The verb as a notional word denoting process. Its formal and functional properties

The verb as a notional part of speech has the categorial meaning of dynamic process, or process developing in time, including not only actions as such (to work, to build), but also states, forms of existence (to be, to become, to lie), various types of attitude, feelings (to love, to appreciate), etc.

Formally, the verb is characterized by a set of specific word-building affixes, e.g.: to activ ate, to wid en, to classi fy, to synchron ize, to over estimate, to re read, etc.; there are some other means of building verbs, among them sound-replacive and stress-shifting models, e.g.: blood – to bleed, import – to import.

There is a peculiar means of rendering the meaning of the process, which occupies an intermediary position between the word and the word-combination: the so-called “phrasalverbs ”, consisting of a verb and a postpositional element. Some phrasal verbs are closer to the word, because their meaning cannot be revealed from the meaning of the verb or the meaning of the postposition separately, e.g.: to give up, to give in, etc.; others are semantically closer to the word-combination, e.g.: to stand up, to sit down, etc. A separate group of phrasal verbs is made by combinations of broad meaning verbs to have, to give, to take + nouns, e.g.: to give a look, to have rest, to have a bite, etc.

The processual semantics of the verb determines its combinability with nouns (denoting either the subject or the object of the action), and with adverbs (denoting the quality of the process). In certain contexts, some verbs can be combined with adjectives (in compound nominal predicates).

The verb is usually characterized as the most complex part of speech, because it has more word-changing categories than any other notional part of speech. It is changed according to the categories of person and number, tense, aspect, voice and mood. Besides, each verb has a specific set of non-finite forms (the infinitive, the gerund, participle), otherwise called “verbals”, or “verbids”, opposed to the finite forms of the verb, otherwise called “finites”; their opposition is treated as “the category of “finitude”.

Such a wide range of forms is mainly due to the importance of the function that the verb performs in the sentence: its primary function (and the only function of its finite forms) is the function of a predicate – the central, organizing member of the sentence, expressing its crucial predicative meanings, or the relations of the event denoted by the sentence to actual reality. The non-finite forms of the verbs, verbids, perform functions characteristic of other notional parts of speech – nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, but still, they can express partial predication and share a number of other important verbal features with the finites.

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