningless,” a “dummy” word, since it represents both the span of duration involved in whatever happening one is talking about and the grammatical meaning found in any verb in the indicative. On the other hand, to make it usable in discourse calls for a lexical refill, a complement of matter to make up for what has been removed through dematerialization. And this is where compounding with the infinitive comes in, as we shall now see. THE SUPPORT ROLE OF DO

We have just seen that, on the lexical side but not on the grammatical side, do is incomplete as a verb since it does not call to mind any particular activity or state but only what is inherent in every activity and state, a certain impression of duration. We also saw that, compared with a verb in the indicative, an infinitive is incomplete on the grammatical side, not on the lexical side, since it does not provide a particular place in time as a locus for its event. Thus it becomes clear that the auxiliary and the infinitive are, in a way, complementary. It may help to bring out the way the two forms complement one another if we express the relationships involved by means of formulas symbolizing the lexical matter (M) and the grammatical form (F). Thus the auxiliary is characterized by lexical matter reduced by a certain quantity (q) and by a complete grammatical form: auxiliary = M(- q) + F The infinitive on the other hand is characterized by a lexical matter lacking nothing and by a deficiency on the side of grammatical form, the lack of a determined place (dp) in time: infinitive = M + F(- dp) By combining the two, we get a verb complete in both respects: compound = M + F Thanks to this manner of presentation we can begin to understand how two verbs from tongue, arising from different lexical imports and different interceptions of the process of chronogenesis, can provide what is required to form a single operational unit in the sentence, a verb of discourse. It remains, however, that this does not make the verb compound identical with the simple form since representing the event in the quasi-nominal mood rather than in a

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finite mood has important grammatical consequences, as we shall see in lesson 17, once we have examined the verb compounds. This view can be filled out if we consider in more detail how the two forms complement one another. Through its tense in the indicative mood the auxiliary provides for its own minimal lexical import a determined place in ascending time, in either the past or the nonpast. When made incident to this place in time, the infinitive’s full lexical import makes up for the auxiliary’s missing matter by providing a particular event. By the same token, making the event incident to the auxiliary’s span of duration has a grammatical effect on the infinitive because the event’s undetermined place in time is determined by do. And it also has an effect on the person of the infinitive, represented as a possible spatial support of the event. The resulting verb compound is thus not merely the sum of its parts, the outcome of adding the meaning of one word to another (as when an adverb is said to modify a verb). It also involves an integration of form, a sort of interlocking combination like that of two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, neither of which is fully understandable on its own but which, when put together so that the relations between them are perceived, form a recognizable unit. Grammars sometimes speak of the support role played by the auxiliary here.9 To understand how it works, it is important to keep this difference in mind: that the support provided by an auxiliary differs from the support provided by the verb for an adverb, or the substantive for an adjective. Thanks to the above analysis we can see that verb compounding involves both the import of a lexical content by the infinitive and a grammatical determination by the auxiliary. By completing the grammatical forming of the infinitive, the auxiliary integrates it into a finite verb to the point where it is no longer felt as a separate unit of meaning (though its identity as a sign is, of course, not affected). We can try to suggest by means of a diagram how this support role is carried out for an ordinary example like I did open the door. where the expressive effect is to emphasize the carrying out of the event: open open

Past Past

Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

did did

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Did represents a stretch of duration situated in the past. Open imports a particular to-be-accomplished metaphase event that, as the dotted vectors suggest, is ready to be made incident to the place in time provided by did. Once this incidence of ‘open’ to ‘did’ is effected, it constitutes a single unit of meaning, which I try to suggest by writing them ‘didopen.’ The spatial support of the infinitive is no longer seen in relation to the undivided, descending universe time of the quasi-nominal mood, but, being identified with the person of the auxiliary, it is situated in the ascending universe time of the indicative. That is to say, besides finding a temporal support in the tense of did, the infinitive finds a spatial support in the person of the auxiliary. As a result infinitive and auxiliary become integrated into a finite verb ready to play its syntactic function of predicate. That is, the import of an event enables the auxiliary to fulfill what is sometimes called its role as an operator, that of predicating the event of a subject, a function the infinitive cannot otherwise participate in. Effecting this syntactic operation of incidence, of applying the import of the verb to a support in the subject, can be depicted in a diagram as follows: I

didopen didopen

This incidence of the verb, carried out thanks to its cardinal person, attributes the event to the subject by situating the subject in time, permitting it to move through the span of duration provided by ‘didopen.’ Thus the sentence can express the beginning-to-end accomplishment of the event in the past only after the verb compound has been constituted as a unit of meaning10 and predicated of the subject. The outcome of making open incident to do is a verb compound. As in a chemical compound, the ingredients unite to form a new entity of meaning, a single verb of discourse. This process of compounding arises whenever do is called on to function as an auxiliary, but it is not always carried out in the way just described. When the auxiliary’s role – either as a support of the infinitive’s import, or as an operator predicating the verb of the subject – is not realized, the result is a negative or an interrogative sentence. In the next lesson we shall examine how compounding is carried out in each of these uses, as well as in positive sentences, to see why the compound differs in meaning from the simple form.

LESSON ELEVEN

Compounding with Do

INTRODUCTION

In the previous lesson we saw that making the infinitive incident to do auxiliary gives rise to a finite verb compound that predicates its event’s accomplishment of the subject. This is characteristic of the compound in positive sentences as it is of the simple form, but we have yet to compare simple form and compound to see if we can explain the differences of meaning observed in discourse. In negative sentences, on the other hand, the introduction of not entails some variation in the compounding process with the result that the compound declares the event’s non-accomplishment. And in interrogative sentences, where neither accomplishment or nonaccomplishment is predicated of the subject, it appears that the inversion of subject and auxiliary is also an indication of some variation in the process of predicating. It is, of course, the role of any finite verb to predicate its event of the subject but with do this role of “operator”1 is particularly transparent and so examining it here may throw light on this syntactic operation that is basic to the sentence. That is, finite verbs, whether simple or compound, have the same predicative function, and so our examination in this lesson will involve trying to see how the very different manner of forming a do + infinitive verb can make possible the same role in the sentence. Any insights we get will help clarify what is at the root of the distinction, fundamental to the verb in English, between simple and compound forms. In this lesson, then, we shall examine usage in light of the theory of the compound outlined in the previous lesson. The point to be

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kept in mind is that this theory is operational in the sense that it involves two processes: making the infinitive incident to do so that the auxiliary can play its role as support of the event, and making the resulting verb compound incident to the subject where do’s role as operator comes into play. We have already seen that this way of conceiving a grammatical form in tongue – as a mental mechanism, a psychomechanism, making possible an operation – offers the potential for different actualizations depending on how much of the process is carried out. Some such framework is necessarily presupposed here by the very fact that, like other grammarians, we consider it to be the same compound – constituted by the same elements from tongue, the infinitive and do – which gives rise to three quite distinct types of sentence. That is, to show how a verb compound can express such different senses in discourse requires us to examine it in any given use from the point of view of the meaning potentials of its components, potentials capable of producing different results in discourse. Grammars have pointed out that, from the point of view of predicating, negative and positive sentences have something in common: they both declare something of the subject. Interrogative sentences with do + infinitive, on the other hand, declare nothing of the subject. We shall discuss each of these oppositions in turn, first the interrogative vs declarative opposition as dependent on the process of predicating, then the negative vs positive opposition as arising from the process of compounding. The aim here is to explore the verb compound, not to undertake a general discussion of interrogative and negative sentences, so any implications concerning these broader topics must be left aside. QUESTIONING WITH DO

+

INFINITIVE

The do compound is best known in positive sentences for emphatically affirming its event of the subject. On the other hand, in an ordinary interrogative sentence like Did you open the door? the verb affirms nothing of the subject, let alone emphasizing it (unless some word is stressed to indicate emphasis), and this is why it is known as a yes/no question. Even interrogatives with question words like when, where, how, as in How did you open the door?, merely imply, but do not affirm, that the subject accomplished the event. In both cases, the event is represented by the infinitive and provided its place in time by do but

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it is not declared to be an activity of the subject. The only indication of a question on the level of the signs is the inversion of auxiliary and subject, a fact suggesting that what is involved here is, in effect, the relation of predication, the relation between the finite verb and the subject, its support in the sentence. From this it can be inferred that do does not carry out its role of operator, that the incidence of predicate to subject made possible by the person of do, is not effected. This can be suggested by the following diagram:

you didopen didopen you Here the curved vector symbolizes the incidence of the verb compound to the subject. It is depicted by a dotted line to suggest that ‘didopen’ is ready to be applied to ‘you’ but not yet applied, that the operation of incidence is realizable but not yet realized. Conceiving the relation between verb and subject in this way provides an explanation for the difference between declarative and interrogative sentences: in the former the incidence of predicate to subject is realized, in the latter it is not.2 This hypothesis also helps us understand how questions operate. Suspending the incidence of the verb to its subject leaves this incidence as a possibility. That is, the support person of ‘didopen’ is ready to be applied to the person of ‘you,’ but the syntax of the sentence withholds its application and does not effect this operation of incidence. The most common consequence of leaving it in suspense, neither predicating the event of the subject nor denying it, is the well-known yes/no expressive effect of questions. This hypothesis offers a means of explaining questions in light of their ordinary syntactic semiology, the inversion of auxiliary and subject. It finds some confirmation from the fact that inversion with do is not found in one case of question word interrogatives: Who opened the door? When the question word focuses on the subject itself, the verb’s incidence to its support, according to our hypothesis, is carried out and yet the sentence remains a question. Although the verb is predicated of who, this interrogative pronoun declares the place in the intended message of its support undetermined. That is, the subject cannot complete the referring of the sentence to its support in the intended message. It is as though relating the linguistic content of the sentence back to the extralinguistic experience of the speaker, the operation of referential

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incidence, cannot be completed because the speaker has no specific individual in mind as a referent for the subject. That is, it appears that the verb plays its role of predication, but that who as subject does not play its role of referential incidence, and so this is not a declarative sentence. Until an analysis of interrogative pronouns like who and what is available, however, it is not possible to confirm this analysis with a description of just what is involved here. Within the general framework of our hypothesis concerning interrogative sentences, the distinction between the two types of question permitted by do + infinitive calls for clarification. We have seen that questions of the yes/no type offer no indication of whether the event is carried out or not, whereas with a question word the sentence implies that it was (or was not) carried out. The difference between the two types of question appears to arise from representing the infinitive’s event time in its potentiality version or its actualization version, the two ways described for the infinitive by Duffley (1992, 142 ff). In the yes/no type, the sentence calls to mind both the event’s accomplishment and its non-accomplishment as possibilities, but predicates neither of the subject. The problem raised by this type is to explain how a verb can call to mind two contraries in one and the same use without any contradiction, how the infinitive’s event can be expressed as something virtual, as an eventuality that at a given moment may or may not be an accomplishment of the subject. In examining the simple form above, it was brought out that representing event time as prospective (in direction-giving, for example) permits expressing the event as an eventuality with both accomplishment and non-accomplishment as possibilities. Here, too, it would appear that the speaker represents the infinitive event as prospective in order to leave both options open, and so produce the yes/no expressive effect. Interrogative sentences of the question-word type, where the question word is not subject (e.g. When did you open the door?), are similar to yes/no questions in not declaring the event was carried out by the subject but differ from them in implying that it was carried out, i.e. in evoking only the accomplishment option. From this it can be inferred that the event is represented by means of the actualization version of the infinitive but that there is something lacking in the intended message (in the above example with interrogative when its place in time) and this keeps the speaker from attributing the event to the subject for realization. That is, the

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question word points to some circumstance of the event that is not yet a reality in the mind of the speaker so that, as in yes/no questions, the incidence of the verb compound to the subject is not effected. As a result, the subject’s accomplishment of the event is not declared, but it is implied. This analysis brings out the parallel between the infinitive and the simple form of the indicative. Both can express event time as either prospective or effective, just as both can express an event as either monophase or metaphase. This in no way obscures the difference between the two forms, the one incapable of taking a subject because of its event time oriented toward the past, the other requiring a subject because of its event time oriented toward the future. It will be recalled that time represented as tending toward the past implies an inevitable movement, whereas time represented as tending toward the future evokes the possibility of accomplishment. Thus in the indicative the subject, identified with the event’s support person, is depicted in time moving ahead to accomplish the event (actually or prospectively) moment by moment, whereas the infinitive’s support person can only provide the necessary spatial support for the event to come into existence moment by moment as it arrives in pastoriented universe time. Between accomplishing the event in the indicative and providing a condition that lets it come into existence in the infinitive there is a significant difference, one reflecting two different relations between the event and its support person. Similar remarks apply to the other verb compounds as compared with the simple form, as will be seen when we examine them in lessons 12, 13, and 15, and this will lead us to question the significance of this formal dichotomy between simple and compound forms. The difference we have just explored between the simple form and the infinitive highlights the support role of do. Do auxiliary does not represent an event, but it resembles the simple form in taking a subject. That is, it provides a stretch of future-oriented event time for its own spatial support, a stretch wherein the spatial support of the infinitive, once it has been made incident to that of the auxiliary, can be seen as a condition for accomplishing the event, and so requiring to be made incident to the ordinal person of a subject. This effect of compounding on the event’s spatial support – making it the agent or setting of the event’s accomplishment – is of considerable importance and deserves further comment because the same effect is found, under different conditions, in other compounds.

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In the simple form of the indicative, the event is represented in ascending time; this puts its spatial support in a position to exercise a causal or conditioning role in the event’s accomplishment. As a result the subject always has ahead of it a moment or stretch of time for realizing the event. In the infinitive, on the other hand, the event is represented in descending time with the result that its spatial support has no time ahead of it to exercise a conditioning role in the event’s accomplishment. In the quasi-nominal mood, it is the movement of past-oriented time, not the spatial support, which brings the event to its place in time. During the process of compounding, however, once the infinitive’s spatial support has been identified with the support of the auxiliary, it is provided with time stretching toward the future and so is put in a position to exercise an active role, to contribute to the accomplishment of the event. The result of compounding is thus to make the neutral role of the infinitive’s spatial support into the effective role of a finite verb support. This helps us to see more clearly the role of person in the infinitive: before compounding with an auxiliary, the support person of the infinitive has no effective role because the incidence of the event to its support person is not yet actualized. That is, the very fact of representing an event with its event time requires the representation of cardinal person as a spatial support, and this in turn calls for the mental operation of making the event incident to its support. To effect the event’s incidence to its support calls for a span of ascending time so that the support can be seen moving through the event, but this can be realized only when the event’s support is identified with the auxiliary’s. Only when provided with the auxiliary’s span of future-oriented time is the infinitive event’s spatial support in a position to provide a setting for the event’s unrolling in time. This hypothesis concerning the relation between event and support person in the infinitive makes it clearer why a speaker would represent some happening by means of the infinitive. Something in the purposed message, something unknown or lacking in the speaker’s experience, calls for a question. Because of this impression of uncertainty concerning the role of the support (or some circumstance in exercising its role), the event’s incidence to its support is not effected, so the support’s role is left undetermined, neutral. Hence in the above examples the very impression of uncertainty prompting the question calls for representing the happening as an

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infinitive, which is then compounded with the auxiliary whose support person can play an effective role with regard to the event. There is a certain affinity of impression between the speaker’s uncertainty and the infinitive event’s lack of determination with regard to its place in time and its spatial support, an affinity that makes this way of forming a question particularly appropriate.3 Analyzing the compounding process in this way permits us to understand the role of both infinitive and auxiliary, bringing out what distinguishes the compound from the simple verb in questions. We have also been able to explain, at least tentatively, different types of question and suggest motives of meaning justifying this manner of constructing interrogative sentences. There is therefore no grounds for considering the do + infinitive compound a mere reflex of the simple form in an interrogative context, and we shall now see that the same holds for negative sentences. NEGATING WITH DO

+

INFINITIVE

We have just seen that when a happening in the intended message is accompanied by an impression of uncertainty, English represents it by means of the infinitive, which can depict an event as something possible. When a happening is perceived not merely as uncertain but as nonexistent there is even more reason to call on the infinitive to represent it because in order to negate something, it must first be called to mind. And the infinitive can call it to mind as an eventuality, with both accomplishment and non-accomplishment as possibilities, thus leaving the way clear for the negative element, not, to specify that the non-accomplishment alternative is being expressed. As in interrogative sentences, depicting the event as an eventuality, albeit negated, requires the auxiliary do to provide a place in time with regard to the present and in space with regard to the subject. This, then, is what calls for the do compound in a typical negative sentence like: He did not open the door. Here there is no inversion of subject and auxiliary, no sign that the auxiliary’s role as operator is not carried out, and so the verb predicates the event’s non-accomplishment of the subject. As a consequence, negative sentences, unlike interrogative sentences, declare something.

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185

Looking at do + not + infinitive in this way thus provides an overall view of how a negative sentence is arrived at, but it remains to examine the way not operates. A glance at former stages of English will be useful because its role appears to have been quite different in the past. In typical usage such as I like it not. the speaker apparently represented an event as something real by means of the indicative and then negated its reality by means of not. The modern construction permits a speaker to represent a nonexistent happening as merely virtual, and then negate its realization.4 Some insight into the role of not, as well as a good test for this way of analyzing the do compound in negative sentences, is provided by the following example, where the auxiliary is not required: It was essential that he not open the door. Here open is in the subjunctive mood. We have seen that a verb in the subjunctive arises in the middle of chronogenesis, between the quasi-nominal and the indicative at a point where the present is not yet represented in universe time but the verb is finite. As a consequence, open is both like an infinitive in representing its event as virtual, without a location in time vis-à-vis the present, and yet like a verb in the indicative because it takes a subject. That is, because open is represented with future-oriented event time, its support person is positioned to undertake the event and so the simple form can operate its own incidence to he, there being no need to call on do. The position of not here, between the subject and the finite verb, suggests that it intervenes in the operation of incidence between the two intercepting it, so that the verb is not effectively predicated of the subject. That is, thanks to not, the event’s nonaccomplishment is expressed, but only as a possibility at the moment in time represented by the verb in the main clause. In the indicative, not arises within the verb compound itself, between do and the infinitive, between the finite component and the component representing the event. This suggests that it intervenes in the process of linking the two. That is, in a sentence like He didn’t open the door.

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it would seem that not intercepts the operation of incidence of infinitive to auxiliary before it reaches its term. The result of this is twofold. The event is not ready to be situated in the past timespan provided by did and its spatial support is not identified with the auxiliary’s. The verb then can only predicate the event’s nonaccomplishment by the subject. One way of checking this hypothesis is to examine sentences with a double negative, as in: She didn’t not like them. As Quirk et al. (798) point out, this expresses something like ‘she didn’t dislike them,’ which is not the same as saying that she liked them (two negatives do not make a positive sentence in this case). The two editions of not manifestly play different roles here. The second one appears to be incident to the lexeme ‘like’ characterizing the infinitive event so that it is the combination ‘notlike’ (‘dislike’) that is to be made predicable of the subject through the auxiliary. In its other use here, according to our hypothesis, -n’t keeps the ‘notliking’ from finding its support in the span of time provided by did, with the result that the auxiliary does not carry out its role of support. As a consequence the ‘notliking’ is not made incident to the subject when did carries out its operator function. This is why, by omitting -n’t, it would even be possible to affirm the ‘notliking’ of the subject in a positive sentence, provided the auxiliary is stressed (shown in small caps here), as in: She DID not like them. Although these comments on the double negative example call for confirmation through further observation and reflection, they do suggest that not, often found as the clitic -n’t, is used not to characterize the infinitive’s event but to keep the auxiliary’s support function from being actualized. This in turn lends support to the hypothesis that not/-n’t is incident to the operation of incidence – more precisely, incident to the infinitive during the operation of incidence – intercepting it before the infinitive finds a support in the auxiliary. Our analysis would thus make of not/ -n’t a sign of the process of intercepting an operation, a proposal that has yet to be checked by undertaking an analysis of not,

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187

with its appreciable lexical import in some uses and its highly abstract grammatical import as not/-n’t in other uses. Usage of not in negative-interrogative sentences also presents data for testing the hypothesis that not intercepts the incidence of infinitive to do. Thus the difference in meaning between the following sentences (suggested by Quirk et al., 810) tends to confirm the analysis of the double negative above: Does anyone not know the answer? (‘Is there anyone who does not know the answer?’) Doesn’t anyone know the answer? (‘Surely someone knows the answer.’) In the first sentence, not characterizes the sense of know resulting in the equivalent of ‘ignore,’ and the inversion evokes ‘notknowing’ as predicable of the subject: ‘is there even one person in a state of ‘notknowing’ the answer?’ In the second sentence, where the effect of -n’t is to refuse the access of know to its support in did, the sense is: ‘isn’t there even one person in a state of ‘knowing’ the answer?’ Whether this distinction can be found in other interrogative sentences remains to be seen. It does not appear to be expressed in the following pair where not and -n’t are opposed insofar as position is concerned: Did you not open the door? Didn’t you open the door? Any attempt to describe what calls for this positioning will probably have to await the analysis of not. A most remarkable use of do in negative sentences is found in oral discourse when do auxiliary is found without an infinitive, even one expressed or simply implied previously. To intercept someone who is undertaking an action, one can say: Oh no you don’t. And to keep someone from continuing some action one could say simply: Don’t.

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Lessons on the English Verb

Because both the speaker and the person addressed are aware of the activity there is no need to represent it by means of an infinitive, a use that is not, I believe, found with other auxiliaries. Since these sentences express a meaning and the person addressed gets the message, this use clearly shows that do brings an import to the sentence. If our analysis is correct, this import consists of the representation of a span of duration, that required for the intended action or the continuation of an action already begun, and this duration is situated in universe time, but the access to it is blocked by -n’t. These sentences would not be possible if do were a “dummy” word, or merely the “reflex” of the simple form. These few observations of usage tend to support the plausibility of the explanation proposed here, namely that not intercepts the incidence of the infinitive to do in negative sentences thus permitting the verb to predicate the absence of the event in the span of time provided by the auxiliary and so declare the nonaccomplishment of the event by the subject. Thanks to the infinitive the event is called to mind, but, since it is not situated in the past or the nonpast and its support is not identified with the auxiliary’s support, its non-existence is expressed. The do + infinitive compound thus permits speakers to negate an event without first representing it as real. There remain a number of questions to be clarified in the field of negation but the very fact that this hypothesis brings such problems into focus is in itself an important contribution. Something similar is true of the use of do + infinitive in positive sentences, as we shall now see. AFFIRMING WITH DO

+

INFINITIVE

We have seen that the infinitive is quite appropriate in interrogative and negative sentences because it represents an event as virtual. At first sight therefore it may seem surprising that the infinitive is called on to represent an event to be integrated into a positive context and strongly affirmed of the subject. Emphasizing the existence of something would seem to be at the antipodes of representing it as virtual, and yet when we examine the conditions of usage as compared with those governing the use of the simple form, we find that this same capacity of the infinitive permits ordinary sentences like:

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189

He DID open the door. Compared with the simple past here, the verb compound, with stress on the auxiliary, emphasizes the reality of the event’s accomplishment at a moment in the past. This is such a common expressive effect that some grammarians have called the do compound in positive sentences the “emphatic form” of the verb. Although this is not a faithful description of the effect in all positive uses, as we shall see in the following discussion of examples, our first concern will be to understand why it arises so often. It has often been pointed out that sentences like the above arise after someone has declared the contrary (e.g. He didn’t open the door). A speaker is thus confronted with the same mental scenario as is found with questions: both the non-accomplishment option evoked by the former remark and the accomplishment option as part of the speaker’s own awareness of the situation are present in the intended message. The infinitive permits speakers to embrace both options mentally by representing the event as virtual, thereby acknowledging that the situation is not univocal, that there are two alternatives. There being no not to hold up the operation of incidence, the infinitive event is made incident to the stretch of time provided by the auxiliary and to its support person, which is identified with that of the auxiliary. This brings out the accomplishment option ready to be predicated of the subject and, there being no inversion, the auxiliary effects the incidence to the subject, which is then seen moving through the timespan accomplishing the event. That is, the actual accomplishment of the infinitive’s to-be-accomplished event is seen carried out once the subject has been situated at the same point in time as the event’s support person. The effect of expressing the accomplishment of the event as an alternative to its non-accomplishment is to imply that the other alternative is denied, a sort of ‘this not that’ impression that gives rise to the usual stress pattern. A sentence framed with the simple form in the above context (He opened the door) would not evoke the same contrastive situation and so would not require the same sort of stress pattern. An obvious contrastive effect arises from countering a former remark in this way. While this may be the most frequent, there are many other situations arising in our experience that call for the doubleoption virtuality of the infinitive. One grammarian summarizes the situation by pointing out that do auxiliary in positive sentences “is

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used to express some comparison, contrast or opposition with respect to what has been said before, for instance true versus false, actual vs. potential, apparent vs. real, indubitable vs. questionable, conditional vs. absolute, negative vs. positive or affirmative, present vs. past or future, and many more of the like, impossible to enumerate exhaustively” (Erades, 163). There can thus be a great variety of expressive effects arising from simply replying to a previous statement. Sometimes it is far less obvious what prompts a speaker to use the do compound. The alternative, rejected option is merely implied in the following example from a novel (cited in Joly and O’Kelly 1987, 100): Later, when she stepped into the boat on joining the waterparty, she remarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her and would like to drown her. “Ah no,” said Ralph, “I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you’d be such an interesting one!” “Well, you do torture me!” The only suggestion of a viewpoint opposite to that expressed by do torture is in you’d be such an interesting one (i.e. victim to torture), the auxiliary would (’d) evoking a possible situation and so implying that she is not a torture victim. This calls for her to reply by presenting her point of view as an alternative, and so the infinitive is used to affirm it in opposition to his point of view. The two options may not, however, arise from one speaker replying to another. In the following example, the two are present, but the contrast is far more subtle: He worked rapidly and well whenever he did work. (Jespersen 1954, 5: 506) Here the expressive effect is not one of emphasis, but rather the suggestion that he did not often work. The speaker, intending to speak of the subject’s work habits, is confronted with the knowledge of his infrequent periods of working. The ‘habitual’ use of worked in the first clause gives an impression of ‘normal frequency,’ what one would expect in a given work situation. To give an alternative version of working focusing on frequency by means of whenever, the speaker resorts to the do compound. Worth noting here is that

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there is no need to use the compound as a “reflex” form, and the simple form might well have been used, but without necessarily bringing out the effect of infrequency. Examples like this show that the do compound is used, not to comply with some syntactic constraint, but to represent what the speaker has in mind. And this is true of all uses of the compound, indeed, of any form of the verb. According to Osselton (1983, 471), in some cases “the do construction may even be the sole device for alerting the reader to some intended contrast.” Thus a sentence like the following might well open a conversation: You do look pale this morning. Where the simple form would simply have represented the state of the subject, the compound presents the present state as exceptional, out of the ordinary, and so in contrast with what is expected, as though the speaker had in mind ‘I had expected you to look notso-pale.’ That is, the infinitive represents the event as one possibility that might well not have materialized in that situation. As a consequence the sentence contributes to an expression of surprise, of greater sympathy, and the like. Again the desire to express this impression of an event that might have been different calls for representing the event as part of a double alternative scenario and so leads to attributing it to the subject as the alternative that is realized. In one common use, where there is no situation involving what has been said before, the expressive effect of the compound is just the opposite of ‘emphasis’: Do sit down. Whereas the imperative in the simple form would have given rise to an order here, in the do compound it expresses an invitation. That is, instead of offering the prospect of only one course of action, the do compound invites the addressee to realize the event while implying that there is another possibility (to remain standing) because the event is prospective. Again we can see that the situation presents alternative possibilities of action, and the indetermination of the infinitive permits the speaker both to evoke this scenario and attribute one of the options to the auxiliary’s spatial support as a prospective accomplishment.

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More examples are discussed in my article on do auxiliary (1997b), but it is hoped that the above examples will give some idea of the variety and finesse of expression made possible by the do compound in positive sentences. It remains that situations giving rise to the double alternative scenario are so diverse that it will require a far more extensive observation of usage to appreciate the extent to which this compound is exploited in contemporary usage. Do auxiliary is, in fact, one of the most remarkable means of representation instituted in the system of tongue by our linguistic forbears. REPRESENTING WITH DO

+

INFINITIVE

To my knowledge, the above analysis is the first attempt to consider the do + infinitive compound as a unit of discourse based on a single means of representing an event, that provided by the infinitive. By calling on Guillaume’s theory of auxiliaries and Duffley’s theory of the infinitive, it brings out how this compound can be variously used in discourse. It is important to have this general view so that it can be confronted with pertinent observations from other studies of usage, the aim here being to present a hypothesis that can be developed, rectified, or replaced when confronted with a more extensive body of data. The purpose of this complicated analysis is to show that in all its uses the do compound depends on the potential meaning of the infinitive and its syntactic possibilities. When not blocks the infinitive’s incidence to do, the event’s non-accomplishment is predicated of the subject giving a negative sentence. When its incidence to do is effected but the compound’s incidence to the subject is suspended (as signified by inversion), neither accomplishment or non-accomplishment are predicated of the subject giving a question. And when both the infinitive’s incidence to do and the compound’s incidence to the subject are effected, the event’s accomplishment is predicated of the subject giving a positive sentence. The role of do is also an essential here, but it can best be discerned by comparing it with the other auxiliaries to see what they have in common and what is specific to each one (see lesson 16). This view of the syntax involved in the three uses entails something common to all, namely that the do compound expresses an event whose realization is in one respect contingent. It brings to the sentence an event whose accomplishment (prospective or real) cannot

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be taken for granted, implying in positive sentences that its nonaccomplishment is rejected, in negative sentences with not that its accomplishment is rejected, and in interrogative sentences with inversion that neither possibility is rejected. In this respect the compound differs from the simple form, which is univocal, always attributing to the subject an event whose accomplishment (prospective or real) is situated in time without any suggestion of an alternative possibility. Comparing the simple and compound forms in this way brings out an important point: the relation between verb and subject, between event and support, is not the same for the two forms. In the case of the simple form, the spatial support is represented accomplishing the event, or, in the case of prospective events, in a position to accomplish it, and this with no suggestion of nonaccomplishment, whether accepted, possible or rejected. It is as though the intra-verbal person in the simple form is represented at a given point in time embodying the necessary and sufficient conditions for carrying out the event and no other impression in the intended message bears on the relation between the event and its spatial support. In the case of the compound, the very fact of representing the event by means of the infinitive involves seeing it as virtual, as open to either accomplishment or non-accomplishment. That is, in the infinitive on its own, before incidence to the auxiliary, even the event’s incidence to its spatial support is virtual, not effected, and this leaves the relation between event and spatial support undetermined, open to discussion. In the process of compounding, of making the infinitive incident to the auxiliary, this relation is determined in one way or the other: either the event’s incidence to its spatial support is effected and the support is then in a position to accomplish the event, or, with the intervention of not, it is not effected and the spatial support is not in a position to accomplish the event. In neither case does the compound relate the event to its subject the same way the simple form does. Where the simple form attributes the event’s accomplishment to the subject, the compound denies it in a negative context, questions it in an interrogative context, and attributes it as part of a double-option scenario in a positive context. The point of comparing simple form and do compound in this way is to understand why it is no longer possible in English to put the simple form of the indicative in a negative or interrogative relation with its subject. We have traced the verb-subject link back to a relationship

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found within every verb, that between an event and its spatial support, its cardinal person. The view that the infinitive represents its event as virtual, as yet to be made incident to a place in time and to its spatial support, leaves open the options of whether or not the person of the event – and consequently the person of the subject – supports the event’s accomplishment. Quite obviously in a negative sentence the subject’s support of the event is denied, and in interrogative sentences the subject’s support of the event is depicted as possible: representing the event by means of the infinitive entails a relationship with the subject different from that instituted by representing the event by means of a tense of the indicative. This difference can be observed even in positive sentences like He DID open the door and the others discussed above. The compound affirms the event’s accomplishment but also evokes “some comparison, contrast or opposition,” implying ‘in spite of what you say, think, expect, etc.’ because the infinitive, representing an intended message where an impression of a happening’s non-realization coexists with a dominating impression of its realization, does not commit its spatial support to either option. With the simple form (He opened the door) no such indetermination or reserve concerning the subject’s relation with the event is implied by the verb. Once this grammatical relation between subject and verb is instituted through the verb’s morphogenesis and incidence it may of course be qualified lexically (maybe, if) or syntactically (I think he opened the door) or by intonation, etc., to express the speaker’s attitude more adequately, the point at issue here not being to describe all the environments in which a verb and its subject may be found, but to discern the different ways a verb relates to its subject. Such considerations, which will be pursued further in lesson 17, should be enough to suggest that the do + infinitive construction reflects a far more profound relationship in the sentence than a mere tendency to uniformize word order in questions and negations, as is often claimed. Its fairly recent historical development and extension to all dialects show that, even though it is not found in other languages, this compound has become an inherent component of the English verb. On the other hand the fact that it is designated by no generally accepted name indicates that its relation with the simple form and the other compounds of the verb has not yet been made clear in grammars. To help bring out this relation subsequent lessons will examine other verb compounds, beginning with one that, like do + infinitive, is characteristic of English: the progressive.

