The subject and the predicate

MORPHEMES

The morpheme is one of the central notions of grammatical theory^ without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. Definition of a morpheme is not an easy matter, and it has been attempted many times by different scholars. Without going into particulars of the discussions that have taken place, we may briefly define the morphemes as the smallest meaningful units into which a word form may be divided. For instance, if we take the form writers, it can be divided into three morphemes: (1) writ-, expressing the basic lexical meaning of the word, (2) -er-, expressing the idea of agent performing the action indicated by the root of the verb, (3) -s, indicating number, that is, showing that more than one person of the type indicated is meant.) Similarly the form advantageously can be divided into three morphemes: advantage + ous + ly, each with a special meaning of its own.

Two additional remarks are necessary here: (1) Two or more morphemes may sound the same but be basically different, that is, they may be homonyms. Thus the -er morpheme indicating the doer of an action as in writer has a homonym — the morpheme -er denoting the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs, as in longer. Which of the two homonymous morphemes is actually there in a given case can of course only be determined by examining the other morphemes in the word. Thus, the morpheme -er in our first example, writer, cannot possibly be the morpheme of the comparative degree, as the morpheme writ- to which it is joined on is not the stem of an adjective or adverb, and so no comparative degree is to be thought of here.

(2) There may be zero morphemes, that is, the absence of a morpbeme may indicate a certain meaning. Thus, if we compare the forms book and books, both derived from the stem book-, we may say that while books is characterized by the -s-morpheme as being a plural form, book is characterized by the zero morpheme as being a singular form.

The problem of parts of speech is one that causes great controversies both in general linguistic theory and in the analysis of separate languages. We shall have to examine here briefly a few general questions concerning parts of speech which are of some importance for Modern English.

The term "parts of speech" (as well as the corresponding terms in Russian, German, French, and other languages), though firmly established, is not a very happy one. What is meant by a "part of speech" is a type of word differing from other types in some grammatical point or points. To take the clearest example of all, the verb is a type of word different from all other types in that it alone has the grammatical category of tense. Thus, while it is perfectly reasonable to ask, "What is the past tense of the word live?" (the answer of course is, lived), it would make no sense to ask, "What is the past tense of the word city?" or "What is the past tense of the word big?" Those words just have not got any past tense, or any tense whatever, for that matter: the notion of tense cannot be applied to them. Tense is one of the distinctive features characterizing the verb as against every other type of word. However, the question is much less simple with reference to some other types of words, and a general definition of the principles on which the classification of parts of speech is based becomes absolutely necessary.

We cannot here go into the controversy over these principles that has lasted a considerable time now, and we will limit ourselves to stating the principles of our classification and pointing out some difficulties inherent in it.

The principles on which the classification is based are three in number, viz. (1) meaning, (2) form, (3) function. Each of these requires some additional explanations.

(1) By meaning we do not mean the individual meaning of each separate word (its lexical meaning) but the meaning common to all the words of the given class and constituting its essence^

PARTS OP SPEECH

THE SYSTEM OP PARTS OF SPEECH

Thus, the meaning of the substantive (noun) is "thing-ness". This applies equally to all and every noun and constitutes the structural meaning of the noun as a type of word. Similarly, the meaning of the verb as a type of word is that of "process", whatever the individual meaning,of a separate verb may happen to be. We shall have to dwell on this later in considering every part of speech in detail.

V (2) By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word.] Thus, the noun is characterized by the category of number (singular and plural), the verb by tense, mood, etc. Several types of words (prepositions, conjunctions, and others) are characterized by invariability.

. у (3) By function we mean the syntactical properties of a type of word.; These are subdivided into two, viz. (a) its method of combining with] other words, (b) its function in the sentence; (a) has to deal with phrases, (b) with sentence structure. Taking, as we did previously, the verb as a specimen, we can state that, for example, a verb combines with a following noun (write letters) and also with a following adverb (write quickly). As to (b), i. e. the syntactical function of a verb in a sentence, it is that of a predicate.¹

Two additional remarks are necessary before we proceed to the analysis of parts of speech in detail.

