Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов
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лекция по грамматиае
| 4. The Category of Number
The category of number shows whether the process is associated with one doer or with more than one doer, e.g. He eats three times a day . The sentence indicates a single eater; the verb is in the singular despite the fact than more than one process is meant. The category of number is a two-member opposition: singular and plural. An interesting feature of this category is the fact that it is blended with person: number and person make use of the same morpheme. As person is a feature of the present tense, number is also restricted to the present tense. Some verbs – modals – do not distinguish number at all. Still others are only used in the plural because the meaning of ‘oneness’ is hardly compatible with their lexical: The boys crowded round him. vs. *The boy crowded round him. The soldiers regrouped and opened fire. vs. *The soldier regrouped and opened fire. The analysis of the examples demonstrates the weakness of the English verb as concerns the expression of person and number and its heavy reliance on the subject: it is the subject that is generally responsible for the expression of person and number in English. The forms of the type livest, takest, livedst, tookest stand outside the grammatical system. They are associated with the personal pronoun thou and are only used in religious and occasionally in poetical texts and among Quakers. With these forms the category of number appears within the category of the 2nd person and the whole system of person and number (including the past tense) must be presented in a different shape. |