LESSON TWELVE

The Progressive

THE COMPOUND

The verb compound consisting of be auxiliary + -ing (or, present participle) is most often named the progressive because it frequently contributes to an expressive effect of ‘event in progress.’ Some grammars have attempted to explain all uses in terms of this effect of “an action happening now,” but without success since the particular sense brought in by the grammatical form is not the only element contributing to the expressive effect of the verb. In examining the progressive, or any other verb form for that matter, it must not be forgotten that what a verb expresses is the outcome of forming its lexical import by means of its grammatical import, and that this in turn contributes, along with other sentence components, to the total expressive effect of the sentence. We have seen this when looking at the simple form and at do + infinitive, but it is particularly important to keep it in mind here because this form, unlike the other two, is limited in the type of event it can express, as we shall see in this lesson. The attempt to explain something by its effects is a cart-beforehorse type of procedure. The alternative is to describe the prior conditions giving rise to what one wants to explain, and what we want to explain here is the use of the progressive and what it contributes to any particular sentence. Quite obviously, a necessary prior condition for any act of language is to have a person both in possession of a language and with something to say. That is, every act of language presupposes a speaker with an intended or purposed message that provokes an appeal to the possibilities made

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available by tongue to represent and express what they have in mind in order to make it the content of a realized message. More specifically, when something in the intended message is perceived as a happening, as extending over a series of instants, it is the system of the verb that is called on to represent it, to give it the form of a time word. Our concern here is to discern the particular conditions calling for the progressive, the impressions arising from the speaker’s experience that require the be + -ing compound rather than some other form of the verb to represent the happening. We have already seen that an impression of the accomplishment (real or prospective) of all that is involved in a happening calls for representation by the simple form. We have also seen that any impression of ambivalence between accomplishment and non-accomplishment of such happenings calls for representation by do + infinitive. To discern what prompts the use of the progressive we will now examine its two components, beginning with the participle because at the instant of speaking it is this verb form the speaker calls on first to represent the happening. Like the infinitive and the past participle, the present participle is a tense of the quasi-nominal mood, resembling them insofar as its indetermination of place in time is concerned. That is, the relative tense of the participle involves no inherent link to the grammatical “now” (the present) and so can situate the event anywhere in universe time. As in the infinitive, the participle’s event is represented with its spatial support, but its incidence to the support is held in abeyance, not effected. Furthermore, since the spatial support consists of cardinal person it involves no inherent link to the grammatical “here” (the speaker) and so can relate its event to whatever spatial support is represented by the subject. On the other hand, since the participle represents an event carried by descending universe time, it is unable, on its own, to predicate its event of a subject and so requires an auxiliary if it is to be part of a finite verb in the projected sentence. Where the participle differs from the infinitive is in its representation of event time, as we saw in lesson 4. When used in the progressive, instead of depicting event time as totally accomplishable, the -ing participle depicts it as partly already accomplished, partly to be accomplished. That is, it represents a divided event carried along by the descending movement of universe time, an event whose spatial support has part of the event behind it, part before it. This is

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the only form of the English verb representing both what is already accomplished and what is yet to be accomplished within the event itself. This then is the grammatical form called on to depict any happening perceived as partly realized, as in a state of incompletion. Integrating this view of the event into a finite verb calls for an auxiliary. Be offers the means for doing just this, representing an empty stretch of duration at some moment in either the past or the nonpast of the indicative in order to provide a place in time to which the -ing event can then be made incident. In this way, like do auxiliary with the infinitive, be makes a span of ascending universe time available for the spatial support of the participle, identified with that of the auxiliary, to exercise its conditioning influence on the event. But unlike do, be here does not represent a stretch of time for situating the whole event since part of it is already over and done with, and part is yet to be accomplished. In fact, as an auxiliary of the progressive be represents only a brief span of duration in universe time, sufficient to situate the next moment of the event. Thus in a commonplace example like The birds are singing. are represents the span of duration that can be lodged in the present of speech and attributes to the subject whatever portion of the singing it can accomplish within that short span. The following diagram attempts to suggest that a moment in the participle’s event is about to be made incident to the auxiliary’s span of duration: singing singing are PastPast

Nonpast Nonpast

•

8

8

•

Effecting the incidence of singing to are produces the compound ‘aresinging,’ which is then predicated of the subject. Since the verb attributes to the subject the accomplishment of the moment of the event contemporary with the present of speech, there is the common effect of ‘an activity in progress,’ but because only this moment is represented in universe time, there is no expression of either the event’s beginning or its end. To obtain a look back on the already-accomplished portion, a change of aspect would be required to give the transcendent progressive (The birds have been singing since dawn), a

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form to be examined in a later lesson. To obtain a view forward to the end of the event and represent the accomplishment of the whole activity in universe time would require the simple form, as was seen in lesson 5 (e.g. Here comes the bus). Because it situates in the past or the nonpast only the contemporary moment of its event, the progressive resembles a use of the copula expressing a monophase event discussed earlier (e.g. The Earth is round): both auxiliary and copula situate one moment, one phase of their event, in time. But with a metaphase event this phase is not identical with all others, and so a verb in the progressive expresses, not the ‘stative’ effect of an unchanging event, but the ‘dynamic’ effect of something open to change, in progress, incomplete, as we shall see in the rest of this lesson. The syntactic signs for negative and interrogative sentences being the same as for do + infinitive, the same analysis applies. Here too the fact that not arises between be and participle will be interpreted as indicating that the incidence of the event (‘singing’) to the past or nonpast timespan of the auxiliary is not effected and its spatial support is not identified the auxiliary’s. Since this leaves the event without reference to the reality of the present and without the incidence to its cardinal person realized, only its nonexistence at that moment in time can be predicated of the subject giving rise to a negative sentence. With the progressive also, the syntactic inversion of subject and auxiliary is interpreted as indicating that the incidence of the compound (‘aresinging’) to the subject is not effected. Not being identified with the intra-verbal support and situated in time with it, the subject cannot be seen moving through the represented timespan accomplishing that moment of the event, and so only its possible accomplishment/non-accomplishment is predicated of the subject in questions. This then is the grammatical instrument invented by English for representing a happening perceived as incomplete because it straddles the present of speech, or some moment in the past (were singing). Since its end is not situated in time, in either the past or the nonpast, the activity is always presented with the prospect of further development. For this reason the progressive can properly be called an imperfective. By the same token, the progressive cannot represent a happening seen as a state, which, being complete in each instant, cannot be depicted as imperfective no matter how little of its duration is situated in time. That is to say, unlike the simple form the

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progressive always expresses a happening perceived as metaphase, never one perceived as monophase. The examination of usage to be undertaken now will compare simple and progressive forms, bringing out distinctions of meaning arising from representing an event as either perfective or imperfective. ACTIVITIES IN PROGRESS

In teaching grammars the progressive is often presented as the verb form for expressing an action going on at the moment of speaking. Since this expressive effect is observable in a great many cases (the example given above is typical) it is sometimes overlooked that the simple form can also express an activity unrolling during the present of speech – performatives, instantaneous events, processto-result situations, etc. In lesson 5 it was shown that these are all cases where the accomplishment of the whole event can be situated in the present of speech. The progressive on the other hand is called on to represent activities only part of whose accomplishment can be situated within this brief span so that the event, if it continues, will extend beyond the moment of present awareness. To illustrate this difference, we can compare the use of the two forms to represent similar happenings in a hockey commentary: He goes into the corner. He is going into the corner. To represent the impression of a player skating rapidly to the corner, the simple form is used to represent the whole movement from beginning to end. Effecting predicate-subject incidence depicts he moving through the timespan carrying out the whole event, thus giving rise to the expressive effect of a short, complete action. To represent the impression of a player skating toward the corner the progressive is called on in order to depict a moment within the action. Effecting predicate-subject incidence depicts he moving through that moment of time carrying out that part of the event, whence the effect of an incomplete action so that we do not know if the player reached the corner. In each of the following examples we find the same scenario: the subject is put in a position to accomplish the next phase of a metaphase event by the progressive, all its phases by the simple

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form. This perfective vs imperfective opposition is brought out by the following pair where the simple form in a performative use contrasts with the progressive: I tell you everything is all right. I’m telling you something important. Listen to me! The impression that the message gets through to the listener calls for tell to express the act of telling as complete, whereas the opposite impression calls for am telling to represent and express the act of communication as incomplete because the listener is not attentive. The same impression of ineffective communication may arise because of the message itself, as in the following example from a novel: An’ was that stuff perfume or was it? I’m tellin’ you that it certainly was.1 The expressive effect here is that the perfume is extraordinary to a degree that cannot be grasped by the listener, cannot be completely communicated. We sometimes hear the same verb in a reply to emphasize agreement: You’re telling me! The telling that just took place is represented as an incomplete act of communication to imply that the person replying already possesses full information. The suggestion is ‘you can’t tell me anything about it because I already know’ with perhaps a hint of ‘who are you to try to tell me about it?’ In the case of a simple form like Here they come. it was pointed out in lesson 5 that this is a foreseen event: because guests are expected, on seeing the beginning of the event (a car stops and people begin getting out) the speaker can situate the whole development as real in time by extending the span of the present beyond the actual moment of speaking. However, in They are coming here.

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the whole event is not represented in time because the speaker has just figured out the destination of the persons perceived, perhaps with a certain surprise, and has no assurance of how the rest of the event will develop. Similarly, as mentioned previously, the comment on a video Here you kiss the bride. would be made at the beginning of a sequence since the speaker knows the rest of it, whereas a comment on a photograph would represent only one moment of the episode and so require the progressive: Here you’re kissing the bride. The following stage directions, already cited, express imagined activities in the nonpast: He is reaching for the bottle, but Gabby stops him. He is returning to his old subject but the wine distracts him. Hildy sails his hat into a corner and is removing his overcoat as the curtain falls. In each case the progressive event is represented as incomplete because it is interrupted by a shorter, complete event expressed by the simple form. Since even the present – the moment when the play is produced on stage – is imagined by the writer, he can represent events in it as carried out either in full or in part according to his conception of the plot. DURATION AND SEQUENCE

The last three examples recall an observation sometimes found in grammars to the effect that the progressive often expresses a more lengthy event than the simple form, as in: When I came in they were watching TV. The progressive suggests that the watching began before the speaker came in, but it gives no indication whether or not

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the watching continued after that. Something else in the context may of course indicate this, as in: When the electricity went off they were watching TV. Because of our extra-linguistic knowledge we take for granted that the power failure interrupted the event, but we still understand that the watching started before, and would have continued after the brief span occupied by went off. This shows that the ‘durational’ expressive effect associated with the progressive arises when the moment of the event it situates in time is equivalent to the total duration of an event in the simple form. These two examples help to illustrate another point. If the watching is represented in the simple form – as in When I came in they watched TV. – the message is quite different. The watching began once the coming in was completed, a sequence in time quite unlike the overlapping expressed by the progressive. These effects can be seen to be the result of the beginning-to-end vs the moment-in-the-middle representations of the respective forms. The same comments would apply to When the electricity went off they watched TV. but of course this would not make much sense because, in contradiction with our knowledge of the world, it would suggest that the watching began once the electricity had failed. Although not the result of a grammatical constraint, the fact that this set of words cannot refer to some experience means that for the linguist it cannot be considered a sentence, the expression of someone’s intended message, unless of course one can imagine a possible experiential scenario (a dream, for example, or making use of an emergency generator) that might call for it. The impression of something incomplete can arise even where a past happening is actually over. One example of this arose when someone returned a call after I had left a message. In spite of the fact that my call was over, he began by saying You were ringing me.

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where we understand ringing in the sense of ‘trying to communicate.’ Similarly, when one ventures information in a conversation and the response is We were just talking about that. the suggestion is that, although the actual talking about it was ended a short time before, the speaker feels that there is room for further discussion, so the talking is represented as incomplete. The perfective talked, on the other hand, would be tantamount to refusing further discussion on the topic. The fact that the progressive situates neither the beginning nor the end of the event in time is illustrated by the following description from a novel: ... now the first leaves of spring were unfolding.2 The expressive effect of a given moment in the unfolding, leaving the rest of its development to be imagined as the narrative proceeds, corresponds with our experience of the phenomenon of nature. The simple form, on the other hand, would be quite out of place here because it would express the whole event, as though one could see the process from bud to full leaf in one brief moment. This slowing down effect of the progressive sometimes contributes to a suggestion of suspense because it leaves the rest of the action to be accomplished before the next event can take place. Thus in: She was leaning back in an Empire chair … Her lips were parting. (Mossé 2: 185) one cannot help wondering what she is going to say. On the other hand the progressive can contribute to just the opposite expressive effect by plunging the subject into the middle of the event, as in: Appleby picked up the instrument. “Hullo –” His chair fell backwards with a crash; he sprung to his feet. He depressed the receiver arm, released it, was calling urgently: “House-exchange … where was that call from … where …?”3

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Since was calling does not express the beginning of the event it gives an effect of rapidity here, as though the calling had started before the releasing was finished. Thus the progressive often straddles the timespan of events in the simple form and contributes to various effects because its event is understood to be more lengthy. Sometimes, however, the progressive gives rise to just the opposite effect, that of a less lengthy event, as in a typical grammar book example: I am living with my uncle. Here the living is presented as temporary, whereas with the simple form it would be expressed as permanent. To explain this we must contrast the progressive with the simple form expressing monophase events. STATES

In a previous lesson it was shown that in order to represent a happening as a state, as involving no development or change throughout its duration, we must represent the same thing, its total lexical import, in each instant of its event time. As a consequence of this monophase representation, a stative event cannot be imperfective regardless of how much or how little of its duration is situated in time, since it is never felt to be lacking something. This is why sentences expressing what has been called ‘eternal truths,’ such as: Light travels faster than sound. Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. are not found in the progressive. In fact, a monophase event cannot be represented by means of the progressive because it cannot be depicted as imperfective. Although some scholars maintain that the progressive is used with “stative verbs” like to be, a careful examination of examples has shown so far that every use of the progressive expresses a metaphase event, an event involving change, or at least the possibility thereof if the event continues. That is, even if such verbs do express a monophase event in almost all uses, their lexeme is occasionally actualized in a metaphase sense and then the progressive may be found. But before looking

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at such borderline examples, it will be well to treat more common cases like the one mentioned at the end of the previous section. The simple form in I live with my uncle. expresses the subject’s place of residence as a long-term event, but the sentence does not evoke the event’s accomplishment from beginning to end. Rather, the verb situates in time that moment of the event contemporary with the time of speaking, and, being in the simple form, it is represented as perfective, offering no possibility of change in subsequent moments. Hence the expressive effect of ‘permanence’ is often attributed to this use. This contrasts with the effect when the situation is represented by the progressive as imperfective, as susceptible to change and so as temporary. Something similar is found when one phones somebody and gets no answer, a situation normally represented by a perfective, as in: He does not answer. As Hatcher (1951, 279n57) points out, the speaker’s assumption here is that “the person in question is away from home, or [otherwise] unavoidably prevented from answering,” i.e. not in a situation to answer. However, “the progressive, in the same situation, usually implies a decision not to answer”: He isn’t answering. What calls for the progressive here is the impression that the person called is there and that, therefore, the not-answering may not continue, that there may be a change, that there is a possibility of him answering. The same contrast – between something permanent, static, unchanging and something temporary, developing, susceptible to change – is found if we compare the progressive with the simple form expressing ‘habit.’ We have already seen that in English the impression of some habitual happening such as He walks to work.

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is represented as a state, an unchanging disposition of the subject to actualize the event. The progressive here He is walking to work. might be understood in two ways: as an activity going on at the moment of speaking (a use examined above), or as a repeated event. In the latter case there is the suggestion of something temporary because it is represented not as a stable predisposition but as open to change (if, for example, the speaker sees it as a new health fad that will not last). The expressive effect is slightly different in cases contrasting capacity and performance, as in: She sings well. She is singing well. Whereas the simple form represents a state of the subject, a talent, which, by its very nature, is seen as permanent, the progressive offers no assurance for a continued good performance. It suggests rather ‘so far’ or ‘for the time being.’ Something similar is found in She speaks Greek. where the verb has the sense of a mental capacity (‘can speak’) and so is represented as a permanent state. On the other hand in She is speaking more Greek. the sense of ‘having more occasions to actualize the capacity’ gives the suggestion of a repeated activity that may or may not continue. The example might be understood in a different way, as representing a different situation: that of a child acquiring the capacity to speak Greek. These two senses of the verb in the progressive bring out a distinction found in a number of verbs that represent mental happenings, the next group to be examined. VERBS OF MENTAL EVENT

It was pointed out in a previous lesson that verbs of mental event generally express a state of mind – intellectual, affective, perceptual,

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etc. – and so are usually found in the simple form. Although grammars sometimes exaggerate in saying that a verb like to know cannot be used in the progressive, such statements do serve to bring out the need to examine any use of these verbs in the progressive to see if, in fact, the verb expresses a state. These verbs, then, provide an excellent testing ground for the theory of the progressive as an imperfective presented here.4 One such verb, to think, is not especially rare in the progressive and so helps bring out what impression calls for this form. The following is a typical use: I’m thinking about it. The idea expressed here is that of the mental activity of forming a judgment, an opinion, etc., so this exemplifies the very common use of the progressive to represent an activity in progress at the moment of speaking. On the other hand, in I think you’re right. the sentence expresses the resulting opinion, the verb representing a state of mind reached as a consequence of reflection. In like fashion, to understand generally expresses a resulting state of mind in the simple form, whereas in a sentence like He looked intently at me to see that I was understanding what he wanted me to do. (cited in Charleston 1960, 250) it is the mental process leading to the state of mind that is represented. Comrie (1976, 36f) gives the following example and comment: I’m understanding more and more about quantum mechanics as each day goes by. “the reference is not to an unchanging state of comprehension, the degree of comprehension being the same from one time-point to another, but rather of a change in the degree of understanding: on any given day, I understood more about quantum mechanics than on any previous day. Thus the verb understand here refers not to a state, but to a developing process, whose individual phases are essentially different from one another.”

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Likewise, for believe in She’d watched him as she told him to see if he was believing her. (Hirtle and Bégin 1991, 115) the progressive is used to bring out the process of mentally accepting each thing said, whereas in the simple form to believe generally has the sense of a mental state, ‘to hold as true.’ Perhaps the most interesting verb representing intellectual states is to know because it is one of the least frequent in the progressive. The following example brings out the sense it expresses in such uses: He had to remember that this man, helpless, an object on the operating table, was knowing the meaning of loneliness. (Osselton 1980, 60–1) The sense here is ‘experiencing,’ ‘becoming aware of,’ i.e. the mental process leading up to the mental state of knowing. The simple form here would express this state as something already acquired, not its being acquired at that moment. The same can be said for an example from a television interview of a person suffering from cerebral palsy speaking of what it is to be human: When a baby is enjoying the feeling of being touched it is knowing that it is human.5 In the next example the sense is ‘getting to know’: While this derisive quarrel went on, as it always did between Steve and Kitty, Hank and Dan were knowing each other very well in a few widely spaced and brief words.6 In the following example the two senses of know – monophase and metaphase – are expressed: He could almost see the learning process, in the way she said to him frowning, “I’m your girl, Will?” Markham said with quick eagerness, “Don’t you know that, Andree?” She shook her head at him slowly, looking into his face as if she were trying to see him clearly, and then, unexpectedly,

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she pulled out of his grasp with such strength that Markham fell back a step. “Yes, I guess I do know now,” she said deliberately, as if she were knowing it better with every word.7 Where she expresses her state of mind by means of the simple form, the writer describes the process of arriving at it with the progressive. In some situations the impression of a firmly settled attitude calls for the simple form. For example, in a pilot’s frequent greeting to passengers shortly after takeoff I hope you will enjoy your flight with us. the progressive would be quite out of place as suggesting that his attitude is not quite formed, as though the expectation element in the hoping were incomplete and the pilot has little confidence in the passengers enjoying their flight. On the other hand, in … and I’m hoping that you’ll straighten it out for me. (Jespersen 1954, 4: 223) the progressive is quite appropriate in asking a favour since it expresses tentative optimism, leaving room for the person addressed to interpret the remark as a weak expression of desire rather than a fully formed hope bordering on expectation. Close (1962, 21) gives a good description of the difference of expressive effects in the following: (a) I hope you will come and have lunch with me. (b) I am hoping you will come an have lunch with me. “A busy, self-important man might feel (a) to be too presumptuous, and refuse the invitation, but (b) flatteringly deferential and accept; while someone else to whom that invitation was given might feel (a) to be definitely meant and accept with pleasure, but (b) to be uncertain and not sufficiently pressing.” Much the same pattern can be discerned with verbs expressing affections. Hornby (118f) describes the difference between two uses of like as follows: “Do you like fish? (This asks about a taste that is assumed to be formed and to have reached completion – a permanent state.) How are you liking your new job? (Here the progressive tense is used

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because it is assumed that the person to whom the question is put has not yet arrived at a final state of either like or dislike.)” Similarly in Nan wondered how Simon’s family were liking her and sensed a certain reservation about his mother. (Buyssens 1968, 33) the expressive effect is something like ‘what sort of opinion they were forming of her.’ In the following example, there is a slightly different effect: What a lovely day! Are you liking the world any better? (Jespersen 1954, 4: 222) The question is whether the subject is in the process of changing his attitude, whereas the simple form here would suggest the result of this process: ‘have you changed your attitude?’ To love can also express the forming of an attitude, as in: I’m simply loving Sitrano, or is it Chitrano? My Italian’s rotten. And I’ve been out here since January. (Hirtle and Bégin 1991, 111) Here the suggestion is ‘so far, up to now,’ whereas the simple form would evoke the resulting state. Far less frequent in the progressive is to prefer, which in the simple form expresses the sense of ‘liking better’ as a settled attitude. In the following example, however, the progressive indicates a different nuance: In time I could earn my keep in that world as well as the next man. All I had to do was to shut my eyes and walk in. Why did the way in seem so hard? I was in anguish, I seemed to be throwing away the substance for the shadow. What I was preferring was an emptiness of which I could give no intelligible account whatever.8 Prefer here expresses the lexical sense of ‘choosing, opting for,’ a process arising as a consequence of the state of mind the verb usually expresses. It is expressed in the progressive because the subject is depicted as involved in choosing but not carrying out it through to its conclusion, since it was being focused on an emptiness.

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In the simple form, have to expresses obligation as a settled state, but in the progressive its “meaning is modified so as to imply some activity” according to Poutsma (343). In the following use it evokes putting the obligation into operation, i.e. the actions arising as a result of the mental attitude: We are having to make some heavy reductions in expenditure … We are having to reduce or postpone some things which are in themselves desirable but not … (Visser 1973, 1967) The expressive effect here is the suggestion of something temporary, of a series of actions for which a change is foreseen or at least hoped for. And in As a matter of fact he’s having to sell his house. He’s very badly off. (Jespersen 1954, 4: 225) the subject is depicted in the middle of the process of carrying out his obligations. These examples of prefer and have to bring out a further distinction: in some uses verbs of mental event in the progressive express not a process leading up to, but one resulting from a mental state. This is also noted among verbs expressing affections. For example in She was loving him into recovery.9 the verb expresses an activity arising from the affective state of the subject. Similarly in: You’ve seen me when I was hating something … I was hating her.10 to hate expresses not the affective attitude but rather the process of manifesting this state by some perceivable means. On the other hand, in I’m hating this house party. (Kruisinga and Erades 1953, 260) it expresses the process of forming the attitude, ‘getting to hate.’ This possibility for the same verb lexeme to be actualized either

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in the sense of a mental state, or in the sense of a process – whether of forming the attitude or of manifesting it – recalls the uses of to speak mentioned in the previous section, where it was seen capable of expressing the capacity itself, a state, and acquiring the capacity, or exercising the capacity, both processes. This suggests an interesting avenue of research for the lexeme of verbs, but for present purposes the point to be remembered here is that a verb in the progressive does not represent the same kind of happening as in the simple form, that the progressive does not express a state. A third group of verbs representing mental events are those depicting perception, a group that is examined in detail in McGirr. Grammars often speak of a use like I see a plane. as a sort of exception to the rule for the progressive because they consider that here the simple form expresses an activity in progress at the moment of speaking. To understand this usage it is important first to distinguish between the act of perceiving and the image resulting from this act. Thus in the above example the speaker declares the result of perception, a state of visual awareness, whereas in His eyes! … They were seeing – surely they saw. (Jespersen 1954, 4: 187) the operation of perceiving is clearly represented, first as imperfective by the progressive (‘they were carrying out an act of perception’), and then as perfective by the simple form (‘did carry out …’). That is, the lexeme ‘see’ can express both the process and its resulting perceptual image, and occasionally as a third sense, a state prior to the act. Thus in You see whenever your eyes are open. see represents the process as a habit, a predisposition to carry out an act of perception. Similarly in I see better with my new glasses.

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the sense is habitual, ‘whenever I put on my glasses,’ or perhaps ‘can see,’ see expressing the capacity to carry out the act. In its most frequent use, of course, the simple form expresses the percept that results from an act of perception, as in the first example of see above. That is, it usually represents a stable mental image, the correlate of some extra-mental reality, as a state and so it constitutes no exceptional use of the simple form. On the other hand, there are situations where the resulting image is felt to be developing, as in the following example from a tv ad: All of what you are seeing is currently available at the Town and Country Furniture Shop … (McGirr, 11) Here, as the camera goes from one object to another, any perceptual image is felt to be incomplete since more is coming, and so to represent that image calls for the progressive. This feeling of an incomplete image is not the only impression arising from the intended message that may call for representing the resulting image as imperfective. Thus in another example from tv It’s so beautiful. At first you don’t believe what you’re seeing. “the speaker is so struck by the beauty of what he beholds (in this case, Bora Bora) that he ‘cannot believe his eyes’” (McGirr, 9). That is, it would appear to be the instability of the relationship between the sensory image and one’s knowledge (at that moment) of the outside world that gives an impression of something nonstative, of being involved in an act of imagining or hallucinating, and so calls for the progressive. Incidentally, believe could not be used in the progressive here since the whole point of the sentence is to express an initial reaction of total disbelief, not a process questioning whether what one sees is true or not. This impression confronting visual image and external reality combines with that of an incomplete series of events in: This program is a realistic depiction of fictional events. None of what you are seeing is actually taking place. (Ibid.) These uses of to see to express perception as such thus provide further manifestations of the perfective/imperfective dichotomy. This

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theory of progressive and simple forms can also help us understand usage when to see expresses analogous senses, mental events as such. It is most commonly used for the mental state of understanding, as in He was the only one who saw the truth. but can also express the prior process, as in He finally saw that he was mistaken. where the sense is ‘came to understand,’ ‘realized.’ Of course if this process is felt to be incomplete, the progressive is called for to express the sense ‘are realizing,’ as in: Naisbitt feels competition between the sexes has just given way to a new kind of cooperation based on individual contribution. Men are seeing that the old ways of wielding power cause great stress. (McGirr, 16) Finally, mixed senses consisting of the literal and the analogous in varying proportions also exemplify the same ways of representing happenings. Thus in I see another speed record was broken yesterday. see expresses a present state of belief or knowledge resulting from a past reading or watching of the news. (Another source of belief would be indicated if the resultant state were expressed by I hear that …). A quite different situation is represented by: At last I’m seeing the Mona Lisa. (Hatcher 1951, 271) Here the act of perceiving is in progress, but the sense of the verb is rather ‘there’s more to this than meets the eye.’ That is, it suggests the process of appreciation, of gradually becoming aware of different impressions arising as a result of viewing a great painting. This would contrast with the simple form: At last I see the Mona Lisa.

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This would suggest a discovery situation (cf. There it is, over there!) where see has its usual sense of expressing the visual image of an ordinary act of perception. Finally, two examples of a verb whose use in the progressive is considered “impossible” by Comrie (1976, 38): I could explain nothing and felt that I was creating some entirely false impression. Also I knew that I was not only seeming but also feeling appallingly guilty. (Hirtle and Bégin 1991, 126) Here the expressive effect is that of ‘giving rise to an appearance of guilt’ a metaphase actualization of the lexeme ‘seem’ that is not the same as its monophase actualization would be here (… that I not only seemed …). Similarly in: “I’ve reached an age,” he told his reflection, whose crow’s-feet were seeming more conspicuous than usual in the clear wintry weather, “when a man becomes selfish in small matters.” (Hirtle and Bégin 1991, 127) impressions of becoming more conspicuous than usual were just dawning on the man contemplating his reflection, just coming into focus. These few examples must suffice to suggest the variety of usage observed in verbs of mental event. In all cases examined so far, the distinction between perfective and imperfective representations of the happening corresponds with the verb form used. Thus there is no need to consider the verbs of mental event in any way exceptional insofar as the use of the simple or progressive forms is concerned. TO BE

Because it is so frequently found in the simple form that it has been called the prototypical verb of state, the copula also deserves special attention when it occurs in the progressive. This use has developed fairly recently in English, Jespersen (1954, 4: 225) giving only two examples of it before the middle of the nineteenth century,11 the earlier one from Keats (c. 1817): You will be glad to hear … how diligent I have been, and am being.