In the first place, there is the question about,the mutual relation of the criteria. We cannot be sure in advance that all three criteria will always point the same way. Then, again, in some cases, one of them may fail (this especially applies to the criterion of form). Under such circumstances, it may prove necessary to choose between them, i. e. to attach to one of them greater value than to another. We may,say, provisionally, that we shall treat them in the order in which they have been enumerated, viz. meaning shall come first, form next, and function last.

It will also be seen that the theory of parts of speech, though considered by most scholars to be a part of morphology, ² cannot do without touching on some syntactical problems, namely on phrases and on syntactical functions of words (point 3 in our list of criteria). We shall regard the theory of parts of speech as essentially a part of morphology, involving, however, some syntactical points.

¹ We do not consider here the functions of the infinitive, participle, and
gerund.

² Some scholars took a different view of the problem. Thus, Academician
A. Shakhmatov held that parts of speech should be treated in Syntax. (See
А. А. Шахматов, Синтаксис русского языка, 1941.)

THE SYSTEM OF PARTS OF SPEECH

I 1. Proceeding in the usual order, we start with the noun, or substantive. *

Its characteristic features are the following.

(1) Meaning: thingness. Thus, nouns include not only chair
and iron, etc., but also beauty, peace, necessity, journey, and every
thing else presented as a thing, or object.

(2) Form. Nouns have the category "of number (singular and
plural), though some individual nouns may lack either a singular
or a plural form. They also, in the accepted view, have the category
of case (common and genitive); see, however, p. 46 ff.

(3) Function, (a) Combining with words to form phrases. A noun
combines with a preceding adjective (large room), or occasionally
with a following adjective (times immemorial), with a preceding
noun in either the common case (iron bar) or the genitive case
(father's room), with a verb following it (children play) or pre
ceding it (play games). Occasionally a noun may combine with a
following or a preceding adverb (the man there; the then president).
It also combines with prepositions (in a house; house of rest). It is
typical of a noun to be preceded by the definite or indefinite article
(the room, a room), (b) Function in the sentence. A noun may be
the subject or the predicative of a sentence, or an object, an attri
bute, and an adverbial modifier; It can also make part of each of
these when preceded by a preposition. f

2. Next, we come to the adjective^

(1) Meaning. The adjective expresses property. ²

(2) Form. Adjectives in Modern English are invariable. Some
adjectives form degrees of comparison (long, longer, longest).

(3) Function, (a) Adjectives combine with nouns both preceding
and (occasionally) following them (large room, times immemorial).
They also combine with a preceding adverb (very large). Adjectives
can be followed by the phrase "preposition + noun" (free
from danger). Occasionally they combine with a preceding verb
(married young), (b) In the sentence, an adjective can be either an
attribute (large room) or a predicative (is large). It can also be an
objective predicative (painted the door green).

¹ In the prevailing Modern English terminology the terms "noun" and
"substantive" are used as synonyms. According to an earlier view, the term "noun"
was understood to cover all nominal parts of speech, including substantives,
adjectives, pronouns, and numerals, thus corresponding to the Russian term имя.

² The property may be either permanent or temporary; cf. a red tie and
a face red with excitement. Thus the idea of permanence should not be men
tioned in defining the meaning of the adjective as a part of speech.

THE STATIVE. THE VERB. THE ADVERB 33

that has been going on for some time now, views on this point are as far apart as ever. We will expound here the view that words of the asleep type constitute a separate part of speech, and we will consider the various arguments for and against this view in Chapter IX. As for the term "stative", it may be used to denote these words, on the analogy of such terms as "substantive" and "adjective".¹

(1) Meaning. The meaning of the words of this type is that of
a passing state a person or thing happens to be in.

(2) Form. Statives are invariable.

