Identifying the verb

Status
Not open for further replies.

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Well, this is getting fairly interesting.

Barry, you said, "Your reference to the verb 'to hit' (I would say the verb 'hit') is also confusing. Your example 'The hit ball flew over the fence' is somewhat contrived. Once again 'hit' is not being used as a verb. The fact that 'hit' is capable of being used as a verb in a different context is of no relevance. You are actually using 'hit' as an adjective. Further to your previous advice to look up in in a dictionary I have checked the main dictionaries for the use of 'hit' in an adjectival way. I have been unable to find any such uses. Hence my view that your use of 'hit' is contrived."

Would it help to say that the "hard hit ball flew over the fence"? Perhaps I am using baseball instead of cricket.

As far as "ajar" and "to" are concerned. In syntactic terms they could be called equal to "shut". They modify.

But so much of this discussion and apparent confusion comes from mixing terms from morphology and syntax. These are different subjects with different lexica.

How a word is operating within a sentence is a matter of syntax. There the words "verb" and "adjective" can be confusing. It would be better to speak of "simple predicates" (or "gerunds" or "participial phrases" or "infinitive phrases") and "modifiers".
These latter terms will not be used by a dictionary, which limits itself to morphology, although it may give some contexts to show how a given word can be used as more than one part of speech.

Regarding my naming the verb "to shut" as "to shut", in my experience that is what linguists, careful grammarians, and careful teachers of foreign languages do. They name verbs by their infinitives. If you simple refer to the verb "to shut" as "shut", it could be the present, past, or past participle that you are talking about (or the latter being used as a modifier -- adjective, if you will).

"Am, are, is, was, were, be, being, and been" are all forms of the verb "to be".
"Go, goes, going, went, and gone". These are forms of the verb "to go".

I have very little idea of how this is all taught in the British schools, but here in America, before the general demise of grammatical knowledge, beginning around the 1970's, all of this, within our system, was quite clear.

I realize that this is getting long. But if you REALLY care about my approach to this, you should look at the videos on the Youtube channel, mrbisse1, beginning with video 42.1 and then stay with the ".1" series.

Frank
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Thanks for the link Bimbi. It is very helpful.

Barry
 

5jj

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
Czech Republic
Current Location
Czech Republic
Would it help to say that the "hard hit ball flew over the fence"? Perhaps I am using baseball instead of cricket.
It still sounds very strange to me. Perhaps it's natural in AmE.
As far as "ajar" and "to" are concerned. In syntactic terms they could be called equal to "shut". They modify.
It sounds to me as if 'shut' is an adjective then.
But so much of this discussion and apparent confusion comes from mixing terms from morphology and syntax. These are different subjects with different lexica.

How a word is operating within a sentence is a matter of syntax. There the words "verb" and "adjective" can be confusing. It would be better to speak of "simple predicates" (or "gerunds" or "participial phrases" or "infinitive phrases") and "modifiers".
But words on their own are not any part of speech. The word 'up' is, in itself, not any part of speech. It can be used as a preposition, verb, noun, adjective, etc. Similarly, the word 'shut' is not, in itself, a verb.
These latter terms will not be used by a dictionary, which limits itself to morphology, although it may give some contexts to show how a given word can be used as more than one part of speech.
Morphology has little to do with it. It's usage that counts. In my Webster's Third (1961), the word 'disembowel' is listed only as a verb, because it has been used only as verb so far in recorded English. 'shut' is listed as a verb, noun, and adjective, 'up' as an adverb, adjective, verb, preposition and noun.
Regarding my naming the verb "to shut" as "to shut", in my experience that is what linguists, careful grammarians, and careful teachers of foreign languages do. They name verbs by their infinitives. If you simple refer to the verb "to shut" as "shut", it could be the present, past, or past participle that you are talking about (or the latter being used as a modifier -- adjective, if you will).
In none of the first four grammars I have just taken from my shelf is 'to' used as part of the infinitive, Hudleston and Palmer (2002) use bold italicised font for the infinitive: want; Quirk et al (1985) and Carter & McCarthy (2006) use smaller font upper case letters: WANT; Biber et al (1999) use lower case italics: want.
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Frank

You write 'But so much of this discussion and apparent confusion comes from mixing terms from morphology and syntax'. It may be that you are correct. Perhaps you would resolve the 'apparent confusion' by listing those terms used in this thread that rightly belong to the realm of morphology and separately listing those terms that rightly belong to the realm of syntax.

As a syntactic fledgling and a morphological embryo I would find any assistance in this regard very useful.

Barry
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Barry,

That's a good idea.

Morphology involves the 8 "parts of speech" -- noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, preposition, and interjection. Interjection is arguably not a part of speech, but it is normally included. The first four are "open classes" with thousands of examples, the next three are closed classes with very few members and very slow to change within the history of a language.

Syntax involves the 25 or so "parts of sentences" -- subject, predicate, modifier, clause, phrase, direct object, indirect object, objective complement, predicate nominative, predicate adjective, prepositional phrase, object of a preposition, infinitive phrase, gerund phrase, participial phrase, noun of direct address, noun clause, adverb clause, adjective clause, appositive, and probably some others -- but a limited number.