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The fact that the first attested use of the passive progressive (a fellow, whose uppermost upper grinder is being torn out by a mutton-fisted barber) dates from about twenty years before (cf. Jespersen 1954, 4: 211) suggests that a new way of conceiving the lexical import of the copula and the auxiliary had developed, a way permitting this very abstract verb to be formed by the progressive. Since then, we find the copula providing the event time for more and more varied metaphase events, the latest type of use, first attested in the 1920s, still considered “a pretty unusual construction in English” (Osselton 1980, 453). This development is in no way surprising in light of our discussion so far, where we have seen lexemes such as ‘know’ and ‘seem’ permitting both a monophase and a metaphase actualization. Today, then, we find the copula expressing activities of various sorts such as: He is being pretty tough about it. (Visser 1973, 1957) I am being as quick as I can. (Ibid.) Above it expresses a type of behaviour, whereas in It makes very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service everything that is in him. (Charleston 1960, 227) the copula expresses carrying out the activities consequent on one’s particular state in life. This can even be one’s imagined state, as in That’s our son … At the moment he’s being a flying squad car from Scotland Yard. (Visser, 1973,1957) where the progressive is used for activities arising from a makebelieve situation. These activities can be less concrete, as in the following, where the actualization of an ability is depicted: “I was sitting quietly in the library, working at the catalogue,” she began: and I guessed, by the way the phrases came rolling out, that she was at last being able to make use of the material she had prepared … 12 or in the following, where the copula helps suggest a manner of carrying out the activity:

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You’re being a precious long time about it.13 This use of the copula is restricted to persons, or rather animate subjects (and personified inanimates). Although it has become quite common over the last century or so, it betokens a notable development: the ability to represent the extremely abstract lexical residue of the copula as a moment within a metaphase stretch of duration. Equally notable is an even more recent development thanks to which the copula is now found in the progressive with an inanimate subject, as in: The bridge party was not being a success. (Visser 1973, 1958) The afternoon was being golden after all. (Ibid.) This use is also found with it as an anticipatory subject: In the second floor back it was being a very different kind of Christmas. (Ibid.) Captain Walker got back to James Bond. “Sorry about that. It’s being a busy day.” (Scheffer, 102) Only a few examples of this use with inanimate subjects have been observed so far, but in each one the subject expresses (afternoon) or implies (bridge party, it … Christmas, busy day) a span of duration involving change, and the copula depicts one moment of this developing duration by means of the progressive, so that it expresses something like ‘turning out to be … ’ In none of these examples, then, can it be claimed that being expresses a state, a monophase event involving no development from one moment to another. Thus even with the copula, the progressive is found with a developing, metaphase event, representing it as imperfective.

‘FUTURE’

USE

In lesson 6 we saw that a happening perceived to be “completely predetermined” with regard to its future realization is represented by means of the simple form. It may strike the speaker as something inevitable, as in: The sun rises at 6:15 tomorrow morning.

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or as the result of a fixed schedule or arrangement, as in: I have an exam next Monday. We saw that the verb situates in time the set of conditions guaranteeing the future realization of the event. It is the impression at the moment of speaking of ‘completude,’ of ‘totality,’ insofar as the preconditioning factors are concerned that calls for representing the happening as perfective. Here then is another example of actualizing the lexeme to express a prior state of the event. When the progressive is found in ‘future’ uses it does not express a fully predetermined event. Thus in “… But it’s a home” Harris said. “I’ll have to share it, but it’s a home.” “Who’s sharing it with you?” “I’m asking Wilson, but he’s gone away – to Lagos for a week.” (Charleston 1960, 231) the speaker expresses an intention to realize the asking. An intention can hardly be considered a scheduling of the event, but at best a first step in that direction. This impression of incomplete arrangements calls for the progressive in this type of use. Similarly in I’m giving up painting and becoming a business man. (Visser 1973, 1951) where little more than an intention is expressed, not even the event’s foreseen place in time, an important factor of predetermination, is evoked. Even where the place in time is indicated, however, the speaker may have the impression that other preconditions do not yet exist, as is obviously the case in: “Have you made your New Year’s resolutions this year Jake?” “Yep! I’m quitting all my vices! drinking, smoking, cheating.” “So you’re going to give up cheating on me.” (Hirtle and Curat, 71–2) In the following example dining suggests a prior commitment rather than an intention

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“Will you tell Mother you’re coming to dinner tonight?” “But I’m dining out already.” “Oh, well, when will you come?” (Jespersen 1954, 4: 219) and the adverb already indicates that this precondition is seen to exist in the present of speech. The simple form would not be used in any of these examples, or even in: The board of directors is meeting tomorrow for a quick consultation. (Hirtle and Curat, 69) The for phrase suggests something being organized at the last minute and so not completely arranged yet, but without this phrase the simple form could be used here to suggest a scheduled meeting. This brings us to cases where both verb forms would be possible, but with a more or less appreciable difference of expressive effect. For example in Mr. Simms, we appreciate your loneliness, but we’re tired. We’re leaving for Acapulco tomorrow. (Hirtle and Curat, 67) where the simple form would suggest something categorical, fixed, whereas the progressive evokes arrangements made so far and reaffirms the subject’s intention to carry out the event. Similarly in We are attempting the Jungfraujoch tomorrow. (Hirtle and Curat, 68) it suggests plans for people on holiday whereas the simple form would have more the effect of a training schedule. The expressive effect in We are meeting Max at 3 o’clock. is quite close to that in We meet Max at 3 o’clock. but again there is a slight distinction that might be described as that between an arrangement and a schedule, between something seen as alterable and something unalterable.

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To appreciate fully these and other ‘future’ uses, it is necessary to examine many more examples. The article from which most of these examples are taken discusses a wider sampling drawn from a far greater number of uses. There it is shown that in all examples where there is sufficient context to grasp the speaker’s message, the progressive expresses an imperfective, a moment in building up the preparatory phase of the event, whereas the simple form expresses a perfective, the preparatory phase as complete. Whether partially or fully actualized, it is the preconditions that are situated in the present of speech, in the first case attributing to the subject a variable degree of influence over the event, in the second full influence or control over its future realization. In all cases we see that the lexeme of the verb can be actualized to designate the pre-event, its preparation phase. CONCLUSION

The quite considerable number of examples of the progressive examined so far, of which the examples mentioned in this lesson are typical, all support the view that the progressive represents an event as imperfective, situating in time some but not all of its constituent lexical elements or phases. In all cases it attributes to the subject the accomplishing of what is involved in the next moment of the event, but it never situates in time the ulterior phases through to the end of the event. That is, the progressive puts the current instant of event time under the subject’s control but cannot guarantee this conditioning influence for the rest of the event, the result of which is a variety of expressive effects: ‘interruption,’ ‘incompletion,’ ‘possible continuation,’ ‘contingent realization,’ ‘ongoing actualization,’ ‘activity in progress at the moment of speech,’ and the like, depending on the particular circumstances of the sentence. A number of scholars have interpreted the fact that event time is not represented by the present participle in the progressive the way it is by the simple form to indicate that the progressive expresses a different aspect. As mentioned in a previous lesson, this view is not adopted here because, for one thing, the same argument would apply to the do + infinitive compound: event time is not represented by the infinitive the way it is by the simple form. But before the question can be discussed more fully we must examine what does constitute another aspect, namely the have + past participle compound. Indeed,

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before the progressive can be allotted its proper place in the system of the English verb, the other grammatical compounds must be examined, since it would hardly be defensible to consider that each such compound expresses a different aspect simply on the grounds that each one represents event time in its own way. After all, the simple form itself can represent event time in different ways.

LESSON THIRTEEN

The Transcendent Aspect: Perfective Events

THE COMPOUND

So far we have seen that the simple form represents an event as perfective, situating the subject in the past or the nonpast time-stretch to accomplish all the phases of an activity or the one phase of a state. Do + simple infinitive also represents an event as perfective but with two possibilities in view for declarative sentences, situating the subject in time for its accomplishment or its non-accomplishment. The progressive, on the other hand, represents an event as imperfective, situating the subject at a given moment in the past or nonpast for the accomplishing of only a portion of an activity. The third verb compound to be examined, auxiliary have + past participle, depicts the event, not from the point of view of its accomplishment in time, but from another place in time, from the event’s aftermath. That is to say, it represents a moment in time after the past participle event took place and situates its spatial support at this point in time. Because of this “ectopic” view the have + past participle compound constitutes a different aspect: it attributes to the subject not the accomplishment of the participle’s event in time but the accomplishment of whatever is entailed in that event’s aftermath. Thus insofar as the situating of the subject in time is concerned, this constitutes another event: the subject is positioned to support the event’s result phase, a phase that depends on, but does not occupy the same place in time as, the event represented by the past participle. We saw that the past participle, the third tense of the quasi-nominal mood, is called on when the speaker wants to represent a happening

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remembered or imagined as already accomplished. Since it always represents event time as accomplished it constitutes the counterpart of the infinitive, which represents event time as accomplishable. Like the other tenses of this mood, the past participle is incapable of locating its event with regard to the present, since universe time in this mood is represented as an unbroken stretch of past-oriented time. It, too, represents the happening’s spatial support by means of cardinal person (i.e. without reference to the speaking relationship) without effecting the incidence of the event to this support. Finally, since the past participle provides no span of future-oriented time in which the subject can exercise its role, it, too, requires an auxiliary verb to locate its spatial support in ascending time in order to predicate its event of a subject. Like the auxiliaries do and be, have has been dematerialized, so that it retains a strict minimum of lexical matter, the representation of an empty span of duration, which it situates outside or beyond the participle’s event. Furthermore, have, like the other auxiliaries, is fully formed grammatically and so, in the indicative, relates its span of duration to the present, situating it in either the past or the nonpast. In so doing, however, have differs from the other two auxiliaries since it determines not where the participle’s event is in time but where the aftermath event is. When, therefore, the past participle event is made incident to the auxiliary to constitute a compound, its spatial support is situated outside the event’s limits, in its result phase. This can be illustrated by the following example in the past tense: I suddenly realized that I had forgotten my keys. The compound situates its subject at a moment in the past coinciding with that of the main verb realized. At this point in the past the forgetting is over and done with, so the subject is positioned to carry out not the activity of forgetting but the next moment in the state resulting from that activity, the state of being “keyless.” This can be diagrammed as follows: forgotten forgotten

had had Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

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The curved vector depicts the incidence of ‘forgotten,’ through its spatial support, to the span of duration provided by the auxiliary. Because had situates the past participle’s spatial support somewhere in the event’s aftermath, the participle’s event is necessarily seen prior to this moment in time, a fact that has some important consequences in discourse, as we shall see in the following sections where we discuss examples. Effecting the operation of incidence that constitutes the compound thus involves situating the spatial support of the participle within the future-oriented timespan of had in order to identify it with the spatial support of the auxiliary. Thanks to this span of ascending universe time, the spatial support of ‘hadforgotten’ can now be made incident to the person of the subject, attributing to the subject the accomplishment of that event’s aftermath, of the state of affairs resulting from the prior event. In other forms of the verb, the lexeme represents the particular activity or state predicated of the subject, but with have + past participle the resulting state is not represented lexically: the state of being “keyless” is not named in the above example. All the verb does is designate its place in time as an outcome of the participle’s event. The particular state of affairs constituting the predicated event must therefore be worked out by the listener, starting with the prior event and discerning the consequences resulting from it. Because this state is what the verb predicates of the subject, the have + participle compound constitutes a different aspect of the verb. The result phase in the above example is not something the subject initiates at the moment represented by the auxiliary, but rather a consequence existing as a result of the prior event. Being a consequence of an already-accomplished condition, the result phase offers no possibility of development or change and so is always seen as a state. That is, the fact that the transcendent phase is resultative means that it will be seen as monophase regardless of whether the event that produced it was monophase or metaphase. This is why, to exercise its role as conditioner of the event, the subject is always attributed a moment of the result phase – the next moment to be actualized – as in any monophase representation, and so I in the above example is represented actualizing a moment in the state of “keylessness.” Since its role is limited to actualizing what is determined by the prior event, the subject of a verb in the transcendent aspect is in effect conditioned to a certain extent by what it has already accomplished.

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Thus the transcendent aspect is called on to represent a moment in the result phase and this moment is situated in universe time by a tense of the indicative. When the verb is in the past tense as in the above example, the participle’s event is relegated to some prior moment of the past, but when it is in the nonpast tense the situation is more complex because the moment of the result phase depicted by the auxiliary is usually situated in the present of speech. This necessarily implies that the prior event was accomplished before that, a fact that has led a number of grammarians to consider the nonpast tense of the transcendent aspect to be a past tense, an interpretation that fails to distinguish aspect from tense and so takes into account neither the visible morphology of the auxiliary nor the syntactic evidence of adverbs. We shall now turn to an examination of usage in an attempt to clarify this issue and show how the transcendent aspect and the nonpast tense work together in this verb compound.

‘CURRENT

RELEVANCE’

One of the most common expressive effects attributed to sentences with a transcendent verb in the nonpast is an expression of ‘current relevance.’ A typical example of this would be the following as a response to being asked to go to the cinema: I have already seen the film. Clearly the former act of seeing the movie is considered by the speaker a motive for refusing the invitation. That is, the prior occurrence is felt to be relevant to the present because of its effect on the subject at the moment of speaking. Because the previous seeing cannot be situated at any definite point in the past time-stretch, as it can if expressed by the simple past (cf. I saw the film last week), this use is sometimes called the “indefinite past,” an unfortunate name because it classifies the verb as a past tense in contradiction with the visible evidence of have. The error arises from focusing on the participle’s event and not on the event predicated of the subject, the resulting state of affairs, which is manifestly what the sentence is talking about. Besides, not all uses of the transcendent nonpast imply that the participle’s event occurred prior to the moment of speaking, as we shall see later in this lesson in the discussion of examples situating the event beyond the moment of speaking.

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This erroneous appellation does however tell us something valuable about the use. It suggests that the participle event is felt to be behind the speaker in time, somewhere prior to the present, because in this use the auxiliary situates a moment of the result phase at the very beginning of the nonpast time-stretch. Considered not from the point of view of the immanence of the seeing but its transcendence, this effect of ‘indefinite past’ – or better, ‘somewhere prior’ – can arise only if the person of the verb, and with it the subject, is represented in time somewhere beyond the end of the seeing. The relationships involved here can be expressed more adequately by means of a diagram: seen seen

have Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

The incidence of the seen’s spatial support to the timespan of the auxiliary both identifies it with the spatial support of have and situates it in the nonpast, leaving a lapse of time between it and the end of ‘seen.’ Some grammars have maintained that the transcendent nonpast differs from the simple past in expressing a “recent past,” but this too is a misapprehension. Insofar as an effect of ‘present relevance’ is concerned, provided there is an appreciable lapse of time it is of little importance how far beyond the end of the accomplished event the moment in the result phase is situated, as the following example shows: Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the ichthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings.1 Here the writer sees these prehistoric events as relevant today because they help us grasp the importance of the human brain, but it is our knowledge of the subjects, not the verb form, that tells us the events took place in the remote past. Similarly, in the previous example the verb gives us no idea when in the past the subject saw the film. This brings out what is constant in all examples of this type is, as Charleston (1960, 237) points out: “The present perfect thus implies that some past action conditions the present moment.”

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To illustrate the ‘current relevance’ effect of the nonpast transcendent it is sometimes useful to compare it with the past immanent, which focuses on the subject accomplishing the event in the past. Thus for a remark like I had a very busy day at the office today. a normal response would be to inquire about what happened during the day, to show a polite interest in the speaker’s day. However a remark like I’ve had a very busy day at the office today. focuses on the present situation as resulting from a busy day, the fact that the speaker is tired for example, and so calls for sympathy, an invitation to sit down and relax, etc. Similarly, the nonpast in an example already discussed I have forgotten my keys. tells us about the situation of the subject at the moment of speaking, whereas forgot here would be used in narrating a former happening. Again in She has applied for a scholarship. we understand the subject to be in the result phase of applying, namely waiting for the acceptance or refusal of the application. The simple past, however, would merely represent the realization of a happening perhaps many years previously. Like comments could be made about the following examples from various current publications: “I’ve lost 20 pounds,” J.N. said, tapping his stomach. Hunters have decimated the once abundant herds of the High Andes. Whatever his reasons, he’s written a play and not a sociological thesis. In each case the sentence expresses not the accomplishing of the past activity but an observable situation resulting from it and actualized by

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the spatial support at the moment of speaking. In the following example from a courtroom, the same individual is depicted first as the support of a present state and then as the support of the prior activity of dying that brought it about: We now have the bare bases of the prosecution’s case. What do they amount to? A woman, eighty-one years old half paralyzed by a stroke, has died. The prosecution says she did not die of age or illness but she died of drugs.2 In the following example of ‘current relevance,’ the speaker breaks all the classroom rules for auxiliary usage in order to express the present result: “The rain stopped about two minutes ago.” “So it has.” (Jespersen 1954, 4: 63) The person replying, not having seen the rain stop, can only express awareness of the outcome by situating the spatial support in the result phase and so must use the auxiliary has, not the auxiliary the rules of usage would lead us to expect, did, which would have evoked the immanence of the stopping. In some cases the only element of ‘current relevance’ is the state of mind of the subject at the moment of speaking. For example: They’ve asked us to go to Norway on their yacht at the end of June. The most obvious interpretation of this example is that “they” are now waiting to see whether or not we accept the invitation. In the next example, the transcendent brings out the knowledge acquired by the subject you as a result of the prior studying: I know you’ve studied all the variations found in Canadian stamps. This type of example has been called “the perfect of experience.” Another example of this is: I’m sure I’ve been here before.

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Here the speaker represents an impression of familiarity existing at the moment of speaking that seems to result from a former happening. Likewise, Maurice (321) suggests that, if asked the question of “whether I knew a particular house,” he might well answer Know it! I have lived in it, and left it but a month ago. thereby affirming an accumulated experience of the house, a result that persists even though the subject no longer lives in the house. In some cases the present result can be expressed by another, semantically related verb in the immanent aspect. For example, to say I have learned the poem. represents the result phase of learning and so expresses much the same thing as: I know the poem. because, in this sense, knowing is usually the result of learning. Similarly, there is little to choose between the following: We’ve already met. We already know one another. because meeting someone is generally the way we get to know them. Other examples of this notional chronology between a process and its result are I’ve caught a bad cold. I have a bad cold. and She has become quite competent. She is quite competent. There are cases where the same verb can express both process and result:

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I have understood everything. I understand everything. Here, in a situation where someone has just given an explanation, one might get the impression that there is no difference between transcendent and immanent aspects. This similarity in expressive effect can be explained if we consider the lexical shift involved here. In the first sentence the past participle represents the mental process of understanding as already accomplished so the compound situates the spatial support in its result phase. In the second sentence, the simple form represents lexically the outcome of the mental process, the state of mind. The difference between the transcendence of the process and the immanence of the resulting state of mind is so slight it is difficult to describe – perhaps the suggestion that in the former case it required a certain effort to understand. A similar case is provided by two uses of the verb assume found in the same paragraph: The empiricist approach has assumed that the structure of the acquisition device … Beyond this, it assumes that the device … 3 Here the transcendence of the process of making an assumption is equivalent to the immanence of the mental state of holding an assumption. This compensating for the difference between the two aspects by a lexical shift explains why the transcendent in I’ve heard you are resigning. could be replaced by the immanent hear with the sense of ‘understand, believe.’ The present state of mind of the subject is the result of having previously heard the information concerning the person addressed. Similarly in He has told me you are enjoying school. The teacher has said you are working hard. the transcendent nonpast represents the present result phase of the prior process. Thanks to a lexical shift in each verb, the immanent nonpast (tells, says) might have been used to attribute to the subject a present opinion based on a prior activity of telling or saying.

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BEYOND THE PRESENT OF SPEECH

So far we have seen that have of the nonpast transcendent occupies – i.e. locates the subject at – the very beginning of its time-stretch, thereby expressing the existence of the result phase in the present of speech, as illustrated above by the diagram. Since that is by far the most frequent use, some grammarians have concluded that this moment in the nonpast is the only place that have can occupy. To correct this impression, let us consider an example from an ad announcing a new airline service: We’ll be leaving every morning at 9:00 from our Worldporttm at JFK. We’ll get to San Francisco around noon. And we’ll arrive in Tokyo the next day (you’ve crossed the international date line) at 4:00 p.m. Here the verb situates you at the moment of arrival in Tokyo in the result phase of a future crossing the international date line. This shows that the nonpast transcendent can express an effect of ‘current relevance’ anywhere in the nonpast. This use is quite commonplace, as in an example like: Call me as soon as you have found his address. Here the finding is to take place somewhere beyond the present of speech and so its aftermath, as expressed by have, is even further in the future. These relationships in time can be depicted by the following diagram: found found

have have 8

8 Past Past

call call

Nonpast Nonpast

Thanks to the position occupied by prospective have, the subordinate clause can indicate the place in the future when the prospective calling is to be actualized. It is noteworthy that the immanent aspect here would express much the same thing: Call me as soon as you find his address. The reason for this equivalence is that, by means of the immanent find, the subject is carried right through to the end of the event.

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Since there is no lapse of time between the final instant of an event and the beginning of its result phase (evoked by as soon as), the two forms express practically the same thing. The following pair illustrates a similar equivalence, but we can distinguish a nuance between them: He won’t come until the play begins. He won’t come until the play has begun. According to Allen (141), the first sentence means “that he will come just at the beginning of the play” whereas the second sentence “means that he will arrive after the beginning.” Again we can see that the immanent aspect situates the subject within the event, and the transcendent aspect after the event, perhaps an appreciable time after. But we could also interpret has begun to mean the instant after, and it would differ little in expressive effect from begins. That is, as in the comparison of find vs have found above, there is little in the expressive effect to distinguish between representing the spatial support at the final instant of the event or at the first instant of its aftermath. When, however, the first instant of the aftermath is situated not at some point in the future but in the present of speech, this equivalence is not found, as we shall see in the next section. EVENTS CONTINUING UP TO THE PRESENT

Having examined the ‘current relevance’ use, we come to the second major use of the nonpast transcendent, which is often described in grammars as expressing an event extending up to the present of speech as in: He’s been on holiday for a week. In this example the subject is situated in the present of speech just after a week’s duration of the state ‘being on holiday.’ That is, the subject is represented with a week’s holiday to his credit, with the outcome of the event up to now. This differs from the ‘present relevance’ use discussed above because there is no interval separating the immanence of the participle’s event

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and the point where the subject is situated – the first instant of the aftermath; in a diagram: been been

has has Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

Nonpast

This example brings out clearly how the transcendent differs from the immanent aspect (He is on holiday for a week), which would situate the subject somewhere within the week-long event, not after it. To represent the subject as having just completed one week of holidays does not indicate that the holidays are over, or that they are not, but simply that that week-long event is over. If the sentence is about a colleague sitting at his desk on a Monday morning, bronzed and relaxed, the implication is that he is just back from a holiday. If it concerns a colleague who is still absent, the implication is ‘so far’ – i.e. that the ‘being on holiday’ continues in the present. In either case, the event is ‘perfective’ since a state can never be seen as incomplete. In short, although the holiday happening may or may not be over, the verb tells us that this portion of it has been accomplished. The implication of the happening continuing in the present would not arise if no span of time like for a week is expressed lexically because a position in the aftermath would then involve situating the subject beyond the end of the holidaying. Thus one might say: He has been on holiday. on seeing a colleague sitting at his desk quite late one evening. Here the expressive effect is one of ‘present relevance’ (he is trying to catch up on his work) because the subject is seen separated from the prior event by an indefinite lapse of time. This expressing of a result phase or after effect was felt to be characteristic of the transcendent aspect of to be, to the point that it led to a nominalization of the compound. To designate a person formerly known for excellence in a field but no longer being in that state we speak of a has-been. Another example of an event extending up to the present of speech is: I have known that for a long time.

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Again there is a suggestion of still knowing, an effect reinforced by our general experience that, once acquired, knowledge remains with us. This is why it would sound strange to leave out the for phrase here, as though one could leave the knowing of something behind in time. In the following example, which occurred in an ad for a bank, has done may appear at first sight to express an event situated at a definite moment in the past and so to constitute counter evidence to the point made in a previous section: What Chemical has done yesterday, what we’re doing today and what we’re working toward for tomorrow are all part of the tradition of giving you the very best banking service. Here, however, the sense of yesterday is obviously not ‘the day before today’ but by metonymy something like ‘in the past,’ ‘so far,’ and so done expresses a complex event stretching up to, and producing a result in, the present. Our examination of events continuing up to the present has dealt with verbs expressing a state, a monophase event. When the past participle represents an ordinary metaphase event and the auxiliary situates the subject at the very beginning of its transcendence, the compound gives rise to quite a different expressive effect. Thus in We’ve done it! the speaker wishes to express the impressions felt immediately after succeeding in some exploit and so represents the subject in the first instant of the result phase. This use can produce interesting stylistic effects, as in the following passage where the author repeats the transcendent aspect – has gone, has not said, have leapt – to describe a dramatic episode in a courtroom: … there is somewhere a kind of exercise-book and it has gone from counsel to the usher and is now in front of Nurse Stronach … There is a hovering interval during which the Attorney-General is on his feet but has not said anything, the national Press have leapt their box and are massing by the door … (Joos, 143)

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With the immanent nonpast here (goes, does not say, leap) the passage would lose much of its effect of tense drama. Since the transcendent presents us with the result of the action but no view of its being accomplished – we do not actually see the exercise-book going from counsel to usher to Nurse Stronach but simply its resulting location – there is an effect of rapidity that emphasizes the element of surprise. Similarly for the reporters leaping their box, the suggestion is that it happened so fast that the result is all we can perceive. Even the negative verb, which presents us with the result of a short interval of silence, helps bring out an element of suspense. IN THE PAST

The same relation between immanence and transcendence is found in the past time-stretch, as the following pair illustrates: They disqualified him because he was absent. They disqualified him because he had been absent. In each case it is the verb in the principal clause that determines the moment of reference in the past. In the first sentence, it is the absence that coincides in time with the disqualifying, as in the following diagram: disqualified disqualified 8

8 Past

was was

Past

Nonpast Nonpast

In the second sentence, the absence being already over, it is the aftermath of the absence that coincides with the disqualifying: disqualified disqualified 8

8

been been

Past

had had

Past

Nonpast Nonpast

Similarly, with the immanent aspect in He finished at 6 o’clock. the sentence tells us that he finished “on the hour,” as one grammarian (Owen, 57) puts it, whereas with the transcendent aspect in He had finished at 6 o’clock.

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the “context must tell us whether there was a lapse of time” between the ‘finishing’ and 6 o’clock. In examples from a linguist (Hill, 214) Mary cooked dinner when John came home. there is a sequence of two metaphase events suggesting that the cooking began immediately after John’s arrival whereas in Mary had cooked dinner when John came home. “there is an antecedent completion” of the cooking. A similar difference is observable between the two aspects in: I told the gatekeeper that we wanted to stay in the park until he shut the gates. I told the gatekeeper that we wanted to stay in the park until he had shut the gates. (Allen 1960, 143) With the immanent aspect they would get out at the last minute; with the transcendent aspect they would be locked in since the staying would last until the result phase of shutting the gates. Curme (361) makes an interested observation in this respect: “In ‘As soon as he heard that, he turned pale’ heard cannot be replaced by had heard, although in fact the person in question heard the bad news before he turned pale. The use of the past perfect here would stress the time relation too much and call the attention away from the close relation of the two acts, the one following the other immediately.” The transcendent had heard would situate he in the result phase of the hearing contemporary with the turning pale and so would not bring out the causal link between the two events. The immanent heard situates he in the accomplishment phase of the hearing prior to the turning pale and so permits the causal link involved in an involuntary reaction. In some cases the difference between the two aspects in the past is barely noticeable. Thus in Thirty years later my father still lived on the same spot where he settled first.

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the subject is represented carrying out the metaphase settled at some distance further in the past than the moment of the monophase lived actualized in the sentence. The following diagram depicts this: lived lived lived

settled settled

8

8

Nonpast Nonpast

Past Past

On the other hand, in Thirty years later my father still lived on the same spot where he had settled first. the subject is represented actualizing a moment of the result phase of settled and a moment of stative lived at the same point in the past. This can be shown by situating the two moments vis-à-vis the same point in universe time: lived 8

8 settled settled

Past Past

had had

Nonpast Nonpast

This capacity of the transcendent to evoke a prior event from the vantage point of its aftermath is often exploited in reported speech. For example in They told me G. had died two days before. the moment in the past occupied by told is seen to be contemporary with the moment in the aftermath of the dying expressed by had, the dying being seen in retrospect. In the following example, the respective positions in time are more complex: Nearly a year later the Doctor called on Mr. Sogno without an appointment … The Doctor told Mr. Sogno that Mrs. Morell had promised him her Rolls-Royce in her will and that she now remembered that she had forgotten this, and that she desired to leave him not only the Rolls-Royce car but also …” Joos, 143) At the moment of told in the past, Mrs. Morell was still in the result phase of promised, but also in the state of remembered, which had brought to an end the result phase of forgotten, as well as the state of desired.