(3) Function, (a) Statives most usually follow a link verb (was
asleep, fell asleep). Occasionally they can follow a noun (man
alive). They can also sometimes be preceded by an adverb (fast
asleep), (b) In the sentence, a stative is most usually a predicative
(he fell asleep). They can also be objective predicatives (/ found
him asleep) and attributes, almost always following the noun they
modify (a man asleep in his chair).

The verb.

(1) Meaning. The verb as a part of speech expresses a process.

(2) Form. The verb is characterized by an elaborate system of
morphological categories, some of which are, however, controver
sial.² These are: tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number.

(3) Function, (a) Verbs are connected with a preceding noun
(children play) and with a following noun (play games). They are
also connected with adverbs (write quickly). Occasionally a verb
may combine with an adjective (married young), (b) In a sentence
a verb (in its finite forms) is always the predicate or part of it (link
verb). The functions of the verbals (infinitive, participle, and
gerund) must be dealt with separately.

The adverb.

USE OP ENGLISH TENSES 93

Strangely enough, some doubts have been expressed about the existence of a future tense in English. 0. Jespersen discussed this question more than once.¹ The reason why Jespersen denied the existence of a future tense in English was that the English future is expressed by the phrase "shall I will + infinitive", and the verbs shall and will which make part of the phrase preserve, according to Jespersen, some of their original meaning (shall an element of obligation, and will an element of volition). Thus, in Jesper-sen's view, English has no way of expressing "pure futurity" free from modal shades of meaning, i. e. it has no form standing on the same grammatical level as the forms of the past and present tenses. However, this reasoning is not convincing. Though the verbs shall and will may in some contexts preserve or indeed revive their original meaning of obligation or volition respectively, as a rule they are free from these shades of meaning and express mere futurity. This is especially clear in sentences where the verb will is used as an auxiliary of the future tense and where, at the same time, the meaning of volition is excluded by the context. E. g. / am so sorry, I am afraid I will have to go back to the hotel — (R. WEST) Since the verb will cannot possibly be said to preserve even the slightest shade of the meaning of volition here, it can have only one meaning — that of grammatical futurity. Of course numerous other examples might be given to illustrate this point.

It is well known that a present tense form may also be used when the action belongs to the future. This also applies to the present continuous, as in the following example: "Maroo is coming, my lad," he said, "she is coming to-morrow, and what, tell me what, do we make of that?" (BUECHNER) The adverbial modifier of time, to-morrow, makes it clear that the action expressed by the verb come in the present continuous tense actually belongs to the future. So it might also have been expressed by the future tense: Maroo will come, my lad, she will come to-morrow. But the use of the present continuous adds another shade of meaning, which would be lost if it were replaced by the future tense: Marco's arrival to-morrow is part of a plan already fixed at the present; indeed, for all we know, she may be travelling already. Thus the future arrival is presented as a natural outcome of actions already under way, not as something that will, as it were, only begin to happen in the future.

So the three main divisions of time are represented in the English verbal system by the three tenses. Each of them may appear in the common and in the continuous aspect. Thus we get six tense-aspect forms.

¹ See, for example, 0. Jespei'gen, The Philosophy of Grammar, p. 50.

In giving a general preview of our subject on p. 14 we pointed out that within the domain of syntax two levels should be distinguished: that of phrases and that of sentences. In giving characteristics of a part of speech we consistently kept apart the two layers in so far as they concern the syntactical functions of parts of speech — their ability to combine with other words into phrases, on the one hand, and their function in the sentence, on the other.

In starting now to analyse problems of syntax itself, we must first of all try to elucidate as far as possible the sphere belonging to each of the two levels. After that we will proceed to a systematic review of each level.

|We will term "phrase" every combination of two or more words which is a grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of some word (as, for instance, the perfect forms of verbs). The constituent elements of a phrase may belong to any part of speech. |For instance, they may both be nouns, or one of them may be an~adjective and the other a noun, or again one of them may be a verb and the other a noun, or one may be a preposition and the other a noun; or there may,be three of them, one being a preposition, the other a noun, and the third a preposition, etc.

