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Other Morphological Categories 127
t errogative and negative can be united in one form, as in does ... not take? Since interrogative and negative can be combined in one form, they cannot possibly belong to the same category but have to be assigned to different categories. We may put the four categories: affirmative, negative, interrogative, and interrogative-negative together in the following diagram:
Non-interrogative Interrogative
Non-negative takes does ... take?
Negative does not take does .. . not take?
The diagram, simple as it is, shows that we have here a system of 2 X 2 categories completing each other. The peculiar thing is, that only one of the four forms does not include the auxiliary do, and that the two items of the second line differ from each other only by word order, while the two items of the first line differ from each other by the use or non-use of the auxiliary verb.
The question may be asked: what is the meaning of the auxiliary do in the negative-interrogative form does ... not take? Is it an auxiliary of interrogation or an auxiliary of negation, or does it combine the two meanings? There seem to be no objective criteria in this matter, and if a somewhat subjective view may be expressed, we will say that the auxiliary do in the negative-interrogative form combines both meanings.
However, the whole problem of negative and interrogative forms of the English verb requires some deeper investigation.
Emphatic do-forms
Another question arises concerning the so-called emphatic do-forms, such as he does know, she did go, meaning more or less the same as he really knows, she really went, etc. The specific meaning of such formations is well known, but their status in the morphological system of the verb has not been clearly defined.
In the first place, we must find out whether the verb do does or does not introduce any lexical meaning of its own into the formation. Apparently it does not: it merely emphasises the meanings expressed by the infinitive following the form of the verb do. If this view is endorsed, we must conclude that these are analytical verb forms, that is, the verb do is an auxiliary verb here just as it is an auxiliary in the negative and interrogative formations of which it is a necessary component. If that is so, the opposition between knows and does know, or that between went and did go, etc., must be based on some grammatical category or other. It is also evident that the forms does know, did go, etc., are the marked members of the opposition, while the forms knows, went, etc., are its
128 The Verb: Person and Number
unmarked members. This is obvious both from the meaning and the form of each member: does know, did go, etc. are necessarily emphatic and they have the auxiliary as a means of expressing emphasis, that is, they cannot be used unemphatically; knows, went, etc., on the other hand, are not necessarily unemphatic: they may very well become emphatic if pronounced with the appropriate intonation, even though they have no special auxiliary or any other material sign to mark them off. The category which lies at the basis of this opposition may perhaps be briefly termed emphasis.
It should also be noted that the do-forms do not cover the entire field of the English verb: they are only found in the finite verb form (thus not in the infinitive, participle, or gerund), and only in those which have no auxiliary in the unemphatic form.
We may add that for all those forms of the verb which do not fall under this definition the way to express emphasis is purely phonetic: the verb form is pronounced with strong stress; in writing the form is usually underlined, and in print it is given in italics.
The auxiliary do is also occasionally used as a kind of homogeneous part parallel to a modal verb and marking the reality of the action denoted by the following infinitive, as distinct from, and opposed to, its mere possibility or necessity, etc., expressed by the modal verb. Here is an example of this use: Life could and did go on almost as usual. (M. MITCHELL)
Hierarchy of Verbal Categories
It is natural to assume that in the system of verbal categories there is some hierarchy, that is, some categories are above others, determining their possibilities. To give a clear example: the category of voice to some extent dominates that of aspect, as there are fewer continuous forms in the passive than in the active voice: such continuous forms as shall be writing, have been writing, had been writing find no counterpart in the passive. We could also say that the passive voice limits the possibilities of the continuous aspect. 1
The category of mood, as we take it, dominates the category of tense. In the indicative mood there are (at least) three tenses, whereas in the "oblique" moods there are at any rate not more than two, and the imperative mood has no tenses at all.
1 In this the English language fundamentally differs from Russian, where the category of aspect dominates. As Academician V. Vinogradov puts it, the category of aspect dissects the entire system of the Russian verb (see В. В. Виноградов, Русский язык. М., 1947, стр. 493). Thus, in the imperfective aspect in the indicative mood there are three tenses, while in the perfective there are only two.
Other Morphological Categories 129
A peculiar relation obtains between the categories of number and of person. Leaving aside for the moment the verb be with its individual system of forms, number and person of English verbs have a positive (that is, non-zero) expression only in the -s-ending of the 3rd person singular present indicative. We might even suppose that in Modern English there are not two separate categories, number and person, but one "combined" number-person category. It is, however, doubtful whether such interpretation of phenomena would in any way yield a clearer and more consistent view of the verbal system. The notions of "number", that is, the difference between one and more-than-one doer, on the one hand, and that of "person", that is, distinction between the speaker, the one spoken to, and that which is neither speaker nor spoken to, seems too far apart, to be united under a common heading.
In pursuing this subject further, it should be possible to work out a system of verbal categories, something of a "pyramid"; however, there would probably arise some doubts and difficulties in assigning a place to this or that category.
б в. A. Ильиш
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