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A more subtle effect of reported speech is found in the following passage describing the testimony of a woman in the witness box: The questions went on. Word by word the damning facts came out. On the night in question the prisoner had taken out a crowbar with him. He had returned at twenty minutes past ten and had confessed to having killed the old lady. His cuffs had been stained with blood, and he had burned them in the kitchen stove. He had terrorized her into silence by means of threats.4 The repeated use of the transcendent here has the effect of reminding the reader that the point of reference in the past is the moment of the trial in court, not the prior moment of the crime. This obliges the reader to view the events recounted through the eyes of the witness, as reported speech, a fact that has considerable importance in the later development of the novel. CONCLUSIONS

It is hoped that these examples will suffice to give a summary idea of how the have + participle compound is formed and used to express the transcendent aspect. Many more examples and comments of grammarians have been examined in my study on aspect (1975b, 32–102). Observation of facts from the vantage point of a theory can never be considered complete, however, since usage in a living language constantly finds new means of exploiting the form made possible by the system in tongue. This constitutes an ongoing challenge because, if valid, the theory of this compound will permit us to explain every use observed in discourse. Summary though it may be, our discussion has brought out two points of importance for the theory developed here. The first, concerning usage, makes it clear that in each example the subject of the compound is located either at the first instant of the participle event’s transcendence or at some later instant in it. The observation of this contrast confirms the role proposed for the auxiliary of situating the spatial support of the participle in time. Furthermore, observing this contrast is of theoretical interest because it indicates that the auxiliary have, which provides a monophase representation of an event’s aftermath, has the potential of actualizing different moments in this span of duration, either the beginning or a moment somewhere in the

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middle of it. The following diagram attempts to suggest these two possibilities by means of vertical arrows intercepting the transcendence: past participle past participle

have have

The difference between these two possible actualizations of have is that with the later interception there is an interval between it and the end of the past participle event, whereas the earlier interception, intervening at the instant immediately following the end of the event, leaves no such interval. As a consequence, the later interception can intervene at any instant in the aftermath except the first. Furthermore these are the only possible actualizations of have auxiliary because a position in an event’s transcendence must be either at the very beginning or somewhere later. Finally, the effects of these two actualizations of the auxiliary are manifested in grammars, which often describe the compound’s two most frequent uses in the nonpast as ‘state coming up to the present’ and ‘current relevance.’ The second point, following on the first, concerns the transcendent aspect as such. Like do + infinitive and the progressive, its components exist in tongue as potentials: the auxiliary as one possible actualization of the lexeme ‘have’ and the past participle as a tense of the quasinominal mood, i.e. as a grammatical category for giving a mental form – that of already-accomplished event time – to any lexeme represented as an event. Once these units of potentiality, participle and auxiliary, have been realized, once the potential matrix proper to each in tongue has been actualized for use in discourse, the participle must be made incident to the auxiliary in order to obtain a compound ready to play its role as predicate, i.e. ready to be made incident to a subject. This process of compounding differs however from that of both do + infinitive and the progressive in that the actualized activity or state expressed by the past participle is not situated in the span of universe time occupied by the auxiliary. On the contrary, the role of have is to portray a place in time after that event for its spatial support and thus to provide the condition for expressing what amounts to another event, the result phase. Because making the participle incident to the auxiliary consists in transporting its spatial support to another place in time, that of the auxiliary, and providing it with the auxiliary’s event time, this compound expresses a different aspect. This manner of compounding has several consequences. As in any verb compound, both nonfinite form and auxiliary have the same

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spatial support, and the event can be situated temporally with reference only to the auxiliary, not referred directly to the present. Most important however is the fact that the person of the verb, provided by have with a span of ascending time to actualize its event, is limited in its role. What Charleston (1960, 237) remarked for ‘current relevance’ uses – “The present perfect thus implies that some past action conditions the present moment” – applies to all the uses of the transcendent we have examined, whatever the point referred to in time: all the subject can do is ensure the persistence in time of a predetermined event, the result of the participle’s event. This limitation on the role the subject can exercise differs from that observed in the progressive form, where the subject has the role of actualizing part of the event itself, and from that observed in do + infinitive, where the subject is confronted with accomplishment/non-accomplishment alternatives. In each case, however, there is a constraint on the subject’s role that is not found in the simple form, but before examining the significance of this we must look at two other verb compounds, the so-called “perfect progressive” and the passive.

LESSON FOURTEEN

The Transcendent Aspect: Imperfective Events

WHAT IS ASPECT?

The previous lesson brought out what characterizes the have + past participle compound, namely that the spatial support of the participle (its cardinal person, i.e. the representation of person with no reference to the speaking relationship) is situated outside its event as a consequence of it being made incident to the spatial support (or, cardinal person) of the auxiliary. It will be recalled that no happening in the intended message can be represented as an event without representing a spatial entity providing it a support or setting. Person, the grammatical category for representing a spatial support, is therefore a component entering into the forming of every verb, even those that, like the past participle, cannot be made directly incident to a subject. Since the past participle depicts event time as accomplished, its spatial support is situated at the end of its timespan, once its accomplishment is finished. This position with regard to the event’s accomplishment – not prior to it as in the case of the infinitive, not in the middle of it as in the case of the present participle, but at the end of it – permits the spatial support to be situated after the event when the past participle is made incident to the auxiliary have. Thus what distinguishes the have + past participle compound from other forms of the verb in English is this displaced or ectopic spatial support. That is, other forms of the verb situate their spatial support within the confines of the event as represented by the verb’s lexeme. This point is important for an understanding of the verb system because it indicates why there are only two aspects in English: the

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spatial support of the verb, and as a consequence its subject, must be represented either within the event’s duration or after it in the result phase.1 That is to say, the simple form, do + infinitive, and the progressive all provide a span of time between the beginning and the end of the event for the subject to exercise its role as agent or setting in the accomplishment phase of the event, whereas have + participle provides a span of time subsequent to the participle’s event in the event’s result phase where the subject can exercise its role. This theory of the system of aspect in English follows from what was presented in lesson 2, namely that aspect is the category providing a grammatical representation of event time, without which a lexeme cannot be formed as a verb. Viewing aspect as a necessary component of the verb in this way is at odds with the view, proposed by a number of grammarians and linguists, that the progressive form constitutes an aspect and that the two aspects in English are the progressive and have + participle. They apparently consider that neither the simple form nor do + infinitive embody the category of aspect, and they make no attempt to explain how a verb can be formed without it. Since this alternative view of aspect offers no description of the representational processes at the basis of the category, the very conception of aspect as a category underlying this view remains unclear. Not only that, but the idea that the progressive is an aspect leads to a serious difficulty when we turn to the representation of imperfective events in the transcendent aspect by means of the so-called “perfect” progressive. The difficulty arises from the nature of grammatical systems. Whether it be a question of tense, mood, number, gender, ordinal person, etc., the positions within a grammatical system are mutually exclusive. That is to say, in a particular use in discourse a verb cannot be both subjunctive and indicative at the same time, a substantive cannot be both singular and plural, and so on. And yet those who propose that progressive and “perfect” express distinct aspects of the verb must attribute both aspects to the verb in It has been raining since noon. thus contradicting what we know of grammatical systems. This difficulty arises because aspect is understood in the sense of any variation in the representation of event time, an interpretation that in the past has led grammarians to propose a large number of aspects, even some expressed by purely lexical means (begin to …, used to …,

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etc.). If, on the other hand, aspect is understood, as in the theory presented here, in a far more general sense – as a system constituting a formative element of every verb and consisting (like any other grammatical system) of a small number of mutually exclusive positions – this difficulty does not arise when we are confronted with analyzing imperfective events in the transcendent aspect. The progressive not constituting an aspect, it can be used in both the immanent aspect (cf. lesson 12) and the transcendent aspect. This complex verb compound does however raise a problem. In lesson 12, the progressive was described as an imperfective because it represents a metaphase event as incomplete, with the subject part way through accomplishing it. The transcendent has been described as representing an event already accomplished, with the subject therefore in the result phase. At first sight it may appear that these two representations contradict one another, that an event cannot be both incomplete and already accomplished. An examination of the components of the compound however will show that they are by no means incompatible. THE COMPOUND

The compounding process, examined so far in compounds consisting of two verbs from tongue, has now to be described for a three-part compound, a construction that calls on the system of chronogenesis three times. The basic operation of incidence involved here is the same as in previous compounds, but it must be activated twice, not just once, in order to synthesize the three components into one verb of discourse. The compounding begins, as always, by calling on the lexeme – in the above example the notion ‘rain’ representing the happening the speaker has in mind – and forming it through the grammatical systems of the verb: aspect, mood, tense, and person. Raining expresses a tense of the quasi-nominal mood that determines neither the event’s place in time with regard to the present nor its place in space with regard to the speaker. The event’s spatial support is represented by cardinal person, but the event’s incidence to its support is not effected. All that is depicted here is a span of event time partly accomplished, in descending universe time. In a diagram: raining raining 8

8

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Lessons on the English Verb

In the immanent aspect of the progressive, as described in lesson 12, we saw that once the event has been represented the auxiliary is formed with its abstract lexical matter and its aspect, mood, tense, and person, enabling it to situate the event in the past or nonpast of the indicative mood. Here however the form of the auxiliary called on is been, a tense of the quasi-nominal mood and so unable to situate ‘raining’ in relation to the present. Been does nevertheless provide a span of duration as a temporal support to which the –ing event is to be made incident, and in this respect it plays the same role as an auxiliary in the indicative mood. On the other hand, been, a past participle, represents a span of alreadyaccomplished event time and this span can serve as a support only for something already accomplished. As a consequence, it is not, as with the progressive in the immanent aspect, the next instant of the present participle’s event that is to be made incident to the auxiliary but the part of the event preceding that instant, the already-accomplished portion. This moment in the compounding process, when the incidence of ‘raining’ to ‘been’ is about to be effected, can be depicted in a diagram as follows: raining been been 8

8

In this first operation of incidence, then, the import of raining is transported to the support made available by been, which provides a span of duration and a person-support for its already-accomplished portion (characterized lexically by since noon). The result is a synthesizing of their meanings that can be suggested by writing it ‘beenraining.’ To give it the temporal determination of the indicative so that it can be predicated of the subject, this synthesis must be provided with an auxiliary that will situate in either the past or the nonpast not the already-accomplished event time of ‘beenraining’ – a subject requires future-oriented time in English – but what is beyond this accomplished portion of the event, a moment in its aftermath. And so has is called on to represent a span of time in the aftermath of ‘beenraining’ and situate it in the nonpast (at its first instant in our example) to serve as a support for the event. Carrying out this second operation of incidence identifies the spatial support of the event with that of has and forms a whole

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functioning as a single verb of discourse. Making ‘beenraining’ incident to ‘has’ in this way can be diagrammed as follows: raining raining been been

has has 8

8 Past Past

Nonpast Nonpast

The outcome of these two operations of incidence is thus to identify the spatial support, the person, of the participle’s event (‘beenraining’) with that of the auxiliary has and so to make available to it the span of event time that the auxiliary represents in the nonpast of the indicative. In this span, it is not the next moment of ‘raining’ that is actualized but the situation prevailing as the result of the event up to that point (e.g. ‘so our tennis game is off’). In this way the aftermath of an imperfective event’s accomplished portion can be predicated of the subject. That is to say, the transcendent aspect can represent a position in the result phase, regardless of whether the prior event is perfective or imperfective. Turning now to usage, we shall see that, as in the case of perfective events examined in the preceding lesson, the moment in the result phase represented by the auxiliary may correspond either to the instant immediately after the accomplished portion of the event, as in the above example, or to some later instant in the aftermath. The discussion of examples that follows will bring out the two different types of expressive effect, ‘possibility of continuation’ and ‘concomitant effects,’ arising from these two ways of representing the result phase of an imperfective event by means of auxiliary have. POSSIBILITY OF CONTINUATION

In representing the result phase of an imperfective event, this compound depicts an event with the possibility of being completed. Thus in the above example, the since phrase depicts the timespan of the accomplished portion extending up to the moment of speaking with the implication that the rain is continuing. (The immanent aspect here, is raining, would not take the since phrase because it represents the event as going on in the moment of speech.) As in the case of states extending up to the present, examined in the previous lesson, it is not the grammatical representation of the event but our knowledge of the situation (rain

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does not generally stop within a few seconds) that gives us the impression that the happening is still going on. The next example is similar: They have been leaving for half an hour. The sentence implies that guests, after making preparations to leave half an hour ago, have not completed the process of leaving, thus implying that they are still lingering for further conversation, a situation likely occasioning impatience or annoyance on the part of the speaker. Sometimes the fact of representing the event as incomplete invites discussion, as in: “I’ve been thinking about that,” Mark said, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I wonder if we really understand what is driving those people so hard.”2 In the following example, on the other hand, the continuation of the event is made explicit: “But just what are you going to do?” said Bobby. “I have been thinking of that.” For a while he continued to think. “I becomes all different,” he said, “when one realises that one is not the only Sargon.” (cited in Bégin, 61) The use of the transcendent progressive indicates that he began thinking about the problem at some point in the past, and the next sentence shows that further thinking is required before he expresses his conclusion. As in uses of the progressive in the immanent aspect, the continuation of the event is not expressed, only implied, because the imperfective represents the completing of the event merely as a possibility that may in fact be excluded by something else in the situation or context. Thus, if on waking someone up we want to bring out the result of a long sleep, we might say: You’ve been sleeping since noon yesterday. Here, however, it is obvious that the subject is no longer sleeping so there is no implication of continuation, even if the imperfectivity of the event evokes it as a possibility. In a passage like

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Until this point, we have been examining club life at the higher level of the larger metropolitan areas and their suburbs. Tens of thousands of the nation’s clubs, of course, are in the small towns: service clubs, garden clubs, Optimist clubs, secret fraternal orders, women’s clubs, veterans’ posts, union clubs, and so on.3 the author indicates that his discussion so far has given a picture of city clubs. By means of the imperfective he also implies this examining might go on, but his next sentence, being about clubs in small towns, indicates that it is over. Likewise in an example from a novel We were poor and therefore slow to call a doctor. On the third day of my fever they called him … Sharp footsteps disciplined the stairs and a fat man wearing a brown vest and carrying a fat brown bag entered with my mother. He glanced at me and turned to my mother and in an acid country voice asked, “What have you been doing to this child?” (Bégin, 57) the verb focuses on the outcome of the mother’s ‘doing,’ the child’s state at the moment of speaking, and implies that the mother might well continue if the doctor did not intervene. Similarly in the past The launch had been drifting since 10 o’clock the night before. (Allen 1966, 213) the activity of drifting might have continued but it did not since the place in the past represented by had corresponds to the moment when the launch was found and presumably taken into tow. There is of course no need to express lexically (since …, for …, until …) the duration of the accomplished portion for it to extend up to the moment of speaking. For example, to indicate how tall some youngster is one might say He has been growing fast. and there is no suggestion the happening will stop. On the other hand, there is no implication of it continuing when, to express pleasure on meeting someone, people say: I’ve been dying to meet you.

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Finally, the remark Well, we have perhaps been spoiling her a little. prompted by the speaker becoming aware of the result of spoiling so far, leaves room for the spoiling to go on because, as Charleston (1955, 277) remarks, “she need not actually be spoilt as a result,” but there is no way of knowing if it will go on, whether or not the parents will change their ways. Similarly for the following up-to-now event, which arises just at the end of a television program: You’ve been watching Ski-Tips brought to you by MontTremblant. (Bégin, 78) It suggests that the watching may go on although the program is over. In some cases the accomplished portion of the event consists of a series of repeated actions. This is expressed lexically in the following example: She’s been seeing him off and on. Here the repetition is represented as an incomplete series. Its outcome might well be ‘so I presume she is mildly interested in him.’ Similarly in I see that Willard has been tinkering with the typewriter again. where again indicates a repeated happening, the expressive effect arising from the imperfective is that this may well happen in the future, so the result presumably is that the typewriter should be put out of Willard’s reach. We also find uses expressing a repetition without any lexical indication of it: The baby has been falling out of bed. Here the happening is so short and rapid that it is over before one becomes aware of it. Representing it as an imperfective event, therefore, imposes the view of an incomplete series of

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occurrences, resulting in, presumably, the intention to take means to avoid it occurring again. To say He has been forgetting to do his homework. also suggests repetition, because we are not normally aware of an act of forgetting before its result arises. Since the progressive tells us there is a possibility of continuation, we interpret the event as an incomplete series, with the consequence that something should be done to avoid it continuing. Similarly, we understand the accomplished portion of the event to consist of a series in The office has been phoning you. because a single, incomplete occurrence would be expressed by the immanent aspect (is phoning). The sentence thus permits the person addressed to conclude that the office wants to communicate with him. In these three examples the result phase of a single occurrence would be expressed by the transcendence of a perfective event (has fallen, has forgotten, has phoned). A final example of situating the subject immediately after the accomplished portion of the event brings out a nuance of recency. This nuance is quite understandable since the event does extend in time up to the moment of speaking. It is worth quoting Jespersen (1954, 4: 193), who compares perfective and imperfective in the transcendent aspect: “… in he has collected much evidence against her nothing is said about the time when he collected, the only thing said being that the act of collecting is finished at the present moment; in he has been collecting evidence against her, on the other hand, we understand that the collecting began some time before, and may be continued some time after, the present moment; therefore the implication is that it is recently that this collection has taken place.” To this it should be added that both of Jespersen’s examples express a result phase. In the case of has been collecting, it is the result of an incomplete series of activities extending up to the moment of speech. In the case of has collected it is the result of the total event, a perfective, with the subject located somewhere beyond the end of the participle’s event giving rise to an effect of ‘current relevance.’ It is now time to examine the transcendent progressive in this latter use, that is,

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when the subject is situated somewhere beyond the last accomplished instant of an imperfective event. CONCOMITANT EFFECTS

Noticing specks of paint on someone’s face, one might say: You’ve been painting the ceiling. This differs from examples in the previous section because there is no suggestion of ‘up to now.’ Indeed the remark might arise some hours after the happening. That is, have situates the subject at some distance from the last accomplished instant of ‘beenpainting.’ The following diagram shows the relationships involved here: painting painting been

have have

Past

Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

been Past

The consequence of thus intercepting the transcendence at a later moment is that the sentence does not indicate whether, in the interval between ‘beenpainting’ and the present of speech (have), the happening has in fact been completed. That is, the sentence expresses the state of the subject as a result of ‘beenpainting,’ evoking an effect arising during the accomplishing of the activity and not after its completion, a concomitant effect and not an after effect. Hornby (97) gives a clear contrast between progressive and nonprogressive in the transcendent aspect. In speaking of the example We have built a garage on to the house. he points out that the speaker is concerned with the “existence of the new garage,” the outcome of the whole process. However, in the same situation, to say We have been building a garage on to the house. “would give prominence to the activity involved, the mess and disturbance,” that is, the resulting state of the subject (we are busy or in a mess), a concomitant effect that does not presuppose that the

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building has been completed. The progressive in the immanent aspect here (are building) would simply focus on the accomplishing of the event itself. Similarly, the sentence He’s been rewriting the book all over again. may be an explanation of why the subject is so busy, but it does not tell us whether in fact the rewriting has been completed or not. The sequence of events in the following example indicates that the event has been completed: The sound of his voice had a remarkable effect on the athlete. Sir Buckstone stopped in mid-stride as if he had been hit by a bullet, then bounced toward him with consternation written on his every feature. “Joe! What are you doing here?” “I’ve been paying my bill, and am now waiting for a cab to take me up the mountainside.” (Bégin, 101) Obviously the paying is complete but is represented as an imperfective event to bring out a side effect, the subject’s presence at that moment. An example in the past tense brings out another concomitant effect: Mr. Britling had to go to the house for instructions, and guided by the underbutler found Lady Homartyn hiding in the walled Dutch garden behind the dairy. She had been giving away the prizes of the flower-show, and she was resting in a deck chair while a spinster relation presided over the tea. (Bégin, 121) To account for Lady H’s fatigue it is implied to be a side effect of the prize-giving, an activity completed at some moment prior to the situation depicted here. CONCLUSION

Our brief survey has brought out the main traits of the transcendent aspect with imperfective events.4 As in the case of the transcendent aspect with perfective events the focus is on the result phase, and as in the case of imperfective events in the immanent

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aspect (the progressive) the possibility of completion is left open. The two possible actualizations of the auxiliary of the transcendent aspect, depicting either the first instant or some later instant of the aftermath, give rise to the two different types of use discussed. The theoretical interest of this compound lies in the fact that the auxiliary of the progressive is found here in the past participle form. This calls for a second auxiliary in the indicative and thus gives rise to a three-part compound. It is even possible to find a four-part compound in English, but before this can be discussed we must examine a much more common form, the passive. Along with the compounds examined so far, the passive constitutes one of the basic grammatical constructions of the English verb. As we shall see in the next lesson, besides calling for a reexamination of both of its components, the passive brings into focus the remaining subsystem of the verb, the system of voice.

LESSON FIFTEEN

The Passive

INTRODUCTION

Grammars generally recognize the auxiliary be + past participle compound as a unit of discourse expressing passivity, indicating that the subject is related to the event not as its agent but as its patient undergoing the event. This compound is thus considered to express the passive voice as opposed to the simple form expressing the active voice. Leaving to a later lesson the comparing of these different ways of representing this subject-event relationship, here we will examine voice as a system of the verb, analyzing the be + past participle compound in an attempt to see how its components condition the verb’s incidence to the subject so as to result in the expression of a passive relationship. Considering the passive as a system of the verb in this way, we will explore how a passive sentence derives its ‘passive’ meaning from the verb and so avoid the circularity involved in explaining the passive by means of its effect on the sentence as is so commonly done (cf. Beedham, 3ff.). In previous lessons we have seen how the makeup of the verb conditions the subject’s relation to the event. The simple form depicts the subject’s accomplishment of the event either as a possibility in the subjunctive or as a reality (actual or prospective) in the indicative. Previous lessons on compounds have brought out that each nonfinite form – infinitive, present participle, and past participle – positions the verb’s spatial support (cardinal person) differently with regard to the event, and this results in a different subject-event relation. The passive compound results in the most obvious contrast with the simple form in subject-event relationship, a contrast concerning

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the control of the event. As when examining the other compounds, we will first look at the components of the passive and how they are compounded to form a verb of discourse. We will then go on to distinguish it from certain uses that have been confused with the passive and finally illustrate its use with different types of event. THE COMPOUND

The passive verb in each of the following sentences represents a dynamic happening unrolling from beginning to end before the moment of speaking: They were married in the cathedral. The building was demolished during the war. That is, the verbs represent the happenings of being married and being demolished as events that are lexically metaphase (non-stative), perfective (all phases realized), in the immanent aspect (subject positioned within the event), and in the past tense of the indicative. As in most of the examples examined so far in these lessons, the verb predicates the event of the subject (declarative sentence), but what distinguishes these is that the subject is not understood in an agentive role with regard to the activity. The sentence expresses the subject as undergoing rather than promoting the event’s accomplishment, as being passive rather than active, a fact that helps throw light on the function of subject by showing that an agentive role is not essential to it. Notwithstanding this observable difference in the subject’s role, it is the verb, not the subject, that manifests a distinctive grammatical form. We must therefore seek in the verb compound, not in the subject, the conditions for representing and expressing passivity in these sentences. As usual we will do this by considering the passive compound not as an unanalysable block but as a construction, a unit that is not merely the sum of its component parts. Its parts are visible in the sentence, but the relation between their meanings – what makes them into a unit of discourse – is not visible and can only be discerned through analysis. Our first task then is to understand this relationship, to see how it is that the same auxiliary as in the progressive, be, and the same quasinominal tense as in the transcendent aspect, the past participle, can produce a compound that is neither progressive nor transcendent.

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Instead, like the simple form, it predicates the immanence of a perfective event, but here it is an event that puts the subject in a non-agentive position. To explain this quite different relationship between event and subject, we have to examine the conditions of representation within the verb giving rise to it. More specifically, we need to understand how the incidence of the event to intra-verbal person, its spatial support represented within the verb, can produce an effect of passivity on the subject, its spatial support represented outside the verb. We begin as always by analyzing the components of the compound in the order of their mental assembling. The operation of chronogenesis is first activated to produce the past participle (married, demolished), which imports a durational lexeme formed grammatically as an event with already-accomplished event time and a spatial support. Being a tense of the quasi-nominal mood, the event’s place in universe time is left undetermined and the incidence to its spatial support is not yet effected. So far, then, there is no difference from what we saw when examining the past participle in the lesson on the transcendent aspect. Activating the process of chronogenesis a second time results in the auxiliary, which imports not an event but merely a span of duration that coincides in time with the participle’s event. This timespan is formed grammatically by means of the past tense of the indicative, were and was in the above examples, and provided with its own spatial support. Thus the auxiliary’s import makes available both a place in the past time-stretch as a temporal support for situating the participle’s event and a future-oriented span of event time for its spatial support. This span of forward-looking event time of the auxiliary provides the condition for the event’s spatial support to participate in the event’s realization, thus making possible the verb’s incidence to the person of the subject. In this respect, there is no difference between be as auxiliary of the passive and as auxiliary of the progressive. A difference does arise, however, when we examine what happens when these two verbs, auxiliary be and past participle, are combined by means of incidence. The participles married and demolished represent event time only as accomplished (not like the present participle as partly yet to be accomplished), whereas the auxiliary be represents a span of duration inside the event (not after it like have). As a consequence, what is made incident to the place of was or were in the past time-sphere is the span of already-accomplished

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event time, not the next moment of event time to be accomplished (as in the progressive). Not only this. The timespan provided by the auxiliary in the above examples is not just one moment within the event’s duration but its total duration. That is, was and were here provide a place in the past for a beginning-to-end view of the event, a perfective view including all the phases of each activity. The relationship involved can be shown in a diagram by depicting the instant in the compounding process when married is about to be made incident to were: married married were were 8

8 Past Past

Nonpast Nonpast

Effecting the incidence of married to were situates the event’s accomplishment in the past and identifies its spatial support with that of the auxiliary, thus providing the support with a span of futureoriented time. This enables the support (or, person) of the event to be made incident to the person of the subject, and in this respect the compounding process here is like that of the other compounds. However the conditions prevailing here are different: married imports already-accomplished event time to the auxiliary and were provides an immanent support, situating the spatial support inside the event (not outside it like have). As a consequence, each phase of the event is represented taking its place in time as a moment already realized, and this, phase by phase, from the beginning to the end of the event. That is, the spatial support, intraverbal person, is put in the position not of carrying out the event as a whole or even its next moment but merely of providing a spatial setting for it once it has been carried out. This appears to be the role to which person is reduced in the passive, a minimal role of support permitting the event to take its place in time but without otherwise contributing to the realization of the event. Reduced though it may be, it is nevertheless a necessary role because an event can be situated at a given place in time only if its spatial support is seen at that place in time This point is worth dwelling on for a moment because it is crucial to understanding the passive compound. In discussing the tenses of the quasi-nominal mood we saw that it was necessary to suppose the representation of person within the verb because it is not possible to imagine an event – say ‘running’ – without some spatial support,

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someone or something doing the running. Cardinal person provides this support. Here we see that, as conceived in the above examples, the events cannot be represented without, as spatial support, someone or something subjected to the ‘marrying’ and the ‘demolishing.’ In the morphogenesis of the past participle, cardinal person represents the spatial support as either promoting the event or as undergoing it, whence the possibility of using this participle with either have or be. In the discussion of mood (lesson 3), we saw that, to represent an event in the real time of the indicative, its spatial support must be situated at the same place in the past or the nonpast as the event. That is, the person of any verb in the indicative must be located in time for the event to be situated at that point. Indeed, it is for this reason that a verb in the transcendent aspect is different: with its spatial support positioned by auxiliary have in the result phase, it situates in time not the event of the participle but the aftermath event. The auxiliary be, however, positions its spatial support within the development phase of the event, and so the person of a passive verb is situated in the event’s immanence ready to support the past participle event’s realization. Thus the person of the verb is ready to proceed through the verb’s span of universe time supporting successively each phase or moment of the past participle’s import not as the next to-be-accomplished phase of the event as in the progressive but as its latest already-accomplished phase or moment. It follows that intra-verbal person is in a position not to carry out the event or any part of it but simply to situate in time what it has not brought about. Once the compounding process depicted in the above diagram is completed and the predicate constituted, the process of predicating can take place, that is, the predicate can be made incident to its noun-phrase support. The outcome of this, of course, is that the event is said of the subject. For this to be achieved, the person of the verb must be identified with that of the subject, and this involves putting the subject in time where the event is situated. As a consequence, in the above example we understand the subject they to be the spatial entity moving through were’s span of time in the past and providing the support – just-accomplished moment after just-accomplished moment – from the beginning to the end of the event married. Because it receives the event already accomplished in this way, the subject is in a non-agentive stance and so is felt to have

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a passive role, even though it is the verb that has the distinctive grammatical form. It remains that they is a full-fledged subject because it provides a spatial support in time for the event, a condition without which that event could not have taken place. Analyzing the passive compound in this way may appear a complicated process that could be avoided by simply treating the compound the way some grammars do: as an unanalyzed unit expressing passivity. On the other hand if we are to take into account both semantic and formal criteria, as with the verb forms examined so far, the fact that both the auxiliary and the participle are found in other compounds cannot be ignored. This entails discerning the meaning each form contributes to its compound and comparing them in order to see why the same tense of the quasi-nominal mood can be used to form the transcendent aspect and the passive voice, and why the same auxiliary is found in the progressive and the passive, a question we will return to in the next lesson. Moreover, this analytical approach helps us understand why the combination of auxiliary be and past participle forms a verb compound putting its subject in a passive position with regard to the event by hypothesizing that the subject-verb relationship expressed by the passive voice is the result of making already-accomplished event time incident to the verb’s spatial support. This hypothesis thus helps explain what is observed better than simply accepting the compound as an unanalyzed block. Like any other hypothesis resulting from analysis its validity can be established only by confronting it with various observed uses. Before going on to look at particular uses, however, we will examine two constructions often considered to be passives but that in fact are not. RIPE ORANGES PEEL EASILY

Buyssens (1979, 750) gives this sentence as an example of “the active voice with passive meaning,” thereby posing the problem, already seen in discussing mood in lesson 3, of taking into account both formal and semantic criteria: meaning would appear to contradict form. Buyssens defines passive sense in terms of transitivity and logical subject and so interprets peel as equivalent to are peeled because “this can’t happen without a human hand.” Quirk et al. (170) paraphrase the verb winds “can be wound up” in the following example:

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The clock winds up at the back. They describe it as a “‘notional passive’ with an intransitive active verb,” treating it (1565) as a case of the “conversion” of a transitive into an intransitive verb. Sweet (1891/1955, 90), discussing the example The book sells well. calls the verb “passival” and argues that “Transitive verbs are sometimes used without an object-word [because] … their grammatical subject is logically their direct object.” This view is based on the assumption that these verbs are stocked in a mental lexicon as transitive but are somehow “converted” or simply “used” intransitively. As a consequence, the simple form, generally considered to express the active voice, is here described as expressing passivity. Whatever the merits of this approach may be it dissolves the tie between simple form and active voice here. To maintain that the active voice expresses passive meaning breaks any coherent link between sign and meaning in the voice morpheme. We will see that other grammarians suggest a different view. Although Jespersen (1954, 3: 349ff) also considers this a use of the active voice expressing a passive meaning he rejects Sweet’s view and discusses it in light of common examples like the following: The train stopped: the train was stopped. The stone rolled on: the stone was rolled on. This transitive-intransitive “doublesidedness” commonly found in verbs like these was, according to Jespersen (350f), extended to “other verbs, where it is not so natural to the meaning of the verb itself … [as a consequence] When we say ‘his novels sell very well,’ we think to some extent of the books as active themselves, as the cause of the extensive sale … The sentence therefore is descriptive of something that is felt as characteristic of the subject …” What Jespersen seems to be suggesting here is that the way the event ‘sell’ is carried out, very well, is newly perceived as conditioned by the particular quality or makeup of his novels. A similar interpretation would apply to the previous examples: oranges peel easily because they are ripe, and wind up is carried out at the back because the

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clock, being made that way, is perceived as a determining factor in the event’s accomplishment. Speaking of the example Alabaster cuts very smooth and easy, Hatcher (1943, 12) also sees the subject “represented as possessing in itself the capacity of functioning easily.” This view is further illustrated by Jespersen’s pairs given above: the sentence with the passive verb implies an outside agent whereas the one with the active verb does not. That is, the passive or active sense of a sentence is determined by the relation between its subject and predicate, not by the fact that the verb is used as a transitive in other sentences. In another passage, Quirk et al. (744) also consider that this construction “does not correspond to a transitive construction” because it “imputes a characteristic to the referent of the subject.” Erades (36–7) expresses this view more explicitly: “the subject is represented as having certain inherent qualities that promote, hamper, or prevent the realization of the idea expressed by the predicate … the subject of the intransitive verb is at the same time the agent: his books sell suggests that they sell themselves. There is no thought of an outside agent.” This brings us back to the view discussed previously, that a lexeme exists as a potential in tongue with no grammatical strings attached. As a consequence, ‘peel,’ ‘wind,’ and ‘sell’ can be used as either transitive or intransitive according to the needs of expression and the possibilities of the lexeme. Indeed, the dictionary lists examples like The paint is peeling off, The river winds through the valley, and Fall suits are selling briskly to illustrate intransitive usage, sentences whose expressive effects can hardly be described as “notional passives.” What makes the above examples striking is, as Jespersen suggests in the above citation discussing novels, the innovation involved in considering that oranges, clocks, and books play an agentive role with regard to those particular events, especially since these sentences express not the actualizing of the event but rather the capacity or predisposition of the subject making its actualization possible: ‘ripe oranges make easy peeling possible,’ ‘the clock makes winding-at-the-back possible (or even necessary),’ ‘his novels make extensive sales possible.’ As Poutsma (66) observes, we even find this sense of sell in “an agent-noun”: a big seller. Because of the effect of novelty, this use is not infrequent in ads. Buyssens gives the following example: Dulex Carpet Squares scrub clean in no time.