We thus adopt the widest possible definition of a phrase and we do not limit this notion by stipulating that a phrase must contain at least two notional words, as is done in a number of linguistic treatises. ¹ The inconvenience of restricting the notion of phrase to those groups which contain, at least two notional words is that, for example, the group "preposition + noun" remains outside the classification and is therefore neglected in grammatical theory.

The difference between a phrase and a sentence is a fundamental one. A phrase is a means of naming some phenomena or processes,

See, for instance, Грамматика русского языка, т. II, 1954, ч. 1, стр. 10.

178 PHRASES

just as a word is. Each component of a phrase can undergo grammatical changes in accordance with grammatical categories represented in it, without destroying the identity of the phrase. For instance, in the phrase write letters the first component can change according to the verbal categories of tense, mood", etc., and the second component according to the category of number. Thus, writes a letter, has written a letter, would have written letters, etc., are grammatical modifications of one phrase.

With a sentence, things are entirely different. A sentence is a unit with every word having its definite form. A change in the form of one or more words would produce a new sentence.

It must also be borne in mind that a phrase as such has no intonation, just as a word has none. Intonation is one of the most important features of a sentence, which distinguish it from a phrase.

Last not least, it is necessary to dwell on one of the most difficult questions involved in the study of phrases: the grammatical aspect of that study as distinct from the lexicological.

The difference should be basically this: grammar has to study the aspects of phrases which spring from the grammatical peculiarities of the words making up the phrase, and of the syntactical functions of the phrase as a whole, while lexicology has to deal with the lexical meaning of the words and their semantic groupings.

Thus, for instance, from the grammatical point of view the two phrases read letters and invite friends are identical, since they are built on the same pattern "verb -f- noun indicating the object of the action". From the lexicological point of view, on the other hand, they are essentially different, as the verbs belong to totally different semantic spheres, and the nouns too; one of them denotes a material object, while the other denotes a human being. Thus, the basic difference between the grammatical and the lexicological approach to phrases appears to be clear. However, it is not always easy to draw this demarcation line while doing concrete research in this sphere.

It is to the phrase level that the syntactical notions of agreement (or concord) and government apply.

In studying phrases from a grammatical viewpoint we will divide them according to their function in the sentence into (1) those which perform the function of one or more parts of the sentence, for example, predicate, or predicate and object, or predicate and adverbial modifier, etc., and (2) those which do not perform any such function but whose function is equivalent to that of a preposition, or conjunction, and which are, in fact, to all intents and purposes equivalents of those parts of speech. The former of these two classes comprises the overwhelming majority of English phrases, but the latter is no less important from a general point of view.

It is common in grammatical theory to distinguish between main and secondary parts of a sentence. Besides these two types there is one more — elements which are said to stand outside the sentence structure.

In starting now to'study parts of the sentence in Modern English, we will begin by analysing the principle or principles on which this classification is based.

There are two generally recognized main parts of the sentence — the subject and the predicate. 'As to the secondary parts, their number varies slightly. Among them we usually find the object (with its subdivisions), the attribute, and the adverbial modifier. Other secondary parts are also sometimes mentioned —the apposition (its relation to the attribute is variously interpreted), the objective predicative, and occasionally some other parts, too.

The reason for calling the subject and the predicate the main parts of the sentence and distinguishing them from all other parts which are treated as secondary, is roughly this. The subject and the predicate between them constitute the backbone of the sentence: without them the sentence would not exist at all, whereas all other parts may or may not be there, and if they are there, they serve to define or modify either the subject or the predicate, or each other.

A linguistic experiment to prove the correctness of this view would be to take a sentence containing a subject, a predicate, and a number of secondary parts, and to show that any of the secondary parts might be removed without the sentence being destroyed, whereas if either the subject or the predicate were removed there would be no sentence left: its "backbone" would be broken. This experiment would probably succeed and prove the point in a vast majority of cases. We will therefore stick to the division of sentence parts into main and secondary, taking the subject and the predicate to be the main parts, and all the others to be secondary.