Morphology involves how individual words can change their form and function. Syntax involves how words or groups of words function within given sentences.

If there were a truly easy way to understand this, I would offer it. In my videos I have made it as simple as I can while still making it nearly complete.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Remember, though, that I am using my American experience, which, I believe, is quite different from the Bristish one.

Frank
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Frank

It may be that we remain divided by a common language. Is the following web site and example of what you have been explaining?

grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/creatpartphrase.htm



Barry
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Barry,
I just glanced at that website.
I find it needlessly confusing.
There are better ones.
Give me a moment. I will see if I can find one to sent you.
Frank
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Here.

Try this one.

grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/creatpartphrase.htm

That may be more than you are looking for, but it might help -- entirely American i.e. Reed-Kellogg in its approach.

Frank
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Sorry. That seems not to have worked. Let me try again.
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Okay.

That's a start.

Still, I think that if you want to understand the whole American system, you should follow my videos, tedious though they may be.

What happens is that Reed-Kellogg diagramming is so much fun that often people are not willing to do the preparatory work in morphology, so they hit a dead end.

Frank
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Frank

I will have a look at that site in the morning as I am away this evening. If I can return to the site I mentioned - it gave the example:

My father's hair, streaked with gray and receding on both sides, is combed straight back to his collar.

I was simply going to point out that in this example 'streaked' and 'receding' are used as verbs not adjectives. So it is not analogous to my original sentence.

Barry
 

5jj

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
Czech Republic
Current Location
Czech Republic
Morphology involves the 8 "parts of speech" -- noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, preposition, and interjection. Interjection is arguably not a part of speech, but it is normally included. The first four are "open classes" with thousands of examples, the next three are closed classes with very few members and very slow to change within the history of a language.
I always thought that morphology was about how words are formed. Actually, I still do. My (American) Webster's 3 defines the word as "a study and description of word-formation in a language including inflection, derivation, and compounding".
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
As a matter of interest Frank my A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk et al is similar in its definition of morphology to that referred to by 5jj. I remain very puzzled by your arguments but look forward to viewing the web page tomorrow.


Barry
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Barry,

Thanks. It has been interesting.

I have often heard about Quirk et al, but his work is not part of the American experience.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Frank
 

Frank Antonson

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2009
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
English
Home Country
United States
Current Location
United States
Barry,

"My father's hair, streaked with gray and receding on both sides, is combed straight back to his collar."

In American terms, "streaked" is a past participle of the verb "to streak" used to modify "hair", "receding" is a present participle of the verb "to recede" used to modify "hair" and "is combed" is the passive voice, present tense of the verb "to comb", and, in this case, the simple predicate of the sentence.

Frank
 

5jj

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Member Type
English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
Czech Republic
Current Location
Czech Republic
I have often heard about Quirk et al, but his work is not part of the American experience.
I think, Frank, that their work may not be part of your experience.

Quirk et al may not be as respected in America as in Britain, but virtually every American grammarian I have read has been aware of the team.

By the way - I have in this thread read your posts, and made a few comments on them, as well as asking a couple of questions. I'd be interested to read your responses.
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Frank

I think what you, and the Diagramming Sentences website you referred to, fail to do is to adequately distinguish those words with the form of a participle that function as an adjective from those words with the form of a participle that do not function as an adjective. For example (modifying examples in Quirk et al that deal with this distinction):

1. She is (very) calculating.
2. She is calculating my salary.

'Calculating' has the form of a participle. In example 1 it functions as an adjective. In 2 it does not. Identifying a word as having the form of a participle is straightforward, deciding what function that word performs is not. Many participle form words will function as an adjective and many will not - but it is surely the function not the form that interests us.

One can also give examples of -ing, -ed words that function as adjectives but are not participles because there is no related verb. For example:

She is (very) talented.

'Talented' functions as an adjective but is not a participle - there being no verb 'talent' ('to talent' as you would have it).

Barry
 

barryashton

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2012
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Great Britain
Frank has analysed the following sentence:

My father's hair, streaked with gray and receding on both sides, is combed straight back to his collar.

I disagree with his analysis. 5jj, if you have time, would you please consider my attempt at analysis. Be as brutal as you wish - it helps with the learning process.

Frank identifies 'is combed' as the simple predicate. I would describe 'combed' as the main verb and 'is' as an auxiliary. However, this is a difference of terminology not a difference of substance.

Frank describes 'streaked' and 'receding' as a participles modifying 'hair'. For my part the subject is 'My father's hair' not 'hair' and it is the subject that is being modified. The question then arises as to what is modifying the subject. I take the view that the main clause is:

My father's hair ... is combed straight back to his collar

and that there are subordinate clauses:

1. streaked with gray
2. and receding on both sides

and that it is these that modify the subject.

These two clauses are nonfinite clauses that do not have a subject of their own (see Quirk et al 14.6). Using Quirk's definitions, these subordinate clauses perform the function of adverbials.

The phrase 'straight back to his collar' also performs the function of an adverbial.

I could go on to analyse the functions of individual words but will halt and await any comments.

Barry
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top