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The whole point of the ad is to suggest that the subject makes the event possible and certainly is not intended to imply that “a human hand” is required to do the scrubbing. Likewise for the following sentence found on the label of a bottle of vegetable oil It fries, it bakes, it salads. there is certainly no suggestion of the subject being in a passive situation. Where the novelty has worn off, and one is no longer surprised that a given verb is used intransitively, this use is hardly noticed. The following is a typical example of this: If, in the maiden days of the Dodson sisters, their Bibles opened more easily at some parts than at others, it was because of dried tulip-leaves which had been distributed quite impartially, without preference for the historical, devotional, or doctrinal.1 The latter part of the sentence makes quite clear what in their Bibles promoted the opening more easily at some parts than at others. The idea that this type of use involves perceiving a new relation between the subject and the particular event indicates why some examples in Jespersen strike us as quite acceptable now – four babies, none of whom photographed well; his letters read stark and bald as time-tables – others as quite unusual if not marginal – cut out the rotten from your apple, your apple eats the better; That doesn’t listen so bad. Sounds racy. Furthermore, when Visser (1963/1970, 154) considers the house builds, the shoe fastens, the cream whips, and the clock winds “impossible to say,” it may well be because he had not perceived an agentive relationship making it possible to link the substantive to that verb in the active voice. If we imagine an ad for a child’s toy saying “the house builds in half an hour,” or a contrast with a shoe that laces, a cream that does not whip, a battery-powered clock, such uses no longer appear impossible. Similarly for the ambiguity of She takes a good picture: to understand ‘she is a good photographer’ simply recognizes that the quality of a picture depends on the photographer; to understand ‘she is photogenic’ recognizes that it also depends on the subject photographed. The point of this discussion is to show that what is involved here is the relation at the very basis of voice, that between subject and event. It is not sufficient to categorize these uses as passive simply because, in the grammarian’s experience, that subject has always been used with the passive compound of that verb. Rather, as Jespersen,

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Hatcher, Erades, and even Quirk et al. suggest, the use of the active voice here brings out a particular expressive effect: a characteristic of the subject promoting the event’s accomplishment. Thus, instead of the nail-polish removes easily (Hatcher 1943, 13), one could say the nailpolish can be removed easily, but this would depict the subject as simply a necessary condition for the removing, not as a factor whose makeup promotes it. That is to say, the system of voice is at the disposition of the speaker to represent the relationship between a particular happening and its spatial support as it is perceived in the intended message. Granted the promotional or agentive relationship attributed to the subject in this use, we are led to consider that these verbs express an active meaning and that there is therefore no contradiction between the formal and semantic criteria.

“PSEUDO-PASSIVES” An interesting discussion in Quirk et al. (167–71) brings out a type of expression that is easily confused with the passive compound. For example, there is a superficial similarity with the passive in: The building is already demolished. This similarity should not be permitted to mask the difference in meaning between the two. Here, according to Quirk et al. (170), “is demolished denotes a resultant state … it refers to a state resulting from the demolition, rather than to the act of demolition itself … the verb be in this case being the copula rather than the passive auxiliary.” The passive, on the other hand, as in The building is rapidly demolished at the end of the film. would represent a quite different event, the carrying out of the demolishing. The fact that a difference of meaning expressed by copula + complement vs the passive compound is discernible without difficulty in most cases, raises the question of how the two constructions differ, how their preconscious operations of representation can produce such different results. An example and comment from Curme (445) suggests a lead: The door was shut at six when I went by, but I don’t know when it was shut.

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Curme brings out the different meanings expressed by the copula and the passive constructions in his comment: “The first was shut … is used to denote a state, the second was shut to denote an act.” The fact that the participle in the copula construction expresses “a resultant state,” as Quirk et al. point out, is pertinent here since this can only be conceived of as arising after the activity of shutting. We have already seen verbs whose lexeme can be actualized to express either an activity (I am thinking about it) or a state resulting from that activity (I think you’re right), so there is nothing surprising in finding that shut can express both. What is noteworthy here is that shut in its ‘resultant state’ sense appears to function as an adjective, if one can judge by substituting its opposite into the sentence: The door was open at six when I went by, but I don’t know when it was opened. Since open is an adjective here, shut fulfilling the same function would appear to be the participle used as an adjective, not as a verb. It cannot therefore be part of a verb compound. The same applies to demolished in the above example from Quirk et al. The fact that the lexeme of many verbs can represent either the activity or its resulting state makes it essential to clarify the context and situation of any be + past participle example to understand which sense the speaker is expressing, i.e. whether it is the passive or the copula construction. Another example from the discussion in Quirk et al. will be helpful in distinguishing between the two because it could be ambiguous: We are encouraged to go on with the project. Perhaps the more obvious interpretation here is to take encouraged in its adjectival use and are as the copula so that the sentence expresses the subject’s state of confidence and optimism (‘we feel encouraged’). On the other hand, if the situation is that of a series of consultations concerning the utility of a research project, the verb could also be interpreted as the passive compound with the lexeme actualized in a monophase, ‘habitual’ sense: ‘we are consistently encouraged by those we consult.’ The use of the passive compound would come out more clearly in the past tense: We were encouraged to go on with the project.

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Since a beginning-to-end view of the event can be situated in the past, we can get a ‘dynamic’ sense (‘they encouraged us’), which would contrast with a possible ‘stative’ interpretation (‘we felt encouraged’). Examples like these bring out the fact that a participle can have both verbal and adjectival uses, that it is a quasi-nominal form. This question of usage is examined in Huddleston and Pullum (78f) from the point of view of the effects of the function on syntax, but to explain these effects we must, as always in a word-based analysis, understand what difference is involved in forming the participle to permit each function. What variation in the morphogenesis of a past participle permits a word like encouraged to fulfill either a verbal function as part of a verb compound, or an adjectival function as complement of the copula? We can perhaps get a lead from a view of Guillaume’s concerning the adjective. He sometimes points out (e.g. 1990, 110f) that, as compared with the substantive where person is represented, person in the adjective is “negative,” i.e. not represented. As a consequence, when it occurs in a sentence an adjective, unlike a substantive, has no internal support for its lexical import and so must seek through external incidence a support outside itself in a substantive. This would suggest that when an adjectival function is foreseen for a past participle like encouraged its person is “negative,” i.e. it is not provided with a representation of its spatial support. As a result, its lexeme, actualized as the state resulting from the process, has no internal spatial support and so is made incident to an external support, the person of the copula, which in turn relays it to the subject. Regarding the participle in this light is of interest since it links an adjectival use of the participle to the morphogenesis of the adjective, but before it can be considered as more than an interesting lead for research it must be confronted with the participle’s other adjectival uses, a task that must be undertaken in examining another part of speech, the adjective. It remains that, on the level of discourse, interpreting ambiguous cases2 like the above to distinguish between passives and copula + adjectival use, “pseudo-passives”, calls for a knowledge of the context and situation since the difference of meaning is often not indicated by the signs expressing it. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the passive compound itself can express ‘stative’ as well as ‘dynamic’ events, uses we will now illustrate briefly.

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THE PASSIVE WITH MONOPHASE EVENTS

Jespersen (1954, IV, 98) comments on the example His bills are paid. as expressing “the (present) result of a past action as in ‘His bills are paid, so he owes nothing now’ = ‘he has paid.’”3 This is a case, not of the passive, but of what we have just discussed, the copula with complement expressing a resultant state of the subject. It is to be contrasted with the passive verb in: His bills are paid regularly every month. Here are paid expresses the event as a habit, which, it will be recalled, involves a monophase representation of the conditions governing the repeated actualization of the event. That is, the verb here expresses a state, that of the set of conditions ensuring the paying, not the state resulting from paying. The subject is represented as the non-agentive support of a perfective event (a state cannot be incomplete) in the present of speech, a habit. The following examples, which, like most of the examples of the passive here, are taken from Visser 1973, are similar: It is said there are hundreds of people in this curious city who never have seen a living horse in their lives. … a very strong sense of solidarity with the people he served and was served by. In the first example, is said depicts the current moment of what is usually reported and could be paraphrased by “they say,” they in its generic use. In the second example, was served expresses a moment in the past of a habitual event (though it might also be understood as an ordinary state). In each of these cases, the subject provides a support for a moment of the event not, as in the active voice, in an agentive fashion to realize it but to receive it as an already-realized moment, to be subjected to it. The passive compound can also express the present moment of an ordinary ‘stative’ event, as in: The house is owned by someone who lives in a nearby city.

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Here, the verb expresses the maintaining-in-existence of the owning during the present of speech. This can be suggested by the following diagram where the latest realized moment of the state is ready to be made incident to the first moment of the nonpast represented by the auxiliary: owned owned

is is Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

As was explained in lesson 6, the duration of the state of owning can be imagined extending in both directions as far as the situation may suggest since the auxiliary situates only the contemporary moment in time. In this example, there is little danger of confusing the passive compound with the copula construction because of the byphrase. The following examples of this use do not express an agent: You are held wise, my friend. You will feel that you are owed some compensation. So protected, the purchaser is guaranteed better terms. The impression of an ongoing event appears to arise from the subject’s undergoing or receiving – being subjected to – the event in the present moment, with the implication that someone ‘holds (= judges) you wise,’ ‘owes a compensation,’ ‘guarantees better terms.’ That is, each of these happenings could have been represented as a state in the active voice but with a different spatial support. The point here is that even with a state in the nonpast the subject of a passive verb is represented as supporting in time the latest realized moment of its event, as depicted in the above diagram. Thus even though it has no agentive role of actualizing the event, the subject of a passive compound does fulfill a necessary role as a support – necessary because without the purchaser, you, the house, the event could not have taken its place in time. This supporting role of the subject is more evident in the case of metaphase events. THE PASSIVE WITH METAPHASE EVENTS: PERFECTIVES

Because a verb whose lexeme is actualized to depict a metaphase event generally gives rise to a recognizable ‘dynamic’ expressive

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effect, its passive compound is often more easily recognized, as in the following examples: Permission was granted me for a short visit. We were jeered at and sometimes pelted with mud. She scarcely dared let the infant out of her sight, lest it be made away with. As in cases of the simple form examined in lesson 5, the events here are perfective. That is, already-accomplished instant by already-accomplished instant, the total duration of the events in the first two examples, the granting and the jeering, is situated in the past. As for be made away with, because it is in the subjunctive it represents the already-accomplished event as a possibility in time. Here then the subject is understood to sustain, to be subjected to, each already-accomplished moment of the event from beginning to end, thus fulfilling a necessary condition for the event to be represented in time. Even the possible or imagined existence of the support in time is enough to meet this condition. In the experiential reality represented by the following sentence, the happening brought its spatial support into existence: This type was developed by genetic modification. Although the real existence of this type arises only at the end of the developing, its potential existence suffices to provide a spatial support for the event. Such considerations may help us explain the following examples from Visser, where abstract it and there serve as supports: It is learnt with regret that a sad accident occurred yesterday on the estate of … During that winter there was given a series of concerts of music for strings and wood-wind. There is much to be explored to clarify the subject-event relationship in such cases, and in the passive as a whole, but we cannot pursue the question any further here since our aim is to give an overview of the passive.

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Most passive compounds express a perfective event, either monophase or metaphase, as illustrated by these examples and those in the preceding section. Disregarding for the moment this lexical monophase vs metaphase distinction, we can see what these examples have in common: in each case the past participle represents its event time as already accomplished, imposing it as a sort of fait accompli on the spatial support. This initial relationship between event and spatial support determines the voice of the verb: where only past-oriented, already-accomplished event time is incident to the spatial support, as with past participle + auxiliary be, the verb will be passive; where only future-oriented, to-be-accomplished event time is incident to the spatial support, as in the simple form, the verb is active. That is, once the verb’s spatial support, its cardinal person, is positioned either to undergo or to undertake the event’s accomplishment, it can be made incident to the cardinal person of the subject, positioning it with regard to the event in the same way. This explains why, in a sentence, we understand that the subject has a passive or active role whereas the verb form varies for voice. This view of voice, being based on a relation fundamental to the verb, that between event and person, also shows why voice is found in every verb form. And there are other verb forms where it is particularly manifest. THE PASSIVE WITH METAPHASE EVENTS: IMPERFECTIVES

As we saw in a lesson 12, metaphase events, unlike monophase events, can also be represented as imperfective, and this gives rise to a different verb compound. Depicting a happening as an imperfective metaphase event calls for the progressive passive in: The soldiers are being prepared for immediate departure. As in the case of the transcendent progressive examined in the previous lesson, this brings in a three-part compound with two auxiliaries and two operations of incidence to complete the process of compounding. Here, however, things are a bit more complicated because it involves the same auxiliary, be, in two different uses. To understand the makeup of the passive progressive we will attempt to distinguish between the two uses of the auxiliary and see how the

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two processes of incidence are integrated here to form a single compound. To do so we will rely on the above analysis of the passive as well as the analysis of the progressive provided in lesson 12. As with the compounds examined so far, the passive progressive can be analyzed starting with the lexical component representing the happening. Since the speaker intends to talk about the soldiers in the purposed sentence, the ongoing happening is seen in relation with a non-agentive spatial support, a support subjected to the preparing. As a consequence, the happening is represented by means of the past participle with past-oriented, already-accomplished event time. As we saw in lesson 12 on the progressive, to provide a means for situating in time the past participle event’s immanence calls for be, the auxiliary of the passive. (The auxiliary have would situate the event’s transcendence in time.) Making prepared incident to the passive auxiliary actualized as are, however, would not represent the happening as perceived in the intended message: are prepared would suggest a habit, a perfective event, and what the speaker wants to attribute to the soldiers is a single incomplete activity. That is, the preparing must be represented as imperfective. As we saw in lesson 12 on the progressive, representing an event as imperfective involves locating the spatial support at some moment between the beginning and the end of the event, dividing the event between an already-accomplished portion and a portion yet to be accomplished. The only form of the verb capable of representing this view of event time is the present participle. Thus the passive auxiliary is evoked in the form of its present participle, being, which can offer a support for that part of event that has already taken place, leaving open the possibility of subsequent moments taking their place in time. The compounding process at the point when this first operation of incidence is ready to be realized can be suggested in a diagram as follows: prepared

being being 8

8

This diagram shows that what is incident to being is prepared’s already-accomplished event time, and in this respect the relation between event and passive auxiliary is the same as that described above with perfective events. On the other hand, because it is imperfective

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here, only part of the event’s development, only the first phases of the preparing, are made incident to the passive auxiliary. The remaining phases are therefore evoked only as possible, as yet to be realized, giving rise to an effect of incompletion in the sentence. The next step in forming the verb in the example is effecting the incidence, depicted in the preceding diagram as prospective, to give the first compounded meaning, ‘beingprepared.’ In thus providing a support for the import of prepared with its accomplished event time, being, a quasi-nominal form, relates this to a span of descending universe time. To make the event predicable of a subject, however, a span of future-oriented time wherein the subject can exercise its support role must be provided. Hence another auxiliary is required, an auxiliary in the indicative, as a support for the imperfective ‘beingprepared,’ and this is be again, but as the auxiliary of the progressive, which here situates the contemporary instant of the event in the nonpast. The following diagram depicts this second operation of incidence on the point of being effected: prepared prepared

being being are are

NonpastNonpast

8

8

Past Past

Carrying out this operation of incidence completes the constructing of the verb compound by situating in the present of speech the most recent moment of already-accomplished event time. By the same token, it makes possible the verb’s incidence to the external spatial support in its subject thanks to the future-oriented time of the nonpast. This analysis calls for a comment on the double use of auxiliary be in the same verb compound. There is a difference between the event’s incidence to be as passive auxiliary and its incidence to be as progressive auxiliary, and this difference is important here. In both cases the auxiliary provides a support for a part of the event’s development. In the discussion of the progressive we saw that, as an auxiliary for a present participle event, be situates in past or nonpast time the next moment of the event to be accomplished, the moment beyond the limit dividing the event. This was illustrated by the following diagram:

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singing singing

are Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

Nonpast

In this way, the progressive puts the subject in a position to realize the singing’s next moment to be accomplished. As an auxiliary for a past participle event, on the other hand, be provides a place for alreadyaccomplished event time, and so can situate only the accomplished portion of prepared in the above example, imposing it on the spatial support. This helps bring out why the difference between the two uses of be auxiliary here results in a difference of voice: in the case of the progressive, be + present participle presents a to-be-accomplished moment of the event and so gives its subject an agentive role; in the case of the passive, be + past participle presents an already-accomplished portion of the event and so does not give its subject an agentive role. A comparison of the above diagrams shows that the auxiliary’s role in each case is to provide a support for the event time imported by the participle. We shall return to this difference in the next two lessons. The following, from Visser, are other typical examples of this compound: … her snug domain, every scrap of which was being sat or stood or leaned upon by tobacco-scented, coffee-drinking farmers, farm helpers, and ranch hands. Juvenile audiences do not like to feel that they are being talked down to. We are being swum to. Each of these examples and others examined so far can be analyzed in the same way. The remarkable thing about this compound is the use of the auxiliary be in its two uses. The passive auxiliary (being) as always provides a support for what is already accomplished in the event. The progressive auxiliary (was, are), as always when in the indicative, provides a place in time for the next moment of the event to become a reality. As a result, when made incident to the subject the verb expresses the most recently accomplished moment of the event taking its place in time while leaving open the possibility of further development, as always with an imperfective event. Although the subject is

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not seen as the agent, it is seen as a necessary condition of the event, providing a support in time accompanying the event throughout its duration. That is to say, without every scrap of the snug domain, without they, without we existing at that moment in time there would have been no being sat or stood or leaned upon, no being talked down to, no being swum to. The noun phrase fulfills its function as subject by ensuring the event’s taking place at the moment depicted in the past or the nonpast. Things are a bit different in the transcendent aspect. THE PASSIVE IN THE TRANSCENDENT ASPECT

So far we have seen that the be + past participle compound can be exploited to attribute to a non-agentive spatial support events perceived as perfective (either monophase or metaphase) or as imperfective (always metaphase). That is, it can be used to represent the different types of event we have examined in the immanent aspect. This compound can also contribute to representing events in the transcendent aspect, giving rise to a verb that predicates an event’s result phase of its subject, as in: The soldiers have been prepared for immediate departure. To analyze this compound we shall as usual begin with the lexically “heavy” component, prepared. Again we see that the verb system provides a past participle with its already-accomplished event time incident to a spatial support to represent a happening perceived to be a complete activity, as in this example. The auxiliary of the passive, also formed as a past participle, represents its own spatial support within the event ready to be identified with the event’s support as receiving the event already accomplished. The scenario for this first operation of incidence, which makes prepared the import of meaning and been the support, can be diagrammed as follows: prepared prepared been been 8

8

Effecting this operation of incidence gives a combination of import and support, ‘beenprepared,’ representing the event with a

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non-agentive spatial support. This must now be made incident to a span of indicative time with a spatial support capable of becoming incident to the subject. Since the result phase of the preparing is to be predicated of the subject, it calls for the auxiliary have, which always situates its own spatial support in the transcendence of whatever import it receives. It also calls for an operation of incidence for the spatial support of the import, ‘beenprepared,’ to be identified with that of have. The realizing of this second operation of incidence can be illustrated as follows: prepared prepared been been have have 8

8 Past Past

Nonpast Nonpast

The outcome of this operation is to identify the non-agentive support of ‘beenprepared’ with the person of have so that it is situated after the preparing at the first moment of the nonpast. As a consequence, the person of the verb compound is in a position to support the result phase in the nonpast and attributes this role to the subject once the incidence of verb to subject is effected. That is, the soldiers are understood to have undergone the preparing and at the moment of speaking to be keeping in existence the state of preparedness resulting from it. This role of the subject maintaining the result phase in existence is made explicit in the following example: Your letter has been considered and it is not thought that you have made out a case. Here the letter makes present the result of ‘been considered,’ i.e. an evaluation or judgement, the nature of which is spelled out in the rest of the sentence. And in the example It was obvious that the bed had been slept in. what was obvious was the state of the bed, the result of it undergoing the event of being slept in. The examples just discussed illustrate the transcendence represented at a moment somewhere beyond the end of the passive event, thus giving the ‘current relevance’ expressive effect described in

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lesson 13. This compound can of course express the first moment of the transcendence as well, as in the following example: The contents of the letter have been kept secret so far. Here the expressive effect is one of an event ‘extending up to the moment of speech’ so that we understand that the contents are still in the resulting state of being secret. Besides happenings perceived as complete (monophase and metaphase), the passive transcendent can represent incomplete happenings. That is, the verb compound calls on the past participle to represent the event, the passive auxiliary being, the progressive auxiliary been, and the transcendent auxiliary have, as in: In view of the fact that the members of that class had been being educated for the previous four, five or six winters by … (Visser 1973, 2447) This compound is quite rare. With its four components it adds another operation of incidence to the compounding process but since all three operations have already been described it is not necessary here to describe the successive phases of the process again. CONCLUSION

This discussion is an attempt to trace the characteristic expressive effect of sentences with a passive verb back to its grammatical roots in the system of the verb. The fact that the particular subject-verb relation in passive sentences reflects a particular verb form led us to assume that the passive voice is based on a particular relation between the event and its intra-verbal support person. This in turn suggested that it is the already-accomplished event time of the past participle that puts its cardinal person in the position of a spatial support with no agentive role. That is, the past participle, thanks to its way of representing event time, gives a speaker the means of making an event incident to a spatial support with no part in promoting the event. The role thus attributed to the support is passed on through the auxiliary to the extra-verbal support person in the subject. As a consequence the subject is understood to be in a non-agentive role but

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is nevertheless seen as fulfilling a necessary role as a spatial support without which that event could not take place. The compounding process, as in the case of other verb compounds, involves making the event, represented by a tense of the quasi-nominal mood, incident to a span of time in the indicative by means of the auxiliary be. In the case of perfective events, be auxiliary represents a span in the past or the nonpast as a support for the incidence of either one moment of a monophase event (The house is owned by someone who lives in a nearby city) or of a metaphase event phase by phase (They were married in the cathedral). In the case of imperfective events (The soldiers are being prepared for immediate departure), the auxiliary of the passive itself is conjugated as a present participle in order to situate part of the event in time, thus requiring another auxiliary, that of the progressive, to make this alreadycompounded import incident to a spatial support with a span of future-oriented time in the indicative mood. And in the case of a state resulting from the event (It was obvious that the bed had been slept in), the auxiliary of the passive, itself a past participle, receives as import the already-accomplished event and seeks a support in the span of indicative time provided by the auxiliary of the transcendent aspect. Thus tracing the passive compound back to its grammatical roots leads to components whose abstract grammatical import was described previously, the participle in lesson 4 and the auxiliary in lesson 12. As in the transcendent aspect, the past participle represents the event with its spatial support, and its event time as alreadyaccomplished. In the passive, however, the participle is called on to present its event time, viewed not from the outside but on the inside, as a series of already-accomplished moments taking their place one after the other in time. As in the progressive, be auxiliary depicts a span as a support in universe time for the interior of the event. Here however the auxiliary is called on to provide a support, not for the next-to-be-accomplished moment, but for the alreadyaccomplished event. When the passive compound combines with the progressive or with the transcendent aspect, one gets the impression of an extremely complex set of forms and abstract grammatical meanings. On analysis, however, they are found to involve the interplay of four elements, two participles, and two auxiliaries whose functioning has been seen in lessons 12 and 13. What is remarkable here is the system, the mental program, permitting all

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these subsystems – voice, aspect, mood, tense, and person – as well as the auxiliaries, to interact so readily in order to represent the speaker’s impressions of the relation between a happening and its support in space and to help express them with distinctions so subtle that they are sometimes difficult to describe or translate into another language. The discussion of the passive presented here is, to my knowledge, the first to analyze the compound in terms of two grammatical components, event time and person (spatial support). Because each of these morphemes represents an element of any happening in the speaker’s intended message – an impression of duration and an entity or setting in space – they are necessary constituents of any verb. Thanks to this basis, and to the findings of previous lessons, the analysis has been conducted with both semantic and formal criteria in view and has resulted in an explanation of the expressive effect of sentences with passive verbs. On the other hand, because it is based on elements found in every verb, this hypothesis of the passive has implications for all verbs in English. In particular, this view of the passive poses in terms of the event and intra-verbal person a fundamental question concerning the sentence – the relation between subject and predicate. It remains to examine the simple form and other compounds from this point of view in order to get a clearer idea of this important relationship, which is at the basis of the system of voice. But, before doing this, it will be useful to discuss the question of auxiliaries in light of what we have seen of their functioning.

LESSON SIXTEEN

Auxiliaries

PRELIMINARIES

In preceding lessons, the analysis of each verb compound has been based on the idea that it is made up of words whose meaning imports are linked together, compounded, to form a single verb of discourse. Starting with this commonplace entails examining the meaning of each of the words involved in order to see what meaning it brings to the compound and how this meaning becomes amalgamated through incidence to that of the other word or words. The ease with which speakers manipulate the three auxiliaries and the three forms of the quasi-nominal mood to give rise to seven regularly used verb compounds is a clear indication that the relations between them are systemic. From all this it follows that the syntax involved here is essentially dynamic, calling for the repeated transporting of an import of meaning to a support until the sentence meaning is arrived at in a summatory act consisting, in most sentences, of applying the meaning import of the predicate to that of the subject. These operations, which give rise to the grammatical relations observable in a sentence, vary according to the type of meaning imported and the type of support to which it is applied but are all basically operations of syntactic incidence. A different type of incidence is exercised by the noun phrase subject, which, as the representation of what the speaker wants to talk about, can refer the whole content of the sentence to what is outside of language, to what the speaker has in mind, the intended message. The purpose of an act of language is to represent and express an intended message arising in one’s

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momentary experience and no sentence has played its role until the meaning it expresses is referred to this extra-linguistic reality by referential incidence. The type of syntactic incidence required in compounding a verb of discourse is the transporting of a lexically “heavy” component – the quasi-nominal form, which represents the particular event – to a lexically “light” component – the dematerialized auxiliary, which represents a span of duration but no event. In the case of two-part compounds in the indicative, the two parts are complementary. That is, the quasi-nominal form provides the lexical matter lacking in the auxiliary and in so doing receives the temporal determination lacking in its own grammatical makeup. The outcome is a complete verb of discourse that, like the simple form, situates an event in a timestretch, past or nonpast, and is capable of making it incident to the subject. In a way, compounds offer an analytical view of what is required to constitute any finite verb for use in discourse. What distinguishes the type of syntactic incidence involved in forming a compound from that of, say, applying the import of an adjective to its support in a substantive, is that it completes the grammatical forming of the lexical matter, the event, to constitute a finite verb. The durational element of the event is formed by the tense of the quasi-nominal – event time represented as accomplishable (infinitive), already accomplished (past participle), or divided between the two (present participle) – but the event’s place in time is left undetermined with regard to the present. A spatial support is represented but it is provided with no future-oriented span of time wherein it can promote the event’s taking place. The auxiliary provides the temporal determination and the ascending time, thus combining with the partly formed lexical import to give a single matter-form unit of meaning. Because neither of the components on its own would be complete as a verb predicable of a subject, the compound is generally considered to constitute a single verb of discourse, to a point some linguists consider unanalyzable. Being so highly dematerialized, all the auxiliaries in the indicative carry out this same support function of complementing the lexical import’s grammatical form and thus permit the event’s incidence to the subject by making operative the predicative function of a finite verb. That is, as some grammars point out, auxiliaries function both as a support and an operator, but they provide a support for different types of import. For example we saw in the

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previous lesson that be offers a support for the immanence of a pastparticiple event whereas have offers a support for its transcendence. By observing these differences in the way they function, we can infer certain distinctions between the auxiliaries themselves. In this lesson we will focus on the auxiliaries as dematerialized verbs in an effort to see how each auxiliary characterizes the span of duration constituting its residual matter and thus understand why each auxiliary is restricted in the type of import it can support. We will start with the grammatical auxiliary where this relation between import and support is perhaps most clearly visible, the only one to accept an infinitive event as its lexical refill. DO

In lesson 9 we saw that do has a wider field of application in its auxiliary use than in either its suppletive or its full-verb uses. This brings up the question whether we should consider do two words or even three words in Modern English, as some linguists have suggested. The alternative way of viewing the problem would be to consider that each of these uses manifests a different sense of the same word, a different actualization of a single potential meaning in tongue. In support of the latter view, I have proposed in an article (2002) that every time we use do we can actualize its meaning fully or only partially or just enough to form a word. That is, we actualize its lexical matter to the extent required by the use intended. Materialized minimally, do serves as an auxiliary with its broadest field of application (supporting both monophase and metaphase events). Materialized more than minimally but not fully, do serves as a suppletive with a narrower field of application (suppleting for metaphase events only). Materialized fully, it serves as a full verb with its narrowest field of application (expressing a certain type of activity not expressed by make). Although it remains to be confirmed by a more complete examination of usage, this proposal does offer a means of explaining how the three different fields of application can be considered to arise as the result of different actualizations of a single meaning potential in tongue. The alternative – disregarding what the three senses have in common and considering that do is really two or three different words – would lead to the untenable position of maintaining that two (or three) homonyms are closely related lexically, a position that could be

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supported only by the facts of discourse just mentioned – the presence of an infinitive, opposition with make, etc. But trying to explain a word by the effect it has on the sentence in this way would be putting the cart before the horse since it is the prior condition (a word’s import) that explains the effect (a word’s function). A glance at the history of the auxiliary confirms the close link between the auxiliary and the full verb. The use of do as an auxiliary arose in Middle English, when do was used both as a factitive in its full verb sense of ‘to perform, to bring into being’ and as a causative (a use that no longer exists for do). Each of these uses has been proposed by different grammarians as providing the origin of the auxiliary (cf. Visser 1969, 1488–97). Do auxiliary may be derived historically from either of these sources, or both, by dematerialization. In the process of dematerialization neither of these particular senses was retained so that do was enabled to express what is most general in both, namely the space in time required for an event to take place. That is, to perform or to cause an event, a span of event time situated in universe time is a necessary prior condition. In this way dematerializing the one or the other sense by deleting whatever impressions are particular to it would leave the same minimal meaning1 – a span of duration in universe time as a prerequisite for any event’s realization. It has already been proposed that the ideogenesis of all three auxiliaries produces the representation of a timespan emptied of any particular event. It remains to bring out what distinguishes do from the other two: this abstract lexical residue, being dematerialized from a ‘causative’ or ‘perform, bring into being’ notion (or both), is depicted as a prerequisite, a prior condition, for an event’s accomplishment. We shall see below how this contrasts with the import of both be and have. This particularity of depicting its empty timespan as a precondition of the event taking (its) place in time imposes certain constraints on do. In the first place, it can provide support only for a to-be-accomplished event. That is, do auxiliary cannot receive as its lexical import an event whose event time is represented as already partly or wholly accomplished. As a consequence it can compound with neither participle, only with an infinitive. Auxiliary have, just the opposite, can accept as an import only an event whose event time is represented as already accomplished and so compounds only with a past participle, whereas be can compound with either present or past participle.