PARTS OF A SENTENCE. THE MAIN PARTS

THE PREDICATE

THE SUBJECT AND THE PREDICATE

The question now arises, how are we to define the subject of a sentence? The question may also be put in a different way: what criteria do we practically apply when we say that a word (or, sometimes, a phrase) is the subject of a sentence?

In trying to give a definition of the subject, we shall have to include in it both general points, valid for language in general, and specific points connected with the structure of Modern English,-Tims the definition of the subject in Modern English will only partly, not wholly, coincide w^rith its definition, say, in Russian.

First let us formulate the structure of the definition itself,-It is bound to contain the following items: (1) the meaning of the subject, i. e. its relation to the thought expressed in the sentence, (2) its syntactical relations in the sentence, (3) its morphological realization: here a list of morphological ways of realizing the subject must be given, but it need not be exhaustive, as it is our purpose merely to establish the essential characteristics of every part of the sentence.

.„_ The definition of the subject would, then, be something like this. | The subject is one of the two main parts of the sentence. (1) It denotes the thing ¹ whose action or characteristic is expressed by the predicate. (2) It is not dependent on any other part of the sentence. (3) It may be expressed by different parts of speech, the most frequent ones being: a noun in the common case, a personal pronoun in the nominative Case, a demonstrative pronoun occasionally, a substantivized adjective, a numeral, an infinitive, and a gerund. It may also be expressed by г phrase.²

In discussing problems of the subject, we must mention the argument that has been- going on for some time about sentences of the following type: ft gave Hermione a sudden convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours under the candlelight. (LAWRENCE) Two views have been put forward concerning such sentences. One is, that the pronoun it at the beginning of the sentence is the formal subject, and the real subject is the infinitive (in this particular case, to see). The other view is, that it is the subject of the sentence, and the infinitive an apposition to it. There is something to be said on both sides of the question. On the whole, however, the second view seems preferable, as the division of subjects into formal and real ones seems hard to justify in general syntactical theory./

Л

¹ The term "thing" has to be taken in its widest sense, including human
beings, abstract notions, etc.

² We do not speak here about subordinate clauses performing the function
of subject, since in that case the sentence is composite. See below, p. 286 ff.

As we have seen, the definition of the subject given here includes mention of the predicate. This is in accordance with the view stated above, that the two notions are correlative, that is to say, there is a subject in two-member sentences only. In a similar way, a definition of the predicate will have to include- mention of the subject.

Following the same pattern in^ the definition of the predicate, we arrive at the following result. The predicate is one of the two main parts of the sentence. (1) It denotes the action or property of the thing expressed by the subject. (2) It is not dependent on any other part of the sentence. (3) Ways of expressing the predicate are varied and their structure will better be considered under the heading of types of predicate. Here it will suffice to say that among them are: a finite verb form, and a variety of phrases, for instance, phrases of the following patterns: "finite verb -|- infinitive", "link verb -f noun", "link verb -f adjective", "link verb -|- preposition + noun", etcj

The assertion that the predicate is not dependent on any other part of the sentence, including the subject, requires some comment. It is sometimes claimed that the predicate agrees in number with the subject: when the subject is in the singular, the predicate is bound to be in the singular, and when the subject is in the plural, the predicate is bound to be in the plural as well. However, this statement is very doubtful. As we have seen above (p. 182), there is much to be said in favour of the view that the category of number in the predicate verb is independent of the number in the subject. This is especially confirmed by sentences like My family are early risers, where the plural number in the link verb shows the plurality of the acting persons, though the' subject noun is in the singular. Besides it should be noted that this question of concord or no concord is one that belongs to the level of phrases, not to that of the sentence and its parts. Thus, there seems to be no valid reason for thinking that the predicate is in any way dependent on the subject.

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