Non-perfect Perfect

Non-continuous Continuous

Active Passive

invites is invited

invited was invited

will invite will be invited

There are direct, indirect and prepositional passive.

Some forms of the active voice find no parallel in the passive. It refers to the forms of the Future Continuous, Future Continuous in the Past and all the Perfect Continuous tenses. At various times the following 3 voices have been suggested in addition to the 2 already mentioned.

1. Reflexive
E.g. He dressed himself.

2. Middle
E.g. The door closed.

3. Reciprocal
E.g. They kissed each other.

The grammatical category of aspect is represented by 2 sets of forms in modern English: non-continuous, continuous. These forms are contrasted with each other on the principal of use & non-use of the pattern “to be + participle I”.

-/+ +

writes is writing

wrote was/were writing

will write will be writing

The continuous aspect is marked both in form and in meaning. As for the non-continuous aspect, it isn’t marked in form and in meaning as a rule.

The continuous aspect denoted an action going on at a given period of time. The non-continuous aspect denotes an action which is not limited in this way. The grammatical category of aspect shows difference in the way the action is shown to proceed.

Professor Ivanova recognizes the existence of this category in English, but she objects to the term common aspect or non-continuous aspect saying that the forms write, wrote are purely tense forms.

As for the Russian verb, it has 2 aspects, the perfective and the imperfective, but there is no direct correspondence between Russian and English aspects. Thus the English common (non-continuous) aspect may correspond not only to the Russian imperfective aspect.

The grammatical category of time-correlation (of order, of phase) is represented by binary opposition, constituted by 2 form classes: perfect and non-perfect. The perfect is the marked member of the opposition both in form and in meaning. The non-perfect is a weak member of the opposition both in form and in meaning as a rule.

-/+ +

writes has written

wrote had written

will write will have written

This category shows whether the action is viewed as prior to other actions or irrespective of other actions. Linguists disagree as to the category of the perfect belongs. Some grammarians think that it forms part of the aspect system (the resultive aspect). Other linguists treat perfect as belonging to the tenses. Smirnitsky was the first to draw attention that the forms represent a grammatical category which is different from the category of tense, though it is closely connected with it.

E.g. She has come. – priority to the act of speech.

She had come before he phoned over. – priority to the act of his phoning over.

Thus the perfect forms express priority, whereas non-perfect lays the action unspecified.

The grammatical category of mood

Mood is the grammatical category of the verb reflecting the relation of the action denoted by the verb to reality from the speaker point of view.

E.g. He listens attentively. – indicative mood

Listen attentively! – imperative mood

He would have listened attentively if he had been interested. – subjunctive mood

We deal with the same action of listening, but in the first sentence the action is represented as taking place in reality; in the second it is a command; in the third the action is imaginary, it is non-fact. So in modern English we distinguish 3 moods.

There is no unity of opinion concerning this category. In the opinion of Kaushanskaya in modern English there are synthetic and analytical forms. The synthetic forms are: the Present Subjunctive of all the verbs and the Past Subjunctive of the verb to be.

The Present subjunctive denotes an action referring to the Present of Future. This form is found in poetry, elevated prose, scientific language, language of official documents and some set phrases.

E.g. God forbid!

Suffice it to say that he soon came back.

In American English the Present Subjunctive is used in colloquial speech.

E.g. She insisted that he take care of her.

The Past Subjunctive were is widely used in English is found not only in literature but in colloquial language.

E.g. I wish she were wiser.

The analytical forms are: should + bare infinitive, would + bare infinitive, may/might + bare infinitive.

E.g. If I were the head of the country, I should extend the application of a law to all.

In general the number of English moods in different theories varies from 2 to 17. Kaushanskaya, Ilyish, Ivanova, Iofik find only 3 moods. Barkhudarov believed that there are 2 moods: indicative and subjunctive subdivided into subjunctive 1 and subjunctive 2. As for the imperative, it is treated outside the category of mood.

The difficulty of distinguishing of other moods from the indicative in English is connected with the fact that they do not contain a single form which is not used in the indicative. The meanings of these 3 moods are distinguished not so much by the opposition of the individual forms, but by the opposition of the system of forms each mood possesses.

E.g. To have:

Indicative: have, has, had

Subjunctive: have, had

Imperative: have

One of the most important differences between the indicative mood and the other moods is that the meaning of tense doesn’t go with the meanings of the subjunctive and imperative moods. Tense reflects the real time of the real action, but the imperative and subjunctive moods represent the action not as real, but as desirable or imaginary.

Syntax

Our modern theory of syntax includes:

1. the study of the phrase (minor syntax)

2. the study of the sentence (major syntax). It deals with simple sentences, parts of sentence, complex sentences, compound sentences, composite sentences.

3. the study of text or discourse. The unit of investigation is text or complex syntactic unit.

Syntactic bonds & means of their expression

The structure of syntactic units is formed of constituencies which are joined by means of syntactic connections or bonds. A syntactic bond is a connection between words or groups of words in a flow of speech. In syntactic analysis more effective is the notion of an immediate syntactic bond, by which we mean the syntactic connection between 2 words or group of words which on a certain level of IC analysis turn out to be the immediate constituency of one and the same larger construction.

E.g. He | deserved || my friendship.

Types of syntactic bonds

There are 3 types of syntactic bonds:

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