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A second restriction is that do auxiliary itself does not have an infinitive or participles, whereas do used as a full verb and as a suppletive is conjugated in the quasi-nominal mood. So are the auxiliaries be and have. Do auxiliary’s incompatibility with the mood of virtuality is due to its role of evoking a prior condition for the infinitive event’s realization – affirming it, negating it, or questioning it. Evoking the event’s realization in this way can only be done in the indicative mood, the mood of reality, because only here can the event be provided with a place in time that is referred to the present, the moment of reality. (Very rarely do auxiliary is found in the subjunctive mood affirming or negating the possibility of the infinitive event.) Do auxiliary thus makes available a span of future-oriented time for situating the infinitive’s event on the horizon of the indicative, either in the past or the nonpast. Since the infinitive presents its event as virtual, two options are open: its accomplishment or nonaccomplishment. Making the infinitive incident to the auxiliary identifies its spatial support with the auxiliary’s and thus puts it in a position to accomplish the event. This was depicted above for the verb in He did open the door by the following diagram: open open did did Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

In this way the auxiliary assumes its role as support by providing what is required for the event to be carried out: a span of time and a spatial support ready to proceed through it. When the verb compound’s incidence to the subject is effected, the subject is depicted moving through this span of time accomplishing the event either phase by phase from beginning to end for metaphase events as in the example, or simply the contemporary moment of a monophase event. In either case there is an expressive effect of the event’s non-accomplishment option having been rejected. In negative sentences the non-accomplishment of the event is declared of the subject and the accomplishment option dismissed. In interrogative sentences of the yes/no type, both the accomplishment and the non-accomplishment option are made available by the infinitive but neither is made incident to the auxiliary so both are maintained as possibilities. In all its uses, the distinguishing characteristic of do is that it provides a place in time for an accomplishable event.

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As an auxiliary have is, in one respect, just the opposite of do, but it raises the same question concerning its status: is it one word or two words? As a full verb it can express different nuances that, according to Joly and O’Kelly (1990, 186), can be reduced to two main senses: ‘to possess’ and ‘to come or enter into possession of’ (another case of a verb expressing a state and the necessary prior condition of the state, the process leading up to it). Although the link between main verb and auxiliary uses has yet to be worked out in detail, the basic relation is clear enough to warrant proposing that, like do, have offers the potential in tongue of both uses. This can be most readily understood by recalling what appears to have been involved in the process of its dematerialization. Like any other abstract element in language, it must be assumed that auxiliary have developed from a more concrete element, in this case the full verb with its sense of ‘possession.’ It has been quite plausibly argued that the notion of ‘possession’ may be evoked to suggest ‘ownership’ or ‘holding’ or some other particular manifestation, but in all cases it represents a resulting state, the outcome of a process of coming into possession of or acquiring something. In the historical process of dematerialization leading to the definition of the auxiliary in the mind, all these more particular impressions were deleted so that have was enabled to express the sense of what is most general in ‘possession,’ namely a state of ‘coming after,’ of ‘resulting from.’ This sense is so general in fact that it was extended far beyond states linked with possessing to include the aftermath of any happening the speaker wants to talk about. This is what distinguishes the representation of the span of duration have expresses from that expressed by other auxiliaries. To give a more precise idea of the residual matter of have auxiliary we might suggest as a paraphrase ‘a moment in a state resulting from’ some happening. This view of its residual lexical matter would explain not only why have compounds with the past participle, but also why, unlike passive auxiliary be, it situates the subject after the past participle event. Furthermore, since a result phase is the outcome of some antecedent condition, it is ‘stative,’ and so the timespan represented by have cannot be expressed as an imperfective (again unlike the passive auxiliary). That is, a construction like *I am having seen the film is not found because the state resulting from

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seeing the film is necessarily represented as unchanging, as perfective. Nor has it been found with do auxiliary, which would anticipate the event’s accomplishment.2 All this helps confirm the explanation given in lessons 12 and 13; have provides a place in time for the state resulting from the past participle event. This was illustrated for the verb in I have already seen the film by means of the following diagram: seen seen have 8

8

Nonpast Nonpast

Past Past

In this way, the have + past participle compound constitutes the transcendent aspect because it represents a place in time for this result phase, not for the prior event. In so doing have situates the spatial support of the past participle event in the event’s aftermath, thus making available to it a span of future-oriented time. This permits the auxiliary to assume its role as an operator making the predicate incident to the subject and enabling the person of the subject to realize the state constituting the result phase. BE

Be, which is occasionally found as a full verb expressing ‘existence,’ presents a more complex picture than either do or have because as an auxiliary it contributes to two different verb compounds and also because it is frequently used as a copula, as we have seen in the previous lesson. What complicates the issue insofar as the copula is concerned is that it is manifestly in a state of lexical depletion in this use, requiring a lexical impletion in the form of its complement. The question is: how far has its dematerialization been pushed? As far as the auxiliary’s? The impression it gives of being lexically “empty” suggests this, as does the fact that it can take as a complement most any noun, adjective, or adverb phrase. Furthermore in negative and interrogative sentences the copula has the syntactic characteristics of the auxiliary. On the other hand, it has been argued (cf. Joly and O’Kelly 1990, 179) that it is not dematerialized as much as the auxiliary, that it expresses a partial lexical depletion (something like what was proposed above for suppletive do). To settle the issue we may well have to wait until the incidence of complement to copula has been more fully

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analyzed, in particular the relation between the notional import of the complement and the person of the copula. The relation between full verb and auxiliary is a little clearer, even if the notions involved are so abstract that they are hard to paraphrase. The notion of ‘existing’ expressed in a use such as I think, therefore I am. is described in dictionaries in terms of “to have place in the domain of reality” (oed), or “to have being in space and time” (Webster’s Third). What is noticeable in such definitions is that they imply something already constituted, already occupying its own place in space and time, as opposed to anything outside that place. As a starting point for dematerialization a notion of ‘real existence’ is already eminently abstract, but it is sufficient to suggest limits for a space of time and thus to characterize the span of duration constituting the residual meaning of the auxiliary: in the process of dematerialization, any impressions concerning a particular place in time were deleted leaving only the impression necessary for anything to exist, namely, to be between its beginning and its end. As a consequence be auxiliary represents a span of duration within the event. Thus be auxiliary, whether used in the progressive or in the passive, always provides a support in time for the existence of an event, that is, for its realization, its taking place in time. In the case of the passive, be provides a place in time for the event to take place in spite of the fact that its spatial support is positioned not to realize the event but to undergo it, to receive it, moment by moment, already accomplished. In the case of the progressive, be provides a place in time for realizing a phase of the ongoing metaphase event, in spite of the fact that the spatial support may not realize the whole event. This view of be permits us to compare it with do and have and describe the relationships involved. THE SYSTEM

When the relationships between auxiliary and quasi-nominal event were first discerned some years ago, I proposed that be represents a position coinciding with the event’s position, have a position after it, and do a position before it.3 Subsequent work on the progressive has confirmed this for be. Similarly for have, extensive examination

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of usage has shown that, in representing a place outside the event, it attributes to the subject what is, in the final analysis, a moment of a subsequent state, something existing at a different place in universe time and so constituting another aspect, the transcendent. However, Duffley’s 1992 study on the infinitive has made it clear that do represents the span of time when the event is to take place. That is, it presents a span of time not prior to that of the event but contemporary with it, as does be. On the other hand, unlike progressive be, do presents this span as the place where the event’s coming into existence is realizable, not the place where it is already being realized or exists. Both auxiliaries therefore represent the immanence of the event, but from different points of view. The way they differ was not discerned clearly until we focused on the relation of event time with another necessary element of the event: its person or spatial support. What led to focusing on the role of person was the realization that be used as auxiliary of the passive, although it calls for a past participle view of the event’s realization, also represents a span of time for the immanence of the event. And yet between be + present participle (They were driving to school) and be + past participle (They were driven to school) the difference of voice – of subject/verb relation – is manifest. Tracing this difference to the person/event relation of the finite auxiliary, and then back further to the person/event relation of the participle, we were able to understand what brought it about: the present participle puts its person, its spatial support, in position to accomplish the event’s next phase, whereas the past participle puts its person in a position to support the event’s already-accomplished phases. How does this help us discern the way the do compound positions its subject? Like the progressive, the difference between They did drive to school and the passive compound is manifest: the subject of do + infinitive is positioned to accomplish the event, not to support an event accomplished by another. However, unlike the progressive, do + infinitive is perfective: it positions the subject with regard to all phases of the event, affirming, negating, or questioning their accomplishment. The progressive represents an event as imperfective, situating the subject with regard to its next phase, affirming, negating, or questioning its accomplishment. The subject of the do compound is in a position for bringing the event into existence, that of the progressive for ensuring the event’s continued existence. Thus both do and be depict a span of time for the interiority of the event, not its aftermath;

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but with do the subject is situated at the beginning of the event, in a position to realize all the phases of the event, whereas with be the subject is situated somewhere in the middle of the event, in a position to realize one of its phases. The upshot of all this is that each auxiliary positions the spatial support differently with regard to the event’s span of duration, and so we can compare them in an attempt to discern their relations in tongue. We have seen that do situates the verb’s spatial support (and eventually the subject) in a position at the very beginning of this span, be in a mid position, and have in an after position. That is: do positions the verb’s support in a timespan ready to carry out a perfective event – all the phases of a metaphase event or the single phase of a monophase event; be, ambivalent as befits something already existing, positions the support either in a span ready to carry out the next moment of an imperfective event (the progressive), or (the passive) in a span ready to undergo a perfective event – all the phases of a metaphase event or the single phase of a monophase event; have positions the support in a span ready to initiate or prolong the event’s result phase in time. All this points to the system in tongue, but much remains to be explored before the system can be fully described. Although it permits the existence of the event to be viewed from different points – the inside (be), the threshold (do), and the aftermath (have) – it does not provide for regarding the event from a position before its existence. To evoke the event before it really exists calls for another system of auxiliaries, the modals. This attempt to discern the system of the three grammatical auxiliaries leaves a number of questions unanswered. Among other things, it remains to explain the historical sequence of their appearance in the language – which seems to have been passive be, have, progressive be, and do, in that order – to result in the systemic arrangement we exploit so readily today.4 The fact that be and have are commonly found as auxiliaries in other languages but not do leads to the question of the systemic motivation behind its development. Another question to be explored further is the relation between auxiliary and main verb uses of these three verbs. The question, first raised with do, is whether in its main verb or suppletive uses it should be analyzed as different words from do used as auxiliary, or do these uses reflect different actualizations of the same potential meaning in

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tongue? The latter view, which is the one adopted in this lesson for all three auxiliaries, seems to be suggested by Guillaume (1987, 53; my translation) in the following passage: “a sign considered in tongue is the symbol of a movement, and of the whole of this movement. But if we consider the sign in discourse, it never represents the whole movement, but only one state of suspension of this movement, obtained by means of cutting across the very progressing of the movement considered, interrupting it early or late. The principle, altogether general in its bearing, that the linguistic sign in tongue overlies a dynamic development finds an interesting application where it is a question of auxiliaryhood, of the way a verb goes from the state of being a [main] verb to the state of auxiliary.” The implications of this view have yet to be worked out in detail within the framework of a study of lexical semantics. THE MODAL AUXILIARIES

So far nothing has been said of the modal auxiliaries. There are two reasons for this. One is that they form compounds distinguishable from one another on lexical grounds but not grammatically, like those formed with do, be, and have. And this leads to the second reason: the lexical distinctions between the modal auxiliaries have not been discerned clearly enough to permit a description of the relationships binding them into a system. Enough insights have been gained, however, to suggest that there is such a system governing the abstract senses that each of these auxiliaries can express, but until it can be seen as a whole, discussion can only dwell on particular points and so is best reserved for more specialized contexts. What has been discerned so far does, however, permit us to situate the modal auxiliaries with regard to the grammatical auxiliaries and outline the problem of analysis they present. A first point is that may, can, shall, will, must, as well as need and dare in certain of their uses, are auxiliaries. That is, like do, be, and have in their auxiliary uses, they are formed by the transpredicative part of speech system to be used as verbs that serve as support and operator for the import of the infinitive. The infinitive furnishes the lexical impletion of the auxiliaries, while the auxiliaries situate the infinitive event in a time stretch of the indicative and predicate it of the subject. As a consequence, they manifest the syntactic characteristics of the grammatical auxiliaries and can be used only with a lexical import.

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The modals provide a span of event time as a temporal support for a yet-to-be-accomplished event, and so they can accept it only in the form of an infinitive, though they are not themselves conjugated in the quasi-nominal mood. In this they resemble do, but they differ from do in the type of infinitive event they can accept. We have seen that in positive sentences do situates the event’s accomplishment in either the past or the nonpast, as in You do torture me. That is, it accepts the infinitive event in its actualization version as taking its place in time. The modal, however, accepts the infinitive event in its potentiality version and so situates only the possibility of its accomplishment in time, as in You may torture me. That is, where a do compound affirms the event’s taking place, a modal compound affirms the conditions of potentiality governing the event’s taking place. Duffley, the first to distinguish these two versions of the infinitive, puts it this way in speaking of positive sentences (1992, 98): “while do situates the infinitive in time as an actualization, the modals only situate it as a potentiality.” It is another distinguishing characteristic of the modals that permits them to do this: they have not been lexically dematerialized as much as do, whose minimal lexical residue we have managed to distinguish only by means of analysis. That is, nobody has ever treated the modals as “dummy” or “meaningless” because we are quite aware that in otherwise identical sentences they give rise to various expressive effects (‘permission,’ ‘capacity,’ ‘future,’ etc.), even if there is as yet no generally accepted description of their different lexical imports. Thus the modals bring a more than minimal lexical residue to the sentence, an appreciable lexical import, but it is an import that does not constitute an event and so cannot itself be envisaged as a possibility (and hence compoundable with do or another modal) or as having a transcendent aspect (and so as compoundable with have). In fact each modal expresses certain conditions concerning the degree of possibility for the spatial support to accomplish the event, its chances of making it a reality. Combined with the lexical import of the infinitive, this provides sufficient lexical matter to constitute a verb in the indicative mood even though the infinitive event is left as something merely possible. Indeed, the very fact of representing an event’s conditions of potentiality as really existing in time entails representing the event’s real existence as potential.

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Thus, once the compounding is completed, the verb satisfies the requirements of the indicative to have a content of reality in the past or the nonpast and yet depicts the accomplishment of its event as not real as in: It may rain tomorrow. The instant when this compounding process is ready to be effected can be diagrammed in much the same was as for other compounds. rain rain

may may Nonpast Nonpast

8

8

Past Past

The modal permits situating the infinitive’s event in time at the moment of speaking, not at a later point corresponding to tomorrow, but it is situated in the nonpast as a possible event (and so is not depicted here by means of a full line) so that the compound talks about the event insofar as the likelihood of its being realized is concerned. Thus the modals permit us to talk about the possible event as something that exists, something whose state of potentiality is real. This brings out the difference between the two types of auxiliary. The modals express the conditions of potentiality of an event whereas the grammatical auxiliaries express the conditions of reality, of the event’s accomplishment. And since an ongoing event or a passive event or the result-phase of an event can be seen as a potentiality, the modals can provide support for an event represented by a progressive infinitive (He might be sleeping) or a passive infinitive (Your bags will be examined at customs) or a transcendent infinitive (The train must have been late). But the converse is not possible since a potentiality cannot be seen as imperfective, passive, or resultative. As a consequence, the modals are not conjugated in the quasi-nominal mood. As mentioned above, the main problem posed by the modals is to describe the lexical matter of each one and the relations between them. This will indicate their positions in the field of potentiality and should throw light on the historical dematerialization they have undergone. Except for need and dare, they cannot be compared with less dematerialized versions since they no longer have full verb uses. On

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the other hand, meaningwise full verbs need and dare are barely distinguishable from auxiliary uses (cf. Duffley 1994), and full verb expressions like have to, be able to, and the like are very close to certain senses of must, can, etc. These facts suggest that the lexical depletion of the auxiliaries is not much greater than such abstract, non-auxiliary expressions. Be that as it may, such observations certainly seem to indicate that the modals are less dematerialized than the three grammatical auxiliaries. The discussion in this lesson brings out the extent to which the auxiliary as a part of speech has been developed in English. It is natural for a native speaker to take the system of auxiliaries for granted, but it should be kept in mind that the instituting of each auxiliary as an element in the system of the ordinary speaker’s mother tongue is a remarkable achievement of the preconscious mind. In each case it is an “invasion of the inarticulate,” to paraphrase the poet,5 because it involves inventing the permanent means for representing something that does not arise as such in our experience of the universe around us, an empty span of time.

LESSON SEVENTEEN

The System of Voice: A Hypothesis

APPROACHING VOICE

In preceding lessons the systems of aspect and mood were described, and this permitted us to describe the system of tense. A distinction between ordinal and cardinal person threw light on person in the verb, and the theory that auxiliaries are dematerialized verbs permitted us to describe the forming of the various verb compounds. The one subsystem of the verb yet to be discussed, that of voice, also presupposes a certain familiarity with the other subsystems because voice can be approached only through them. That is, variations in the relation between subject and verb can be analyzed only if a clear enough view of the two terms of this relation has been obtained. This discussion will be undertaken here to recall what can be safely advanced and to present a hypothesis concerning the basis of the system of voice in English. Since the system itself has not yet been discerned clearly enough for it to be described, this lesson will be concerned mainly with what can be plausibly inferred on the basis of our previous analyses. In one respect this difficulty in seeing the system of voice clearly is surprising because there are obvious manifestations of it in discourse. These led grammarians in former centuries to consider it as “a firmly established category” that they nevertheless treated “in a great variety of ways” so that in fact it was “radically unstable,” according to Michael (387). This is similar to their treatment of tense and results from the same failure to make “the fundamental distinction between formal and semantic criteria” (ibid., 373). Again one can see from the outset that a clear view of the difference between sign and significate and of

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the relations between them is a primordial need for the grammariananalyst (the speaker never gets them mixed up). Even today one can observe this failure to distinguish clearly between form and meaning, with the same results. For example, it is commonly recognized that the difference of verb semiology in such sentences as the following corresponds to a difference of meaning expressed by the sentence: We discussed the budget during the last meeting. The budget was discussed during the last meeting. The difference between simple form and be auxiliary + past participle illustrated here is considered to be one of voice, active and passive respectively, and the various other compounds of the verb are distributed between these two categories. However, some grammarians consider that in uses like the following (from Poutsma, 65f) the verb is active in form but passive in meaning: They sell at about a shilling a dozen. The verse scans well and offends against none of the laws of metre. The meat cuts tough. The Jugurtha, as the present translator hints, reads very much like a historical novel of the better class. As was shown in lesson 15 on the passive, in sentences like these the subject is perceived as embodying conditions contributing to the event’s accomplishment and so is represented by the system of voice as promoting the event, not undergoing it. On the other hand, to consider these examples of “Transitives turned into intransitives through being used passively without a change of voice” (Poutsma, 63) disregards the link between simple form and active meaning on the notional grounds that the use of these verb lexemes as intransitives is novel, or at least unusual, for the grammarian. To avoid this confusion of “formal and semantic criteria,” it is essential to view each of the verbs involved in terms of its fundamental, potential meaning, both lexical and grammatical. A grammatical analysis is then based on the postulate that each sign – in this case a grammatical sign, the verb in the simple form – is linked with a systemic meaning in tongue that can be actualized in different ways.

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Ultimately this requires grammarians to accept that language exists both as tongue, the potential of all we say, and as discourse, what we actually say, and to keep in mind that this binary view of meaning implies the operations required to pass from the meaning potential to one of its actualizations. In uses like the above, this requires us to be aware that these verbs can, like many other verbs, actualize their lexeme in the ‘stative’ sense of ‘conditions promoting the activity’ and that the simple form depicts the spatial support as realizing these conditions. The grammarian who examines usage only from the point of view of discourse, of the forms and meanings observable in the sentence, has no means of situating such actualizations, whether of the lexeme (e.g. ‘capacity’ vs ‘realization’) or the grammatical form (simple vs be + past participle), within a constant sign/meaning relationship in tongue and so has no access to what permits such variations, namely the potential lexeme or the system of voice. The ultimate result of ignoring the potential in tongue is a sort of Harry Potter world where we find “transitives turned into intransitives,” “the active voice with passive meaning,” and the like, a language world where communication as we know it would not be possible. In these lessons we try to avoid this sort of difficulty by examining each word on the basis of the tongue/discourse postulate and describing the actualizing of its potential in a given use. Before undertaking this for voice, a word about terminology. We have seen that the different categories and forms of the verb are named according to different characteristics: an impression concerning the state of the event (e.g. “progressive”) or the speaker’s view of it (“mood”), the makeup of the form in discourse (“simple”) or a characteristic of its use (“infinitive”), an analytical phase (“transcendent”) and even its component parts when no name is given (do + infinitive). Unlike these terms, the traditional term “voice” appears to have little motivation as a means of designating the category we are now discussing, but since it calls to mind no misleading impressions it can be used at least until a clearer view of the system it designates suggests a less opaque term. Unlike “voice,” the terms “active,” “passive,” and “middle” used to designate the different voices are motivated. The first two are notionally motivated, suggesting the subject’s role with regard to the event, as either agent or patient, thus naming verb categories by the expressive effect they most frequently contribute to. Unfortunately, the term “active” has sometimes been interpreted too narrowly and so

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not applicable to all the roles assumed by the subject of the simple form, as the above examples show, nor even to the verb suffer, considered by some grammarians to be always passive because its subject undergoes the event and so cannot be an agent. It is true that the subject often assumes the role of an agent in a narrow sense, but, when technical vocabulary is based on the expressive effect most frequently manifested by the sentence in this way, it can easily happen that less frequent manifestations are obscured or even excluded. This confusion arises because formal criteria are neglected. Here then the terms “active” and “passive” will be used for two subject-event relations, each designated by a distinct grammatical form. They must therefore be understood in a sufficiently abstract sense to include whatever verbs have been formed grammatically in the same way as those whose subject is clearly the agent or the patient of the event. As for the term “middle,” it is used to name an intermediate grammatical category where the subject’s role is neither completely the one or the other. It will be discussed below, once the first two voices have been outlined. Thus the challenge here is to describe the grammatical import of the different verb forms involved to explain how they can put the subject in the situation of being “active” or “passive” or somewhere in between, if English does have a middle voice. SIMPLE FORM VS BE + PAST PARTICIPLE COMPOUND

In lessons 5, 6, and 7 we examined the simple form from the point of view of its different uses with metaphase (‘dynamic’) and monophase (‘stative’) events, and then (lessons 10 to 15) compared it with different compounds. Comparing simple and progressive led to distinguishing two ways of situating the event in time: perfective and imperfective. Comparing simple and have + past participle led to distinguishing two aspects: immanent and transcendent. Comparing simple and do + infinitive led to distinguishing two ways of representing the event’s accomplishment: non-contingent and contingent. The simple form has thus been found to represent the immanence of a perfective event as a real (or prospective) accomplishment. The passive also represents the immanence of a perfective event as real, and so there must be yet another parameter that distinguishes it from the simple form.

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There is little difficulty observing this parameter in the sentence: active and passive express different ways the verb relates to the subject. And thanks to foregoing analyses of compounds the representing of these relationships within the verb, i.e. before it is made incident to the subject, is readily discernible. It was shown for each compound that the subject/verb relation is foreshadowed in its first component, the infinitive or participle, by the way it positions its spatial support vis-à-vis its event time. It remains to work this out for one-component verbs, those in the simple form. It will be recalled that in lessons 5, 6, and 7 the simple form was described as representing its event ready for the subject to accomplish it in the past or the nonpast. In lesson 9 it was shown that cardinal person is introduced as a spatial support into a verb during the constructing of the verb itself, since we cannot imagine an event without some entity or setting in space. This applies to the simple form as well: even before the event is situated in universe time by means of tense, the event’s spatial support is positioned visà-vis its event time, ready to accomplish the event wherever it may be situated in time. To suggest the subject accomplishing each phase of the metaphase event from beginning to end in the nonpast, the performative use of the verb in I resign was depicted in a diagram as follows: resign resign Nonpast Nonpast

8

8 Past Past

So we can now see that the event ‘resign’ relates to its intra-verbal spatial support as a span of to-be-actualized event time to its actualizer. That is, during the morphogenesis of the verb, before it is made incident to the subject, the event’s spatial support is represented in a position to realize the event. Once its morphogenesis is completed, the verb is made incident to the subject. This identifies the verb’s spatial support, its cardinal person, with the person of the subject, which is then seen in time at the beginning of the nonpast actualizing the event, carrying it out from beginning to end. Thus it is the relating of resign’s event time to its intra-verbal spatial support as a to-be-actualized span that determines the role of I here, its control over the event. The same analysis applies to monophase events like I know the answer except that the to-be-actualized span made available to the spatial support consists of only one moment of the event’s duration, since this suffices for the subject to situate the one phase of a state

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(its total lexical content) in time. This is why monophase events represented in the simple form give rise to the active voice even though the subject’s control over the event is represented for only one moment of its duration. In the case of prospective events like You take the first street on the left and imperatives, it is manifest that event time is represented as a to-be-actualized span because when the verb’s incidence to the subject is effected, the subject is seen in the nonpast at a point beyond the moment of speech. As a consequence, the subject is represented in a position to actualize the event even though it is not actually seen moving through the event carrying it out. Prospective events thus show that the active voice is found even when subject control is not exercised in the carrying out of the event. What is common to all uses of the simple form, then, is providing the spatial support with a span of time for actualizing the event. The timespan thus provided is necessarily future-oriented because, obviously, an event can be realized only by moving in this direction, from its beginning to its end. This can be represented in a diagram as follows:

The spatial support (depicted by the chevron) is positioned to move through the span of time accomplishing the event, whether it consists of one moment of a monophase event or the total duration of a metaphase event. Representing cardinal person in this way as the spatial support for an accomplishable event puts it in an active situation. When the verb is then made incident to the subject, it gives rise to the active voice in the sentence because the subject is put in control (as in the previous diagram where the event resign is depicted carried out by the subject). The situation is just the opposite with the passive voice because cardinal person is represented as the spatial support of an accomplished span of event time. The discussion of the passive compound in lesson 15 brought out the effect of representing an event by means of the past participle with its already-accomplished, pastoriented event time, and situating its spatial support by means of the auxiliary be within the event. The example They were married in the cathedral depicts they moving through the span of past time as a patient, situating therein each of the event’s phases once it has been accomplished. This was diagrammed as follows:

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married open were did Nonpast Nonpast

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8 Past Past

The auxiliary provides a span of future-oriented past time for the spatial support, but it can situate in this span only what has been realized by another. Representing the verb’s cardinal person in this way as the spatial support for an accomplished event puts it in a passive situation and gives rise to the passive voice in the sentence. What characterizes uses of the be + past participle, then, is providing cardinal person with a span of time for supporting the accomplished event. The timespan thus provided is necessarily future-oriented because, obviously, an event takes place from beginning to end, but each of the phases taking its place in this span is past-oriented, already accomplished. This can be represented in a diagram as follows:

The spatial support (depicted by the chevron) is positioned by the auxiliary ready to support the event in a span of past or nonpast time (the dashed future-oriented vector). Once the incidence of verb to subject has been effected, the subject will support the participle’s event (the past-oriented vector) taking its place, accomplished phase after accomplished phase (the dotted vertical vectors) in this span of universe time. With a monophase event (The house is owned by someone who lives in a nearby city), only one already-accomplished phase is made incident to the span in universe time. Representing the cardinal person of the verb in this way as ready to support an accomplished event puts the subject in a situation where its control is reduced to a minimum, that of a necessary condition of the event, thus giving rise to the passive voice in the sentence. Ultimately, then, the active meaning of a sentence is the result of representing an event as accomplishable by giving its event time a forward-looking, future orientation, whereas a passive meaning results from giving it a backward-looking, past orientation. These two views have been described in terms of driving: in the driver’s seat one has a view of what is coming up; seated in the back of a truck one has a view of what has already gone by. That these opposed representations of time entail quite different relationships with the spatial support is no

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doubt based on the common experience that we can do nothing about what is over, but we are in a position to influence what is to come. In any case, for Guillaume, these impressions are at the origin of the system of voice: “Descending [past-oriented] time corresponds to the intuition of the mind subjected to time which carries all things away including humans, none of whom can move up against the current. This is the basic way of visualizing time. Ascending [futureoriented] time corresponds to the intuition that time is a field open before us for exercising our individual capacity. In descending time the human person feels passive. In ascending time it feels active. This double movement of time is the source of the voices (active, middle, passive)” (forthcoming; my translation). In Guillaume’s eyes, this is just one more case of the “promoting of experience into representation” (ibid.), a process that is carried out by all language systems and gives rise to all linguistic meaning. This analysis provides a means of explaining the usual ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ roles attributed to the subject, as well as cases like They sell at about a shilling a dozen. It can also help us understand the difference between examples like: The water drained out here. The water was drained out here. In the first one can feel that the subject has the initiative, but not in the second. Even in the following examples from Huddleston and Pullum (1446), Our solar system formed / was formed billions of years ago. The boat capsized and over twenty passengers drowned / were drowned. cases where there is “hardly any change in meaning,” the analysis presented above provides a viewpoint for attempting to describe and explain this slight change in meaning. That is, the hypothesis based on Guillaume’s observations concerning the two orientations of time provides a framework for examining in detail the semantic nuances between sentences while respecting the formal criteria of distinguishing active and passive. On the same basis, Guillaume (cf. 1986, 125) also expresses the view that English has a highly developed middle voice expressed by the other verb compounds, a question we will now consider.

