English Grammar: Nouns, Verbs, Mood, and Voice
The English Verb: Grammatical Category of Mood
A verb is one of the main parts of speech that identifies an action or a state of a noun. It has several grammatical categories, and one of them is Mood. Mood expresses the speaker’s attitude toward the verbal activity. There are three types of mood: Indicative, Imperative, and Subjunctive.
Understanding Grammatical Mood
Indicative Mood
The Indicative mood indicates something the speaker considers a fact. For example: She is a doctor; I was ill; She will come tomorrow.
Imperative Mood
The Imperative mood, however, expresses commands and requests. Typically, there is no explicit subject in the sentence. The implied subject is ‘you’ for both singular and plural. For instance: Give me the book, please; Close the door!
Subjunctive Mood
The Subjunctive mood is used to denote a wish for something not actually true or not currently the case. This mood has two subcategories: Present and Past. The distinction refers more to Mood than to Tense. They are also called non-finite and finite.
Non-finite Subjunctive
The non-finite Subjunctive uses the bare infinitive form of the verb across all persons, numbers, and both Present and Past Tenses. It has two different usages and meanings:
- The optative Subjunctive, used only in phrases or expressions (e.g., Long live the Queen; Blessed be thy hospitality).
- The mandative Subjunctive, used in expressions with the construction: Subject1 + demands/demanded; insists/insisted; etc. + that + Subject2 + Subjunctive; or It is/was + imperative, necessary, etc. + that + subject + Subjunctive.
This usage of the Subjunctive has a variant with ‘should + infinitive’, mainly in British English. For instance: It is necessary that he should tell the truth; He insisted that she come that night.
Finite Subjunctive
The finite Subjunctive, or the hypothetical one, is used to express situations considered hypothetical or unlikely by the speaker. Usually, this mood is used after words like ‘if’, ‘wish’, ‘suppose’. For example: If I were you, I would marry her. It is typical for this mood that the only distinction in the past tense of ‘to be’ for first and third person singular is the use of ‘were’ instead of was.
The English Noun: Morphological & Semantic Classes
A noun is one of the main parts of speech that identifies people, things, places, and ideas. Nouns are characterized not only on a morphological level but also on a semantic one.
Noun Classification
Morphological Classes of Nouns
The morphological classes of nouns are based on various inner structural patterns. They fall into four structural classes:
- Simple nouns: mono-morphemic words (e.g., girl, cat, doll).
- Derivatives: nouns formed by the use of affixes and suffixes (e.g., director, friendship, childhood).
- Compounds: words containing at least two root morphemes (e.g., bedroom, dishwasher, blue-eyed).
- Substantivized forms: words from another word class used with an article and a grammatical category of number (e.g., the beautiful, the haves and the have-nots, the wounded).
Semantic Classes of Nouns
The semantic classes of nouns are founded on their functions. According to their uniqueness, nouns are divided into common and proper nouns. Common nouns name a class of items, while proper nouns denote personal names of people, countries, cities, geographical names, etc. For instance, common nouns include dog, city, mountain; proper nouns include John, London, Elba.
Subdivision of Common Nouns
Common nouns are further subdivided into countable and uncountable. Countable nouns have both singular and plural forms (e.g., table – tables; teacher – teachers). Uncountable nouns have only one form (e.g., wood, evidence, energy, faith).
Abstract and Concrete Nouns
Both subclasses of common nouns fall into abstracts and concretes. Abstract nouns identify mental concepts, while concrete nouns denote things a person can touch, feel, smell, and see. Examples of abstract nouns include belief, faith, idea. Examples of concrete nouns include car, house, phone.
Semantic Shift in Nouns
Although semantic classes are based on common knowledge, one should always be alert because semantic shifts can provoke a change in the semantic class. For example: The Beauty and The Beast; There is so much beauty in the world. In the first case, ‘beauty’ is used as a concrete noun, denoting a beautiful girl, while in the second case, it is an abstract noun.
The English Verb: Grammatical Category of Voice
A verb is one of the main parts of speech that identifies an action or a state of a noun. It has several grammatical categories, and one of them is Voice. This category shows the direction of the verbal process.
Understanding Grammatical Voice
Active and Passive Voice
The category of Voice is represented by its two members: Active and Passive. The active voice is the unmarked member of the opposition. It is used in a sentence to express the agent of the verbal action. The active voice is combined with both transitive and intransitive verbs. For example: The hunter killed the lion; The earthquake happened on May 24, 2012.
The passive voice is the marked member of the opposition. It is formed by the auxiliary verb ‘be’ in all tenses, persons, and numbers, combined with the Past Participle of the main verb. It is combined only with transitive verbs. To change the voice from active to passive, certain transformations must be made:
- The object from an active sentence becomes the subject in a passive sentence.
- The active verbal phrase becomes a passive one.
- The active subject is introduced in the passive sentence. This is possible only with a ‘by-phrase’.
For instance: The lion was killed by the hunter; The dishes were washed by Mary.
Types of Passive Voice
Depending on which part of the active sentence becomes the subject in the passive one, there are three types of passive voice:
- Primary passive: The direct object becomes the subject.
- Secondary passive: An indirect object becomes the subject.
- Tertiary passive: A prepositional object becomes the subject.
For example: The flowers were given to Jane; Kate was given the flowers; John was laughed at.
Middle Active Voice
There also exists a Middle active voice. It lies between the active and passive voice because the subject often cannot be categorized as either an agent or a patient, but may have elements of both. Usually, this middle voice has a reflexive sense. For instance: The boy washed the car. Here, passive voice is possible: The car was washed by the boy. But in the sentence The boy washed himself, there is no passive because of the reflexive pronoun.
Personal and Impersonal Passive Constructions
There are personal and impersonal passive constructions. The personal construction indicates the subject (e.g., The Ancient Stadium is said to have been built in the beginning of 2nd century AD). The impersonal passive construction omits the subject, which is replaced by the impersonal pronoun ‘it’. For instance: It is said that the Ancient Stadium was built in the beginning of 2nd century AD.
Usages of the Passive Voice
There are two main usages of the passive voice:
- When the agent is unknown.
- When the agent is known but intentionally hidden.