The Past Perfect Continuous
The Past Perfect Continuous Inclusive and Past Continuous
The use of the Future Perfect Continuous
The Passive Voice
The use of the Passive Voice
The use of tenses in the Passive Voice
Ways of translating the Passive Voice into Russian
§ 21. Uses of the Passive Voice peculiar to the English language
§ 22. The PassiveVoice and the Nominal Predicate
Modal Verbs
Definition
§ 2. Can
§ 3. May
§ 4. Must
§ 5. Should and ought
§ 6. To be + Infinitive
§ 7. To have + Infinitive
§ 8. Shall
§ 9. Will
§ 10. Would
§ 11. Dare
§ 12. Need
Mood
The Subjunctive Mood
General notion
Synthetic forms
Analytical forms
The forms of the Indicative Mood used to express the same meaning as is expressed by the Subjunctive Mood
The use of the Subjunctive Mood
Simple sentences
Conditional sentences
Adverbial clauses of purpose
Adverbial clauses of concession
Adverbial clauses of time and place
Adverbial clauses of comparison
Predicative clauses.
Subject clauses
Object clauses
Attributive appositive clauses
§ 15. Attributive clauses modifying the noun time in the principal clause
Emotional use of the Subjunctive Mood
Chapter VIII. THE NON-FINITE FORMS OF THE VERD (THE VERBALS)
Definition
The characteristic traits of the verbals
The Participle
General notion
Double nature of the participle
Tense distinctions
Voice distinctions
Functions of Participle I in the sentence
Functions of Participle II in the sentence
Predicative constructions with the participle
The Objective Participial Construction
The Subjective Participial Construction
The Nominative Absolute Participial Construction
The Prepositional Absolute Participial Construction
Absolute constructions without a participle
The Gerund
General notion
Double nature of the gerund
Tense distinctions
Voice distinctions
Predicative constructions with the Gerund
The use of the Gerund
The functions of the Gerund in the sentence
The Gerund and the Infinitive
The Gerund and the Participle
The Infinitive
General notion
Tense and aspect distinctions of the Infinitive
Voice distinctions
§ 27. The use of the Infinitive without the particle to
The functions of the Infinitive
Infinitive constructions
The Objective-with-the Infinitive Construction
The Subjective Infinitive Construction
§ 32. The for-to-Infinitive Construction
INTRODUCTION
GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
§ 1. Languages may be synthetic and analytical according to their grammatical structure.
In synthetic languages, such as for instance Russian, the grammatical relations between words are expressed by means of inflections: e.g. крыша дома.
In analytical languages, such as English, the grammatical relations between words are expressed by means of form words, and word order: e.g. the roof of the house.
§ 2. Analytical forms are mostly proper to verbs. An analytical verb-form consists of one or more form words, which have no lexical meaning and only express one or more of the grammatical categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood, and one notional word, generally an infinitive or a participle: e. g. He has come, I am reading. The analytical forms are:
1. Tense and Aspect verb-forms (the Continuous form: I am writing, the Perfect form: I have written, the Perfect Continuous form: I have been writing, the Future Indefinite: I shall write, all the other forms of the Future; also the interrogative and the negative forms of the Present and Past Indefinite: Does he sing? He does noising).
2. The Passive Voice: I was invited to the theatre.
3. The analytical form of the Subjunctive Mood: I should go there if I had time.
In all these analytical forms the form word is an auxiliary verb. (For detailed treatment see chapters on the verb.)
§ 3. However, the structure of a language is never purely synthetic or purely analytical. Accordingly in the English language there are:
1. Endings:
-s in the third person singular in the Present Indefinite: he speaks,
-s in the plural of nouns: tables;
-s in the genitive case: my brother's book;
-ed in the Past Indefinite of regular verbs: smoked.
2. Inner flexions: man—men; speak—spoke.
3. The synthetic forms of the Subjunctive Mood: were, be, have etc.
§ 4. Owing to the scarcity of synthetic forms the order of words, which is fixed in English, acquires extreme importance: The fisherman caught a fish.
A deviation from the general principle of word order is possible only in special cases.
§ 5. One of the marked features of the English language is the extensive use of substitutes. A word substitute saves the repetition of a word in certain conditions. Here belongs one, that, do. One replaces class nouns in the singular and in the plural:
Thanks for the compliment, if it is one.
The hours he spent with Ruth were the only happy ones he had, and they were not all happy. (London)
That generally substitutes nouns; especially abstract nouns and nouns of material followed by an attribute, mostly introduced by the preposition of:
He (Martin) watched the easy walk of the other in front of him, and for the first time realized that his walk was different from that of other men. (London)
Almost every day thereafter Mrs. Skelton would go for a ride in her own car or that of Castleman. (Dreiser)
Do substitutes verbs:
You know your law better than Ido. (Galsworthy)
Forgive me for speaking with brutal frankness; I only do so because I care. (Alexander)
ACCIDENCE