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THE OTHER COMPOUNDS

Grammars usually classify the other compounds as either active (I did make it, I was making it, I had made it, I had been making it) or as passive (It was being made, It had been made). This classification certainly corresponds to expressive effects arising in usage, but we have already seen cases where the meaning of the sentence as a whole has not been sufficient to provide an accurate view of the way a verb is formed grammatically. And a moment’s reflection does bring up certain questions concerning these other verb compounds. For example if, as just recalled, the simple form attributes to the subject control over the realization of the whole event, the same thing cannot be said about the progressive, which always provides the representation of an imperfective event – as in He is reaching for the bottle, an example from a stage direction already discussed (lesson 12). That is, by definition the progressive cannot attribute to the subject control over the realization of the whole event. Can it be considered to be an expression of the active voice on the same footing as the simple form? If we are to consider the progressive a form expressing the active voice, it is a mitigated sort of activity since it represents the subject accomplishing only part of the event. The progressive represents the subject’s control over the event’s contemporary phase but does not represent its control over the remaining phases, as the following diagram suggests:

This recalls a historical fact showing that the progressive has not always been considered an expression of the active. Until recently it was not uncommon in uses such as: The book is printing at the moment. It is only around the beginning of the nineteenth century that we find the contemporary compound coming into use: The book is being printed at the moment. Quite clearly, the progressive has had affinities with the expression of passivity in the recent past.

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The do + infinitive compound raises another question. We have seen that a sentence like I opened the door simply attributes the accomplishment of the event to the subject, whereas a sentence like I did open the door affirms the accomplishment while implying the possibility of its non-accomplishment. That is, thanks to the infinitive representing the event as virtual, both options are evoked, and do provides a span of time and a spatial support for accomplishing the event, as suggested by the following diagram:

Once the spatial support (the chevron) is made incident to I, as subject it proceeds through the timespan actualizing the event. Even though the event’s accomplishment is attributed to the subject by do + infinitive in the above sentence, the fact of calling to mind the possibility of its non-accomplishment puts the subjectevent relationship in a slightly different light. To imply that the event is contingent, that there was a chance of the event not being carried out, suggests, as in the case of the progressive, that the subject’s control over the event is not as full as that expressed by the simple form, where no alternative option is implied. Furthermore, when the event’s accomplishment is questioned or negated, that is when the subject is not seen proceeding through the timespan actualizing the event, the degree of subject control is even less. In the case of a verb in the transcendent aspect like I have lost my keys, we have seen that the effect of making the past participle event incident to have is to put the spatial support in the position to realize a moment not of the event but of the event’s aftermath, as in the following diagram:

Once the subject is identified with the support in this position, however, what it can accomplish is limited to the event’s result phase, the scope of its activity being determined by what it inherits, so to speak, from its own previous doings. Because the subject is constrained to realize the result phase, there is at that moment of time a limitation in its control over the event itself.

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The different conditions of usage characterizing these compounds thus suggest that each of them gives its subject a control over the event that is not complete. That is, in forming each of these compounds the person of the auxiliary is put in the position of an ‘active’ support, but its capacity to accomplish the event is limited and conditioned, compared with the intra-verbal person of the simple form. In short, there seem to be reasons for considering these compounds as expressions of a middle voice. A glance at the other two verb compounds, those considered to be passive, leads to a similar conclusion. The progressive of the passive (The soldiers were being prepared for immediate departure) represents an imperfective event and so, like the ordinary progressive, cannot impose the whole of the event on its support. The ‘passivity’ of the subject is not therefore integral, as it is with the passive (They were quickly prepared). And in the case of the transcendent (They had been prepared) the event prepared, instigated by another, is represented as an accomplished whole whose person support is provided by have with a span of time after the event to perpetuate the existence of its result phase. That is, the subject is seen submitted to the event but in control of its aftermath. As a consequence, this compound certainly expresses ‘passivity’ but not to the full extent of its counterpart in the immanent aspect (They were quickly prepared). This examination of the different compounds is necessarily abstract, providing little discussion of particular examples, because it focuses on the general level of the system with the forms and mechanisms involved in compounding. Since examining the other two compounds, those involving double (they have been preparing) and triple (they have been being prepared) compounding, would entail describing the same relationships producing similar results, it need not be undertaken here. This very fact – that it would involve describing the same formal notions and operations of incidence – does however serve to bring out that we are dealing with grammatical elements here, abstract potential meanings with their respective syntactic possibilities and distinct signs, meanings that are brought together to constitute a verb of discourse. Provided our analysis has not gone astray, discerning these formal meanings and the relations between them in tongue should give us a first view of what the system of voice is like.

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The almost mechanical nature of the above analysis does in fact give a good idea of the way the system works. Insofar as the analysis has not been deflected from the trajectory traced by the observation of usage – and it might be recalled that it is based on the results of examining a large number of examples of the infinitive, the simple form, do + infinitive, the progressive, and the transcendent as they are used in real discourse – we can, even at this level of generality, attribute a certain plausibility to what it reveals. As in any scientific endeavour, however, confidence in our findings must be tempered by the possibility of having erred either through faulty reasoning or incomplete observation of the facts. Since in either case others can rectify any such errors, I will carry these reflections to their conclusion in order to see what sort of system they suggest. It all turns on the position allotted to the intra-verbal support person vis-à-vis the event’s accomplishment, a position predisposing the extra-verbal support person qua subject to have an ‘active’ or ‘passive’ stance with regard to the event. With a timespan for the event’s accomplishment before it (simple form), the subject provides not only the spatial support required for the event to take place but also the control needed to situate the event in time; with the event’s accomplishment already behind (be + past participle), the subject in a positive sentence merely provides the support condition for the event’s realization. The subject is thus seen in opposed roles, not insofar as its syntactic function is concerned since in both cases it provides a spatial support for the verb but insofar as the event is controlled by it or imposed on it. Between these two extreme positions, the subject in a positive sentence may be called on to provide a support for: a) the contingent accomplishment of the event (do + infinitive); b) the next moment of the event, either accomplishing it (progressive) or having its accomplishment imposed (progressive of the passive); c) the result phase of either its own event (transcendent) or the event of another (transcendent of the passive). These five compounds do not position their support person in exactly the same way as either the simple form or the passive compound and

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Table 17.1 voice active I ate

middle

passive

Medio-active

Medio-passive

I did eat I was eating I had eaten

It was being eaten It had been eaten

I had been eating

It had been being eaten

It was eaten

so, on strictly analytical grounds, should be considered to depict a different relation between event and support, hence a different voice, a middle voice. In proposing a middle voice, then, the main consideration is not the expressive effect in discourse of a given verb compound. Indeed, in certain cases, two forms may express effects in a sentence that are barely distinguishable. The point at issue is the relation between subject and event and analysis of these different compounds has shown that they are able to express positions extremely close to that of the active, or that of the passive, so that in fact the middle voice can cover all the middle ground between the two. And to provide a classification corresponding more closely to such expressive effects of the middle voice, one should probably distinguish between the medio-active and the medio-passive. Table 17.1 (with the two other compounds) summarizes this distribution of verb forms for the verb eat in the past tense of the indicative: Table 17.1 should not be considered to depict the system of voice, which, like any other grammatical system, is operational by nature, consisting of an ordered sequence of positions, as we have seen with aspect and mood. It is rather a paradigm of the verb forms observable in discourse and as such invites reflection on the operational relations implied by the different forms. Only when we are able to describe the operational sequence linking active, middle, and passive forms will we get a view of the system and be able to propose it as a theory of voice in English. In the meantime, this table can be considered no more than a platform from which to explore further the hidden system in tongue, a presentation of the data based on the hypothesis that voice is ultimately a matter of positioning the spatial support with regard to the event’s state of accomplishment.

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The suggestion that English has a middle voice goes back at least to the eighteenth century. Nor is it new to include so many verb forms in it: Guillaume proposed to Roch Valin some years ago that an extensive development of the middle voice is one of the characteristics of the English verb. The above suggestion may nevertheless be questioned because it does not correspond to expressive effects that are customarily associated with the category of voice in grammars. It will, therefore, be useful to conclude by recalling some of the notions arising in these lessons that point in the direction of this hypothesis. CONCLUSION

The lack of consensus and the confusion observable in attempts to describe voice in the past have made one point obvious: one cannot hope to see the system of voice clearly on the sole basis of the meaning expressed by the sentence. In particular, the lexical meaning of the verb must be carefully distinguished from its grammatical meaning, which, once discerned in relation with its grammatical signs, provides the only sound basis for analysis. The grammatical meaning of any verb results from a number of components that can be distinguished only after a careful sifting and comparing of examples suggests what lies behind the meaning expressed by the verb in a sentence. The result of all this analysis so far is to bring out what should have been obvious from the outset: that a simple form is not put together in the same way as a verb compound and that it requires a sufficiently clear view of the simple form’s morphogenesis, of how it is put together, to obtain an understanding of how auxiliary and participle or infinitive are compounded. Only then can the difference between the two types of verb formation, simple and compound, be discerned. In terms of the parameters that interest us in the discussion of voice, the essential difference appears to be that verb compounds all attribute to the support person an event represented as past-oriented whereas the simple form represents its event as future-oriented. We have already met this opposition between descending and ascending time in discussing the representation of universe time. In lesson 3 (on mood) it was pointed out that descending universe time in the quasi-nominal brings in the suggestion of an inevitable movement toward the past leaving a spatial support no room for initiative, thus making this a nonfinite mood. Furthermore, it was proposed that the

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gradual disappearance of the past subjunctive can be attributed to its past-oriented universe time offering no possibility for a subject to exercise its role. Here on the other hand we are dealing with event time and the effect of representing it by means the infinitive and participles as past-oriented: notwithstanding the fact that the event can be attributed to a subject thanks to the auxiliary giving it a support in ascending time, representing it by means of the infinitive or participle has an effect of constraining the support, of limiting more or less the initiative of the support in accomplishing the event. This effect may be minimal, as in certain uses of do + infinitive, or maximal, as in the case of the passive compound, but it can be observed in all verb compounds through their different expressive effects. On the abstract level of time orientation, then, what characterizes the active voice is that the event is represented by means of future-oriented time so that the support person (the chevron in the diagram) is put in a position for exercising full initiative in accomplishing the event, as in: simple simple form form

What characterizes the non-active voices is that the event is represented by means of past-oriented time. In the middle voice, making the past-oriented event incident to the future-oriented auxiliary span leaves a certain room for the initiative of the support person, either to accomplish a contingent event, as in infinitive infinitive

do do

or to accomplish the next moment of a metaphase event, as in present present participle present participle participle

be be

or to accomplish the next moment of the result phase of the event, as in: result phase past past participle participle result phase have have

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The subject of each of these compounds thus has a relative control over the timespan made available to it by the auxiliary, but it does not have the same control over the event as the subject of the simple form. What characterizes the passive voice is that the past-oriented event occupies the whole of the future-oriented span of auxiliary time leaving no room for the initiative of the support person. This was suggested by the following diagram: past past participle participle

be be

As for the middle voice, in the passive progressive (are being married) only the next moment, not the whole, of the event is imposed on the spatial support, as can be seen by the following diagram: past participle participle past being being

be be

And, finally, in the transcendent passive (have been married), the spatial support is positioned to realize a moment in the transcendence of an event already imposed on it: past participle participle

result phase phase result

been been have have

The point of these diagrams is to bring out that the relationship fundamental to voice, that between subject and event, is foreshadowed within the verb. This way of conceiving voice in English is necessarily abstract, but it does have a very close connection with our most concrete experience of time. Thinking of any span of time ahead of me, say the rest of today, offers me room for taking the initiative, for making plans, whereas thinking of a span behind me, say that part of the day that is already over, gives me the impression of something irrevocable, unchangeable, out of my control. And the most fundamental elements in language are based on just such inevitable, omnipresent elements of human experience.

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It was pointed out above that until recently the progressive was used to express both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ senses. Interpreted in light of our hypothesis, this means that for imperfective events the progressive was able to cover the whole field of the middle voice, but, with the historical development of the passive progressive, it was restricted to the medio-active. The development of do auxiliary is another historical question that can be considered in this light. Why has the simple form been practically excluded from negative and interrogative sentences? Certainly the subject-event relationship is not the same in sentences declaring an event’s accomplishment as opposed to those negating or questioning it. Interpreting non-positive sentences as expressing diminished subject control would suggest why they require a non-active voice, a verb compound. Another point, one that we have not been able to go into in these lessons, gives a certain coherence to this way of viewing voice. It is the manner of representing the contemporary instant of an ongoing event. As a result of comparing differences of usage between Dutch and English (see Korrel), it becomes apparent that, where Dutch (German as well) represents an event’s last accomplished instant as coinciding with the moment of speaking, English always represents the next instant to be accomplished as coinciding with it. Furthermore this difference may well have arisen since Old English, which appears to resemble modern Dutch and German in this respect. This major change in the way English speakers view the contemporary instant of an event appears to be closely connected with the future-oriented/past-oriented event time dichotomy in the category of voice. Further reflection on the historical development involved here may well throw some light on the hypothesis proposed above. These considerations suggest that the hypothesis for voice is to be judged by the extent to which it permits us to understand better not only the meaning expressed by the sentence but also the observable characteristics of the verb’s semiology in discourse, and so explain in terms of its potential meaning each form: the infinitive, the present participle, and the past participle, as well as the auxiliaries do, be, and have, and of course the simple form. In this respect, it does provide an explanation for what is probably the most striking characteristic of the English verb: the dichotomy between simple and compound verbs. Anyone who wishes to avoid the confusion of form and meaning so prevalent in past grammars must pay close

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attention to all distinctions of form, and certainly to this the most obvious of them. If the above hypothesis is soundly based, it makes this dichotomy of form meaningful as signifying an opposition between the active and the non-active voices. Distinguishing between these two manners of forming verbs of discourse on the grounds of grammatical meaning in this way gives a better understanding of the system of the verb in English.

Conclusion

RESULTS

The unconscious ease with which native speakers of English (or of any other language) use the various forms of their verbs is a cause for wonder and hence a fitting object for scientific investigation. To understand and explain what makes it possible for ordinary anglophones to express on the spur of the moment whatever they have in mind by means of the limited resources of the system of their tongue required the postulate that a form in the system exists as a potential making various actualizations possible. Any form derives its potential meaning from its position in the system of tongue – for example, the infinitive at the beginning of chronogenesis – but it must have one of its possible senses actualized to be usable in discourse. This leads to the general postulate at the base of our inquiry: language exists not only as discourse, an unlimited series of uses in sentences, but also as tongue, the system of potentialities permitting these uses, and as the operations involved in passing from tongue to discourse. Without the unconscious resources of our mother tongue enabling us to represent what we have in mind, we would be unable to express in speech or writing this momentary experiential content by means of words in sentences. Within the verb, tenses are characterized by their position in the operational system of forming an image of time, chronogenesis. Those arising early in the operation, the tenses of the quasi-nominal mood, are not able to carry out the predicative role of a verb. The tenses of the subjunctive and indicative moods, arising later in chronogenesis, are predicable of a subject, but only the two tenses of the

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indicative, produced at the end of the operation, can situate the event in a time-stretch with regard to the present. Thus by recognizing the system of mood as the means of providing different representations of universe time we have been able to explain the difference between finite and nonfinite forms, as well as that between relative and absolute tenses. Examining how have + past participle differs from other forms brought out the two aspects of the verb, each characterized by a position with regard to the event: the spatial support is situated either within the span of the event’s accomplishment or beyond it, in the result phase of the event. Thus by recognizing that the past participle represents the event as accomplished and that have auxiliary represents in the event’s aftermath a span of event time without any particular event occupying it, we have been able to explain the difference between the have + past participle compound and other verbs as that between two aspects, transcendent vs immanent. Examining be + present participle brought out two ways of relating the event’s lexical components to time: either some of the components are situated in time or all of them are. This entailed distinguishing between two ways of actualizing the verb’s lexeme, as a monophase or a metaphase event. By recognizing the capacity of be auxiliary to represent a moment somewhere within a metaphase event, and the present participle to depict the event as only partially accomplished, we have been able to explain the opposition between the progressive and other verbs – whether in the immanent or the transcendent aspect – as imperfective vs perfective representations. Examining do + infinitive brought out two ways of viewing the reality of an event’s accomplishment, characterized by two positions with regard to a moment in the past or the nonpast: if its accomplishment is questioned, negated, or affirmed when doubted, the event is represented by an infinitive before being referred by do to the reality of the indicative; if its accomplishment is considered real, the event is situated directly in the past or the nonpast. Thus by recognizing the capacity of the infinitive to represent the event as accomplishable (with both accomplishment/nonaccomplishment options open) and the capacity of do auxiliary to represent a span of time for the event’s accomplishing, we have been able to explain the opposition between do + infinitive and the simple form.

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Examining be + past participle and the simple form brought out two ways of relating event time to person, depending on whether event time is represented as accomplishable or accomplished when made incident to its support person: the event’s person – and so ultimately the subject – is positioned to support either a to-be-accomplished event or an already-accomplished event. By recognizing the past participle’s capacity to provide an accomplished-moment-byaccomplished-moment representation of the event and the capacity of be auxiliary to represent time within the event, we have been able to explain the opposition between be + past participle and other verbs as that between passive and non-passive. Examining what is common to all compounds brought out a final opposition between two ways for the subject to exercise its role. Either the event’s accomplishment is, in one way or another, preconditioned by the auxiliary + infinitive or participle combination before it is attributed to the subject, or (the simple form) its accomplishment is attributed unconditionally to the subject. By recognizing the capacity of the simple form to situate its lexeme as a whole event in relation to the present and to predicate it of the subject, we have been able to explain the opposition between the simple form and all the verb compounds as that between active and non-active. The analysis has been carried out with the constant concern to keep both sign and meaning in view. It has brought out different actualized senses for each of the chronogenetic forms examined – infinitive, present participle, past participle, simple past, simple nonpast – and has shown the specific import of each verb compound opposing it to the others. This has required proposing an analysis of the syntax of compounds based on an operational sequence that is always the same: calling up the lexeme as a nonfinite form and then the auxiliary, and, when the purposed sentence requires it, a second and even a third auxiliary. Each verb compound is thus provided for, but not constructed, in tongue: the different component tenses and auxiliaries, along with the operative possibilities for assembling them into a compound, are made available through the resources of tongue, but the compound itself is a construction carried out during the act of language as a part of the operational syntax of the sentence: each component form, like any other word, has the potential of effecting an operation of incidence, and the exploiting of this potential produces the compound and predicates it of the subject. The wonder of it is that with such

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meagre resources – five tenses (six including the subjunctive) and three auxiliaries – the system can provide such rich means of expression. PROSPECTS

To remind us that our view of the system is not yet complete, it is worth recalling several of the areas that require further research. Although one can never consider that the data for any given tense or compound is sufficient, the subjunctive and the passive deserve to be singled out. From the viewpoint of the theory of representation presented here, they have received least attention insofar as observation of usage is concerned. Having in mind a hypothesis such as presented here when undertaking this task of exploring particular uses, however, makes it much easier to discern what is pertinent in the data. The problem of the -s inflexion calls for further reflection, as does the related problem of person in the verb. Other than the lack of personal endings, the verb offers little data for confronting the hypothesis that intra-verbal person in English has been reduced to a representation of cardinal person. To find a means of checking the hypothesis, it will probably require a much clearer view of ordinal person in the pronoun and the substantive. This would provide a basis for reflecting on its consequences in the verb, on what is required for representing in time a spatial support that makes no reference to the speaking relationship. This in turn may well help clarify the operations of incidence involved in taking a subject or a direct object or, in the case of the copula, a complement. Another question where both the verb and the noun are concerned is that of the nominal uses of the quasi-nominal forms. Duffley’s work on conditions governing the use of the infinitive vs the present participle as complements of verbs is providing interesting results (cf. 1999 and 2006). Exploring their syntactic possibilities, such as the capacity to take a direct object or to be introduced by an article, is helping situate these forms more precisely with regard to the limit between the noun and verb systems in tongue thus bringing into clearer focus the status of each one as a potential in tongue. The suggestions made concerning the role of not in negative sentences and the effect of inverting subject and finite verb in interrogative sentences call for extensive investigation. Here, as everywhere

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else, it is of crucial importance to keep in mind both the semiology and its significance in the sentence when attempting to infer the operations of syntactic incidence that have produced them. Evoking these areas calling for further observation and reflection should suffice to show that we are still far from a clear view of the verb as a system of interacting subsystems and forms. That there is such a system cannot be doubted, unless one loses sight of the initial observation prompting this inquiry: the ease and precision with which speakers express themselves by means of the verb. In attempting to see the system more clearly it will likely be profitable to follow Guillaume’s advice and example. He considers that a verb system is instituted as a coherent whole on the basis of its representation of the present. Reflecting on each of the subsystems in light of how that unique instant is represented may well give us that global view that will make it possible, one day, to write a grammar of the verb that explains usage. THE BROADER PICTURE

These lessons constitute one more instance of that unceasing effort, so characteristic of our civilization, to understand what we observe around us, and within us. We will end them by recalling some of the general presuppositions and evoking some general implications of the view of language implicit throughout. Like all other attempts to get beyond a purely descriptive presentation, our efforts to understand the data are based on certain assumptions concerning the nature of the object under observation: language. The first is that we can express by means of language only what has been represented by means of language, whence the dictum “no expression without representation.” Experience, the experience we have in mind at the moment of speaking, unsayable in itself, must be represented to be sayable, to make the saying involved in expression possible. This explains why the word is of central importance: being the smallest sayable unit of representation it is found in every act of speaking. To understand what is expressed, one must look for what brought it about, the preconscious means of representation involved. The listener or reader does this without conscious awareness but the grammarian-linguist, whose role is to describe this hidden part of language, must resort to the usual scientific procedures of observation and

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reflection. Observing a certain regularity in the grammatical import of words leads to the second assumption: the means of representation are systemic. The idea that language is somehow systemic was proclaimed by Saussure on the basis of his work in comparative grammar, but it fell to Guillaume to demonstrate this in synchrony. Reflecting on the conjugations and declensions of the Indo-European languages led him to the conclusion that to use a word in a sentence involves reconstructing it from its lexeme through a systemic interplay of grammatical systems. Moreover he realized that this LEXIGENESIS – forming a word out of whatever lexical material is needed for representing the speaker’s momentary experience – presupposes that both the lexemes and the set of grammatical systems, the system of systems, exist at every instant as a potential in the speaker’s mind. This preconscious, word-forming potential, which he called la langue (tongue), differs from the well-known Saussurean notion in being conceived as operational. In Guillaume’s eyes, tongue is a potential for forming any lexeme with appropriate morphemes each drawn from its own system. That is, tongue provides for carrying out a large number of integrated mental operations during the moment of speaking, the sort of thing neurological research is bringing to light in other areas of human mentation. Assuming that representing experience by calling on the meaning import of any morpheme, or lexeme, requires time, operative time, Guillaume postulated that each such meaning potential itself involves movement that, intercepted at different points, can give rise to distinct actualized senses in discourse. This postulate provides a general basis for explaining polysemy but requires the linguist to work back from the observed senses to infer the potential meaning they presuppose for the morpheme. Furthermore, by comparing the potential meaning for one morpheme with that of another morpheme permits discerning the relations between them and thus reconstituting the system in tongue. In fact, as Guillaume points out (2003, 6): “There are no facts of morphology or syntax one can get a clear knowledge of by considering them in isolation, outside the system that, as component parts, they help define.” Reflecting on the makeup of a system instituted in tongue thus amounts to discerning the systemic relations between its components, between their meaning potentials. This involves mentally reconstructing the system lying hidden behind the observed facts in the manner of the watch example from Einstein and Infeld

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cited in cited in lesson 1. Systems are “closed circuits of ideation” (Guillaume 1984, 106) constructed out of a small number of notional components opposed one to the other and the signs necessary to express them. Thus what constitutes the coherence of the system resides in the relations between its notional components, the signs requiring only sufficient distinctness to ensure the exteriorizing of the meanings. This view of the inherent mental construction of a system led Guillaume to view the structure of tongue, the system of systems of a given language, as an instrument forged over the millennia by the mind to serve its own purposes of representing its experience of the universe: “Indeed, the whole structure of tongue is the outcome … not of the meeting of man with man, but of the eternal confrontation of man and universe, and of the specifically human conditions of their confrontation which tongue mirrors, so to speak, in its structure” (1984, 160–1). Language is thus a product of human intelligence, of human lucidity as Guillaume likes to say, and not something organic, a product of human biology, as has been proposed.1 It is man-made, or better, mind-made, retouched from one generation to the next to provide an ever more adequate instrument of representation. As a consequence, “The word in a modern language of high civilization is the refined product of this sort of continuous, multimillenial revision” (Guillaume 2003, 196). To view “thinking man the constructor of language, the architect of language in his own mind” (Guillaume, Ms., 167) in this way led Guillaume to consider man “a being of exception among animals,” endowed with a specific human lucidity permitting us to take the experience the universe presents us with and re-present it mentally in our own way, the way our language represents it. This lucidity is characterized by the innate human mental capacity both to generalize from experience and to situate within the general the experiential particular. This intuitional mental mechanism, the RADICAL BINARY TENSOR as Guillaume calls it, is the pre-linguistic mental attribute that enables infants to acquire their mother tongue, and human communities, over generations, to develop and refine their language. Language is thus the instrument forged by the mind to provide an ever more adequate means of representing experience in a constant effort to better grasp the universe. This grandiose view of human language constitutes an invitation, or better a challenge, to

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analyze a language, every language, and each of its systems as a mental construct organized on the basis of these postulates. The example provided by these lessons shows how far this task has been carried out insofar as the English verb is concerned. Any light that has been shed on the many problems discussed is due primarily to the possibilities of Guillaume’s theory based on that exceptional human capacity to represent our experience before we express it.

Glossary

a c t u a l m e a n i n g (or, actual significate): an actualization of a potential meaning; the particular sense of a lexeme or a morpheme expressed in discourse. a s p e c t : the grammatical category providing a representation of event time within the verb. c a r d i n a l p e r s o n : a grammatical representation of the space occupied by whatever in the intended message is being talked of. c h r o n o g e n e s i s : the process for generating a formal (i.e. grammatical) image of time. c o n s i g n i f y : to signify grammatical meaning when it is combined with lexical meaning in a word. d e m a t e r i a l i z a t i o n : the process of withdrawing part of a word’s material significate to obtain a more abstract meaning. d i s c o u r s e : language as expressed in sentences. e v e n t : the representation of a happening by means of a verb as either monophase or metaphase. e v e n t t i m e : the representation of a happening’s duration by means of the system of aspect. e x p r e s s i v e e f f e c t : the combination of two or more actual meanings giving rise to the particular sense expressed by a word, phrase, or sentence. f o r m : the mental category (i.e. grammatical significate) providing a shape or mould for the word’s lexical import (lexeme); also used to designate the morphological or syntactic shape of the sign.

318

Glossary

h a p p e n i n g : a process or state in the speaker’s intended message. i m m a n e n t a s p e c t : the aspect representing time inside an event, i.e. the event time involved in its accomplishment phase. i m p e r f e c t i v e : the representation of event time such that all the phases of the event are not situated in time. i m p o r t : the meaning brought into a sentence by a word or phrase. i n c i d e n c e : the mental operation of carrying an import of meaning to its support. i n t e n d e d ( o r p u r p o s e d ) m e s s a g e : the personal experience of some situation (be it perceived, remembered, imagined, etc.) that a speaker represents by means of words in order to talk about it. i n t r a - v e r b a l p e r s o n : person represented within the verb, as opposed to person represented outside the verb in its subject or object. l e x e m e : a particular idea in tongue providing the lexical content (material significate) a word brings to the sentence. l e x i g e n e s i s : the mental operation of forming the lexical and grammatical import of a word. m a t t e r : the lexical meaning a word brings to the sentence. m e t a p h a s e e v e n t : an event represented as developmental, i.e. as involving different phases. m o n o p h a s e e v e n t : an event represented as a state, i.e. with the same phase persisting throughout its duration. m o r p h e m e : a unit of grammatical meaning that provides a generalizing form for the lexeme. o p e r a t i v e t i m e : the span of microtime required for any of the mental operations involved in an act of language. o r d i n a l p e r s o n : grammatical person distinguished for its rank or order in the speaking relationship momentarily established by a given act of speech. p e r f e c t i v e : the representation of event time such that all the phases of the event are situated in time. p o t e n t i a l m e a n i n g (or, potential significate): a sign’s constant mental counterpart in tongue permitting the actualization of various senses in discourse.

Glossary

319

p s y c h o s y s t e m : a mental system of grammatical meanings instituted in tongue for forming or categorizing a lexeme. q u a s i - n o m i n a l m o o d : the mood that arises first in chronogenesis and contains the three nonfinite tenses of the verb. r a d i c a l b i n a r y t e n s o r : the basic mental mechanism enabling the mind to generalize and to particularize. r e f e r e n t i a l i n c i d e n c e : the operation involved in referring the meaning expressed to the speaker’s intended message. r e p r e s e n t a t i o n : a mental figuration of some experience by means of the resources of tongue. s u p p o r t : what an import of meaning is said about, i.e. applied to by an operation of incidence. t o n g u e : the preconscious mental universe consisting of ideas (lexemes) and morphemes (in psychosystems) with their signs for producing words. t r a n s c e n d e n t a s p e c t : the aspect representing time after the event, i.e. the event time involved in its result phase. u n i v e r s e t i m e : the representation of time as an endless stretch capable of containing any event.

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 At the early stage where beginners learn to form interrogative and negative sentences, it is not worth explaining the role of the auxiliary and that of the infinitive. At an advanced level where students are able to appreciate the expressive nuances brought in by do auxiliary in positive sentences, on the other hand, this may well be of value, as it certainly is for those who teach English. 2 Meaning paraphrases are given in single quotation marks. 3 For an introduction to Guillaume’s theory see my Language in the Mind (forthcoming). See also Guillaume 1984, as yet the only English translation of his writings, as well as the Fonds Guillaume website: www.fl. ulaval.ca/fgg/, and to other publications listed on the Fonds Guillaume website: www.fl.ulaval.ca/fgg/. LESSON ONE

1 Fortunately two excellent studies give us a detailed account of grammatical tradition: in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe (Padley), and in England up to 1800 (Michael). Most of this section is based on the latter. 2 This problem of defining the basic categories of a discipline is by no means restricted to grammarians. According to a naturalist writing in 1865, “there are as many [definitions of species] as there are naturalists” and this, according to the author citing him (Tattersall, 43), “is not a situation that has materially changed in the years since.” 3 Small caps are used for terms defined in the glossary.

322

Notes to pages 16–30

4 Guillaume 1984 is a translation of excerpts from Guillaume’s manuscripts, mostly from his lecture notes (1938–60). Other texts from Guillaume cited in these lessons are translated by the present author. 5 This corresponds to Guillaume’s term langue, which is to be understood as the operational potential of our language enabling us to speak of any experience and so goes far beyond the static concept found in Saussure. In this context, the concept of the mother tongue (we would not say the mother “language") deserves reflection. 6 The expression is used by Einstein and Infeld (28) in speaking of Newton. 7 For a description of the comparative method and an outline of how Guillaume applied it to a problem in synchrony, see Valin 1996a. 8 If you do [indicative] it and [that] there result [subjunctive] an accident, you will be held responsible. See Valin (1994, 9f) for an account of this discovery. 9 The expression is from Einstein and Infeld (30). 10 Guillaume was careful to distinguish between the word as found in English and the character as found in Chinese. It will not be useful to introduce this distinction here. 11 To get an idea of a language with a very different set of word-forming operations, a system that is not based on parts of speech, see Lowe. 12 The citation is from Aristotle: “Here, as elsewhere, we shall understand things best if we consider them as they emerge from their origins” (cited in Waldron, vi). 13 The sign may vary slightly, as in the past tense of the verb sleep. To my knowledge, only be and go, of all the verbs in English, express the same lexeme by means of a different sign (cf. was, went). 14 That is, not necessarily. Certain lexemes do entertain a systemic relationship with some other lexeme, thus forming a little lexical system, for example before/after, part/whole. LESSON TWO

1 My translation of “les manières diverses de concevoir l’écoulement du procès même” (1943, 6). In using the term procès, Holt presumably does not intend to exclude states, just as Comrie, in using the term situation, presumably intends to designate what I have called a happening or occurrence. 2 Guillaume does not, of course, imply that the systems of Latin and Russian are identical.

Notes to pages 30–41

323

3 Guillaume developed his view of aspect in various lectures over a number of years. For a summary presentation and comparison of the systems of aspect in Latin, Russian, and French, see Valin 1994, 37–52. For an English translation of this article, see the appendix in Hirtle 1975a. 4 Sweet is, to my knowledge, the first to distinguish between the two manifestations of time in the verb, as the whole passage suggests: “By tenseaspect we understand distinctions of time independent of any reference to past, present, or future. Thus the duration of an occurrence is independent of the relation of the time of the occurrence to the time when we are speaking or of which we are speaking.” Unfortunately Sweet did not follow up on this insight to relate each such manifestation to its physical means of expression, with the consequence that, instead of discriminating the different categories involved, he describes all the different verb forms in terms of tense. 5 See lesson 13 for a discussion of examples expressing an event continuing up to the present, as in I have been living here a long time. 6 One consequence of considering the progressive an aspect distinct from that of the simple form is the failure to recognize that the simple form expresses an aspect. This leads to considering aspect “so closely connected in meaning with tense, that the distinction in English grammar between tense and aspect is little more than a terminological convenience” (Quirk et al., 189). The only chance we have of maintaining a clear distinction between aspect and tense is to keep in mind what each system represents, what each aspect and each tense can express in discourse, and so far Guillaume’s theory is, to my knowledge, the only one to provide a clear basis for this distinction. LESSON THREE

1 That is, outside of some situation involving an historical present where the grammatical present is represented somewhere before the moment of speaking. 2 As is customary, an asterisk indicates an unacceptable use. 3 Differences in the manner of representing the grammatical present arise because our experience of the present moment may vary considerably. For example one may have the impression that the present is the moment when things happen to us, or the moment when we exist, or the moment when we do things. In a given language, the manner of giving a grammatical representation to our experience of the present moment depends on the dominating impression in that language.

324

Notes to pages 42–58

4 Usually, but not necessarily, because it may be represented outside the moment of speech, as in historic present usage. 5 Bridgman (32) does not, however, consider this something common to all humanity: “The Greek, on the other hand, thought of himself as facing the past, with the future behind him, coming up over his shoulder as the landscape unfolds to one riding back to the engine.” Observations like this suggest that our language helps determine how we organize our experience of time. 6 The contrary point of view has even been put forward. To suggest that “were is quite regular” in conditional sentences, Palmer (2001, 201) argues: “what is irregular is the use of was in the singular … for no other verb [in the past] has different forms for singular and plural.” 7 See lesson 7 for a discussion of examples of the past indicative sometimes considered to be subjunctives, as in I wish I spoke Mandarin. 8 See lessons 6 and 7 for a discussion of apparent exceptions such as If he comes tomorrow … . 9 In lesson 4, when we examine the category of tense in the verb, it will be seen that to represent an event, even in the quasi-nominal mood, some representation of person, of a spatial support, is required. 10 Many grammars distinguish an imperative mood in English. When we examine usage below (lesson 7), it will be shown that the imperative involves not a distinct way of representing universe time but a particular use of the simple form of the indicative to obtain a special expressive effect. LESSON FOUR

1 “De là, un ensemble de formes verbales, qui sont toutes d’ordre temporel. Aspect, mode, temps ne se réfèrent pas, comme l’enseigne la grammaire traditionnelle, à des phénomènes de nature différente, mais aux phases internes d’un phénomène de nature unique: la chronogénèse; en un mot, l’aspect, le mode, le temps représentent une seule et même chose considérée en des moments différents de sa propre caractérisation.” 2 Some years later he realized that the components of systems, the morphemes themselves, also involve operative time. When we come to examine the use of particular morphemes like the simple form (lessons 5–7), we shall see examples of this later discovery and how it provides a basis for explaining grammatical polysemy. 3 See the discussion in Quirk et al. (176–7), where it is pointed out that “morphologically English has no future form of the verb in addition to present and past forms.”

Notes to pages 65–75

325

4 See my article “Aspect, Tense and the Missing Link” (1996). 5 An interesting confirmation through lexical expressions of the double representation of time in the verb is found in the distinction between for and during as temporal prepositions (see Hirtle 1975b). 6 This seems to be a case of a non-linear system as described by a physicist: “When dealing with any non-linear system, especially a complex one, you can’t just think in terms of parts or aspects and just add things up and say that the behavior of this and the behavior of that, added together, makes the whole thing. With a complex non-linear system you have to break it up into pieces and then study each aspect, and then study the very strong interaction between them all. Only this way can you describe the whole system," Murray Gell-Mann, cited in Friedman (24). LESSON FIVE

1 For a discussion of Vendler and several other authors who have examined uses of the simple form, see my “Events, Time and the Simple Form” (1988). 2 Reference is not given for examples considered to be common usage, some taken from conversation, some, like this one, invented. 3 The term “perfective” is used here to designate any representation of event time that takes in all phases of an event. It will be opposed to the term “imperfective,” designating a representation of event time that does not situate in time all phases of an event. These two terms are not to be understood as indicating grammatical aspects in English. In the Slavic languages, on the other hand, the term “perfective” is used to designate an aspect opposed to the “imperfective” aspect. Comrie (1976) has adopted this opposition as the basis for the system of aspect he proposes for English, a view of aspect in English quite different from that presented above in lesson 2. 4 An example of what Vendler calls “accomplishments,” i.e. events that “proceed toward a terminus” (101). 5 W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind (Toronto: Macmillan, 1947), 3. Sources of examples not taken from linguistic studies and grammars will be given in a footnote. 6 Life, 27 January 1958, 86. 7 Maxwell Anderson in J. Gaver, ed. Critics’ Choice. New York Drama Critics’ Circle Prize Plays 1935–1955 (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1955), 54. 8 Ibid., 49.

326

Notes to pages 75–106

9 The following are some common ones: predict, command, order, forbid, permit, insist, confess, declare, claim, repeat, maintain, name, pronounce, testify, authorize, invite, resolve, challenge, beseech, beg, urge, propose, deny, say, admit, renounce, protest, dare, disagree, consent, question, give up, quit, forgive, pardon, refuse, accept, choose, venture, excuse, nominate, request, double (in bridge), compliment, congratulate, bid. 10 Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (London: Heinemann 1951), 17. 11 Anderson 1955, 60 (see note 7). 12 National Geographic. May 1980, 594. 13 Ibid. 14 Omni. August 1982, 114. 15 J.K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (Penguin Books 1959), 30. 16 G.B. Shaw, Pygmalion (Penguin Books 1957), 62. 17 Cited in N. Landmark, A Study of the Two Forms of the English Verb in the Present Tense (Unpublished thesis, Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, 1954), 233. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 A. Miller, “All My Sons” in Gaver 1955, 358. 21 Life. 27 January 1959, 71. 22 Anderson 1955, 61 (see note 7). LESSON SIX

1 From the beginning of the story, “The Old People” by William Faulkner. 2 Joseph Conrad, Four Tales (London: Oxford University Press 1954), 220. 3 Business Week, 20 June 1981. 4 The Gazette, 31 October 1979, 97. 5 See Hirtle and Curat for a discussion of these and many more examples leading to this conclusion. 6 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (New York: Doubleday, no date), 129. 7 Maxwell Anderson in Gaver, 1955, 59. 8 See my article “Events, Time and the Simple Form” (1988). LESSON SEVEN

1 See my article (1995) for the detail. 2 Quirk et al., 828. See pp. 831–2 for a good discussion of various effects arising from the imperative.

Notes to pages 106–29

327

3 That the imperative gives no indication of a representation of universe time different from that of the indicative mood and, in fact, implies a reference to the present of speech are reasons for not considering it a separate mood, as some grammarians suggest. Furthermore, analyzing it as a prospective use of the simple form helps explain why some other uses have expressive effects resembling those of the imperative. 4 Cited in Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements (London: Marion Boyars 1978), 122. 5 The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (London: Oxford University Press 1963), 1142. 6 For the detail, see my 1980 article “Meaning and Form in when clauses.” 7 Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County (New York: Warner Books 1992), 71. 8 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (New York: Warner Books 1992), 595. 9 The utility of this analysis can be seen in the classroom when it comes to explaining the difference between, say, simple and progressive forms in various uses. Experience shows that, in teaching grammar, appealing to understanding in this way is far more effective than simply enumerating different uses in an appeal to memory. 10 This view goes back to Wittgenstein, according to Hewson (1992, 579). LESSON EIGHT

1 R. Jordan and J. Cunningham, The Sound of High Fidelity (Chicago: Popular Mechanics Press 1958), 30. 2 James McCawley, “Tense and Time-Reference in English” in C. Fillmore and D. Langendoen, eds. Studies in Linguistic Semantics (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston 1971), 106. 3 Aurora. The Professional Journal of NWT Teachers 2, no. 2 (1980): 25. 4 P.G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1929), 145. 5 Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (London: Panther Books, Granada Publishing 1985), 129. 6 The Catholic Register 17 May 1986, 1. 7 S. Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (Bantam Books 1979), 219–20. 8 The Macpherson Report, Undergraduate Instruction in Arts and Science (University of Toronto Press 1967), 61. 9 V.M. Axline, Dibs. In Search of Self (New York: Ballantine Books 1967), 68. 10 Spinks Report, Report on the Development of Graduate Programmes in Ontario Universities (University of Toronto Press 1966), 92.

328

Notes to pages 129–45

11 The Macpherson Report, 85. 12 Leonard Bloomfield, Language (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston 1933/1966), 24. 13 From a McGraw-Hill Book Company ad. 14 Canadian Journal of Linguistics 16, no. 2 (1971): 124. 15 Spinks Report, 44. 16 Sylva (Department of Lands and Forests of Ontario) 9, no. 6 (1953): 21. 17 Canadian Journal of Linguistics 17, no. 1 (1969): 11. 18 A.N. Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan. 1959), 23. 19 T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962), 172. 20 The Gazette, 25 November 1978, T-11. 21 Life 2 February 1968, 30. 22 cbc radio, 21 January 1979. 23 caut Bulletin 20, no. 2. (1972): 37–8. 24 Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press 1965), 204–5. 25 Noam Chomsky, “A Transformational Approach to Syntax” in J.A. Fodor and J.J. Katz, eds. The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, M.J.: Prentice-Hall 1964), 215. 26 The term is borrowed from Duffley, private communication. 27 J. LeCarré, The Honourable Schoolboy (New York: Knopf 1977), 263–4. 28 This is in no way different from the ordinary procedure for determining the sense intended by a speaker when the sign gives no indication. To determine the tense of the verb in I put it over there, we appeal to the context (Where do/did you put the dictionary?); to determine the meaning of the homograph or homophone in I’m looking for the seal, the situation (in a notary’s office vs at the aquarium) would normally reveal what the speaker has in mind. 29 Life, 27 January 1958, 86. 30 We have examined uses in the immanent aspect only because uses like the following in the transcendent aspect are quite rare: Control is exerted over the hiring of a candidate by virtue of the requirement that he have fulfilled certain requirements (from a thesis). LESSON NINE

1 The term “subject," from the past participle of the Latin verb subjacere (‘throw under’), suggests something ’placed under,’ i.e. acting as a support for the meaning import of the predicate.

Notes to pages 146–9

329

2 Except where some means of expressiveness make the particular support obvious, as in imperative usage. 3 See Guillaume 1997 (106–7) for comments on the development from Latin to French and the changes in representing person. 4 The only remains of personal inflection in the past is the was/were opposition, but one cannot take this as sufficient evidence of a distinction of person for all verbs in the past tense because, in view of the surviving past subjunctive (were I/he) discussed in the previous lesson, even in the verb to be itself it is by no means obvious how to interpret the was/were opposition. Thus it is hardly satisfactory to consider that was expresses first and third persons singular only in the past indicative, whereas were expresses first, second, and third persons plural and second person singular in the indicative, but all persons in the subjunctive. Consequently, unless evidence to the contrary arises, it is perhaps better, insofar as person is concerned, to consider the was/were opposition as persisting on the level of the physical sign but no longer reflecting a difference in representation of person. 5 The verb be does present a distinct form for each ordinal person in the nonpast tense: am, are, is. However the fact that these forms do not even correspond to the distinction of form in the past tense (was takes both first and third person subjects) makes one hesitate to consider be as a model, as evidence that ordinal person is represented intraverbally in all verbs of English in the nonpast. Furthermore, the status of negative am in many dialects (I ain’t) and negative-interrogative am in all dialects (ain’t I? / aren’t I?) raises the question of whether positive am really is the sign of an intra-verbal first person. Again one wonders if it is not a semiological relic that, in Modern English, no longer signifies a distinct position in the system but merely the same person as that signified by are. The problem calls for further reflection. 6 According to Michael (120–1) this was a problem for classical grammarians: “The term [persona] kept much of its human reference and never fully became a technical term: its metaphor was still active.” 7 From the present participle of Latin incidere (< in + cadere) ‘to fall upon.’ 8 The notion of ’incidence’ is important as a general characterization of the operation involved in relating the import of words, phrases, and clauses while constructing a sentence. Without incidence, without a bringing together of all the meaning imports of the words, the sentence could not be the expression of a “complete thought,” as tradition describes it.

330

Notes to pages 149–77

9 The same point was brought out by James Harris in 1751 but was apparently lost from view in English grammars during the nineteenth century (cf. Michael, 324, and particularly Joly 1994). 10 See, for example, his discussion in Leçons de linguistique, vol. 16 (1999, 132–3). 11 For other examples, see my article (1982b) on verb discord, where a less advanced view of the problem is presented, a view not taking into account the role of cardinal person. 12 In my study on grammatical number (1982a) in the substantive I showed that -ø signifies a ‘continuate’ representation of space, ‘singular’ or ‘one’ being only one of its possible actualizations. Likewise, -s signifies a ‘discontinuate’ representation of space in the substantive, ‘plural’ or ‘more than one’ being one of its actualizations. I adopt this more general terminology here. LESSON TEN

1 In most dialects, only one simple verb is found in negative and interrogative contexts, the copula. It will be discussed later in connection with the auxiliaries. 2 We here consider the infinitive insofar as it contributes to a verb compound. Its uses as a nominal cannot be profitably treated in the present context. 3 For a detailed analysis of the infinitive in English, see Duffley 1992. The present sketch is based on this study. 4 This is by no means a survey of all possibilities, since, as Duffley 1992 makes quite clear, the infinitive with to can also express an effectively actualized event, as in We managed to escape, and the bare infinitive can express an event whose accomplishment is prospective, as with the modal auxiliaries. 5 For the detail and a more complete analysis of the do compound than can be presented here, see my article “Do Auxiliary – a Meaningful Support and Operator” (1997b). 6 For the detail, see my 2002 article “DO – One Sign, One Meaning?” 7 Also called vicarious, substitute, propredication, proform, or pro-verb use. 8 In certain uses, even the copula is found with do: Don’t be late. 9 See my article “The Support Role of Auxiliaries” (1997a) for a discussion of this centred on be auxiliary. 10 Of course the noun phrase the door, being the object, must also be made incident to the verb before the predicate can be made incident to the subject.

Notes to pages 178–211

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LESSON ELEVEN

1 Cf. Quirk et al (79-81), where the term is limited to auxiliaries and the copula. Since incidence to the subject is the role of any finite verb, the term is used here to apply to the simple form as well. 2 Our concern here is with questions formed with auxiliary do, not with those signified by intonation, etc. 3 This way of looking at interrogative sentences might help us understand why the common construction with auxiliary found today gradually replaced questions like Goes the King hence today? in Late Middle English and Early Modern English. Representing the event to be questioned in the indicative in this way involves referring it to the reality of the present moment, felt to be less in affinity with the uncertain status of the happening than representing it as an infinitive and situating it with minimal determination in the universe time of the quasi-nominal mood. This is a question to be explored further. 4 Obsolete constructions like the above should not be confused with the very different type of sentence found in I hope not. Here the negation is incident not to the verb (the hoping is not denied) but to some formerly expressed notion (just as so would evoke it in a positive way). Such uses show that it is not the mere presence of negation in the sentence that calls for the do compound but rather the need to maintain an event in a state of virtuality in order to negate it. LESSON TWELVE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Peter Cheney, Poison Ivy (London: Fontana Books 1960), 43. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (Laurel ed. 1963), 9. M. Innes, Hamlet Revenge (Penguin Books 1959), 242. See the article “Can the Progressive Express a State?” (Hirtle and Bégin 1991) for a more extensive discussion of this area of usage. Sandra Diamond on Man Alive, CBC Television, 13 January 1975. Paul Horgan, A Lamp on the Plains (New York: Popular Library 1964), 174. E.E. Gordon, “Markham’s Girl” in Collier’s, 28 March 1952, 51; cf. Buyssens 1968, 119. Iris Murdoch, Under the Net (London: Chatto and Windus 1954), 198. A. Bennett, Lord Raingo (New York: Doran 1926), 298. M. Spillane, Vengeance Is Mine (Toronto: Signet Books, New American Library 1966), 173.

332

Notes to pages 215–80

11 Visser (1973, 2426) disagrees with Jespersen, but his data is questionable, as was pointed out in Hirtle and Bégin (1990, 2). 12 Aldous Huxley, Brief Candles (London: Penguin 1965), 39. 13 Agatha Christie, Endless Night (London: Collins 1967), 207. LESSON THIRTEEN

1 Cited by H. Kirsten in Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 15 (1962): 162. 2 S. Bedford, The Best We Can Do (Penguin 1961), 23. 3 N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press 1965), 47. 4 Agatha Christie, Witness for the Prosecution (New York: Dell 1958), 25. LESSON FOURTEEN

1 It has sometimes been suggested that the subject can be situated before the event by means of the modal auxiliaries. However, Duffley (1992, 93ff.) has provided convincing evidence that the modal auxiliaries situate the personal support of the verb within the confines of the infinitive event represented as a potentiality. 2 L. Uris, Exodus (New York: Bantam Books 1959), 181. 3 Vance Packard, The Status Seekers (New York: David McKay 1959), 189-90. 4 For a more detailed discussion, see Bégin. LESSON FIFTEEN

1 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, New York: Macmillan, 1919, 281-2. 2 Because ambiguous examples of this sort express two different intended messages, they in fact represent two different sentences. 3 For the lexeme ‘pay’ this of course involves a lexical shift between the activity of paying and the resultant state. The grammatical difference between has paid and are paid largely compensates for this lexical shift – largely but not completely, as was pointed out in lesson 13 when discussing certain uses of the nonpast transcendent. LESSON SIXTEEN

1 Pushed to the limit, the process of dematerialization would have eliminated all lexical matter and so would have destroyed the very basis of do

Notes to pages 283–315

2

3 4 5

333

auxiliary as a word. It might be pointed out that in first proposing this process as the basis of a theory of auxiliaries in 1938 (cf. the 1964 reprint), Guillaume called it “subduction” thereby suggesting a historical process of leading the word's meaning down to a more fundamental and general sense. Bolinger (169), however, suggests that this is not impossible. He imagines the scenario of someone racing home to recuperate a compromising note left on the table and proposes as possible an inner dialogue something like Please, Neale, don’t have read it yet. Here, too, do would anticipate by presenting the present of speech as ready for but not yet containing the result phase of reading. See my 1965 article. For the clearest description of this view of the system see Joly and O’Kelly (1990, 192-3). For the historical detail, see, for example, Warner. In Four Quartets Eliot characterizes a poet’s attempt to use words as “a raid on the articulate.” CONCLUSION

1 Cf. Sorman, 132.

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Bibliography

NB: references for examples, usually from non-scholarly writings, are found in the footnotes. Allen, Robert Livingston. 1966. The Verb System of Present-day American English. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Allen, W.S. 1960. Living English Structure. London: Longmans. Augros, Robert and George Stanciu. 1988. The New Biology. Boston and London: New Science Library, Shambhala. Beedham, Christopher. 1982. The Passive Aspect in English, German and Russian. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Bégin, Claude. 1992. The Transcendent Progressive. Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Laval, Québec. Bolinger, Dwight. 1977. Meaning and Form. London and New York: Longman. Bridgman, P.W. 1936. The Nature of Physical Theory. New York: Dover Publications. Brown, Goold. 1856/1893. The Institutes of English Grammar. New York: William Wood. Buyssens, Eric. 1968. Les deux aspectifs de la conjugasion anglaise au xxe siècle. Étude de l’expression de l’aspect. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. – 1979. “The Active Voice with Passive Meaning in Modern English” in English Studies 60. Charleston, Britta M. 1955. “A Reconsideration of the Problem of Time, Tense and Aspect in Modern English” in English Studies 36. – 1960. Studies on the Emotional and Affective Means of Expression in Modern English. Bern: Francke Verlag.

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Index

adjective, 264 aspect, 13, 29–36, 142, 220–1; immanent, 30–4, 68–119, 122–43; system of, 33–4, 241–3. See also: transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events auxiliary, 35, 277–90; modal, 287– 90. See also: do compound, passive, progressive, transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events chronogenesis, 18, 36, 49–50, 56, 66, 243, 309 comparative method, 15–17 dematerialization, 173–5, 280, 282–4 do compound, 167–94, 300, 310; compounding, 175–9; do auxiliary, 172–5, 279–81, 284–6; infinitive, 169–72, 183, 194; in interrogative sentences, 179–84, 187; in negative sentences, 184– 8; in positive sentences, 188–92 dynamic. See: event

event, 284; dynamic, 88; metaphase vs monophase, 87–9, 99–102, 113–14, 204–15, 224; prospective, 103–15; stative, 88; time, 29, 33– 4, 103–4, 115–16, 196–7. explaining, 22–3, 115–18. expressive effect, 69 happening, 27, 101, 114, 145, 150, 196, 241, 243, 254, 262, 267, 269, 276 imperative, 106, 121, 129–30, 191 imperfective, 198–9, 222, 242–52, 269. See also: progressive incidence, 148, 176, 180, 185–8, 189, 192, 197, 224, 226, 239, 243–5, 268–70, 272–4, 277–8, 311; referential, 180–1, 277–8 indicative mood, 40–4; tense in, 44, 57–9; universe time in, 40–4 infinitive. See: do compound, quasinominal mood, tense intended message, 27, 101, 114, 149–50, 151, 153, 156, 164, 280–1, 189, 195–6, 202, 213, 262, 277–8

344

Index

lexigenesis, 314 meaning; lexical vs grammatical, 20–1; observing, 21–2, 68–9, 116; as observable 5–7; potential, 7–8, 68–9, 117–18, 179, 260, 279, 293, 314. See also: polysemy metaphase. See: event, passive monophase. See: event, passive mood, 11–12, 39–40, 49, 309–10, 327n3 (lesson 7); discovering the system of, 17–18, 38–9, 52–4, 65. See also: indicative mood, quasinominal mood, subjunctive mood not. See: do compound in negative sentences parts of speech, 14, 19, 56. See also: adjective, auxiliary, verb passive, 253–76, 311; be auxiliary, 255–8, 264, 275; compounding, 254–7, 268–70, 272–5; metaphase events, 266–72; monophase events, 265–6; past participle, 255–8, 264, 275; progressive, 268–72; pseudo-passives, 262–4; ripe oranges peel easily, 258– 62; subject-event relation, 254–8, 267–8, 271–2; transcendent aspect, 272–4 past participle. See: passive, transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events perfect. See: transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events perfect progressive. See: transcendent aspect with imperfective events

perfective, 70, 89, 115, 116, 222– 40, 266–8 person, 59–60, 145–65, 241, 264; agreement, 151–8; cardinal, 149– 51, 157–65, 241, 243–4, 253–7; intra-verbal, 146–7, 150–65; ordinal, 145–8, 151, 159–63, 165; as support, 148–50, 241, 243, 253, 255–8, 264, 269, 295–7 polysemy, 7–8, 117–18, 179, 314 present, 40–4 present participle. See: progressive progressive, 31–2, 195–221, 242–3, 299, 310; be auxiliary, 197, 283– 6; compounding, 197–8; expression of activity in progress, 199– 201; expression of duration and sequence 201–4; expression of future events, 217–20; expression of mental events, 206–15; as imperfective, 198–9; present participle, 196–7; with to be, 215–17; vs verbs of state, 204–15. See also: passive Psychomechanics of Language, 19, 116; method of analysis, 8, 16, 117–19, 122–33, 141–4, 168 quasi-nominal mood, 49–52; tense in, 60–3; universe time in, 50–2 radical binary tensor, 315 representation, 27–8, 313–16 -s inflexion. See: verb sign, 5 simple form, 68–144, 309–11; importance, 68–70; as perfective, 70–1, 84–5, 87–9; in tongue, 113–15. See also: voice

Index

simple form expressing activities, 88; foreseen, 78–81; imagined, 81–3; instantaneous, 76–8; as metaphase event, 88, 99–102, 113–14; past, 70–4; performative, 74–6; process to result, 83–4 simple form expressing states, 86–9, 204–15, 224; as capacity, 94; duration of, 89–93; as future event, 94–7; as habit, 93–4; mental event, 97–8, 206–15; as monophase event, 88–9, 91, 99–102, 113–14; as perfective, 87–9 simple form expressing prospective events, 103–15; conditionconsequence sentences, 107–9; direction-giving, 102–4; either-or sentences, 105–6; if-clauses, 107– 8; imperative, 106; inner dialogue, 109–10; past, 110–12; when-clauses, 108–9 spatial support. See: person stative. See: event subject. See: passive, voice subjunctive mood, 45–9, 112, 120– 44, 185; existence in English, 45– 6, 122–33; future-oriented (“present”), 47–8, 63–5, 122–39; judgmental, 133–7; mandative, 130–3; past-oriented (“past”), 47–8, 63–5, 139–41; tense in, 47–8, 63–5; universe time in, 47–9, 133–41, 160 support, 145, 148, 175–7. See also: person syntax, 148, 192, 277, 314 system, 18–19, 32, 57, 141–4, 275– 6, 309, 314. See also: aspect, mood, tense, verb

345

tense, 11, 28–9, 37, 55–6; absolute vs relative, 59–61, 133, 141; Latin vs English, 9–10. See also: indicative mood, quasi-nominal mood, subjunctive mood, transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events time: event, 29, 32–4; operative, 57, 314; universe, 37–40, 52–4. See also: indicative mood, quasi-nominal mood, subjunctive mood tongue, 16, 117, 293, 309, 314–5 transcendent aspect with perfective events, 30–6, 222–40, 300, 310; compounding, 223–4, 239– 40; expressing current relevance, 225–30, 249, 273; expressing a future event, 231–2; expressing an up-to-the-present event, 232– 5, 274; have auxiliary, 223, 238–9, 282–6; in past, 235–8; past participle, 222–3, 241; and tense, 225 transcendent aspect with imperfective events, 242–52; compounding, 243–5; expressing concomitant effects, 250–1; expressing possibility of continuation, 245–9; have auxiliary, 244– 5; past participle, 244–5; present participle 243–4 universe time, 37–40, 43–4, 47–8, 51. See also: indicative mood, quasinominal mood, subjunctive mood verb, 25–8; agreement, 151–8; ancient grammarians, 9; copula, 263–5; criteria for analyzing, 13; English grammarians to 1800,

346 9–13; finite vs nonfinite, 12, 54; Guillaume’s approach, 16–19; inflexion, 122–5, 151–63; negation, 128–9, 184–8; as operator, 178, 180; system of, 56, 65–7, 309–12. See also: simple form, verb compound verb compound, 35–6, 167–9, 178–9, 182–4. See also: do

Index compound, passive, progressive, transcendent aspect with perfective events, transcendent aspect with imperfective events voice, 291–308. See also: passive word, 14–15, 25–6, 144, 168, 172, 313–5