VERB: PERSON AND NUMBER

VERB: PERSON AND NUMBER

1. The categories of person and number are closely connected with each other. Their immediate connection is conditioned by the two factors: first, by their situational semantics, referring the process denoted by the verb to the

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subject of the situation, i.e. to its central substance (which exists in inseparable unity of 'quality' reflected in the personal denotation, and 'quantity' reflected in the numerical denotation); second, by their direct and immediate relation to the syntactic unit expressing the subject as the functional part of the sentence.

Both categories are different in principle from the other categories of the finite verb, in so far as they do not convey any inherently 'verbal' semantics, any constituents of meaning realised and confined strictly within the boundaries of the verbal lexeme. The nature of both of them is purely 'reflective' (see Ch. III, 5).

Indeed, the process itself, by its inner quality and logical status, cannot be 'person-setting' in any consistent sense, the same as it cannot be either 'singular' or 'plural'; and this stands in contrast with the other properties of the process, such as its development in time, its being momentary or repeated, its being completed or incompleted, etc. Thus, both the personal and numerical semantics, though categorially expressed by the verb, cannot be characterised as process-relational, similar to the other aspects of the verbal categorial semantics. These aspects of semantics are to be understood only as substance-relational, reflected in the verb from the interpretation and grammatical featuring of the subject.

2. Approached from the strictly morphemic angle, the analysis of the verbal person and number leads the grammarian to the statement of the following converging and diverging features of their forms.

The expression of the category of person is essentially confined to the singular form of the verb in the present tense of the indicative mood and, besides, is very singularly presented in the future tense. As for the past tense, the person is alien to it, except for a trace of personal distinction in the archaic conjugation.

In the present tense the expression of the category of person is divided into three peculiar subsystems.

The first subsystem includes the modal verbs that have no personal inflexions: can, may, must, shall, will, ought, need, dare. So, in the formal sense, the category of person is wholly neutralised with these verbs, or, in plainer words, it is left unexpressed.

The second subsystem is made up by the unique verbal

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lexeme be. The expression of person by this lexeme is the direct opposite to its expression by modal verbs: if the latter do not convey the indication of person in any morphemic sense at all, the verb be has three different suppletive personal forms, namely: am for the first person singular, is for the third person singular, and are as a feature marking the finite form negatively: neither the first, nor the third person singular. It can't be taken for the specific positive mark of the second person for the simple reason that it coincides with the plural all-person (equal to none-person) marking.

The third subsystem presents just the regular, normal expression of person with the remaining multitude of the English verbs, with each morphemic variety of them. From the formal point of view, this subsystem occupies the medial position between the first two: if the verb be is at least two-personal, the normal personal type of the verb conjugation is one-personal. Indeed, the personal mark is confined here to the third person singular -(e)s [-z, -s, -iz], the other two persons (the first and the second) remaining unmarked, e.g. comes  come, blows  blow, slops  stop, chooses  choose.

As is known, alongside of this universal system of three sets of personal verb forms, modern English possesses another system of person-conjugation characterising elevated modes of speech (solemn addresses, sermons, poetry, etc.) and stamped with a flavour of archaism. The archaic person-conjugation has one extra feature in comparison with the common conjugation, namely, a special inflexion for the second person singular. The three described subsystems of the personal verb forms receive the following featuring:

The modal person-conjugation is distinguished by one morphemic mark, namely, the second person: canst, may(e)st, wilt, shalt, shouldst, wouldst, ought(e)st, need(e)st, durst.

The personal be-conjugation is complete in three explicitly marked forms, having a separate suppletive presentation for each separate person: am, art, is.

The archaic person-conjugation of the rest of the verbs, though richer than the common system of person forms, still occupies the medial position between the modal and be-conjugation. Two of the three of its forms, the third and second persons, are positively marked, while the first person remains unmarked, e.g. comes  comestcome, blows  blowest  blow, stops  stoppest stop, chooses  choosest  choose.

As regards the future tense, the person finds here quite

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another mode of expression. The features distinguishing it from the present-tense person conjugation are, first, that it marks not the third, but the first person in distinction to the remaining two; and second, that it includes in its sphere also the plural. The very principle of the person featuring is again very peculiar in the future tense as compared with the present tense, consisting not in morphemic inflexion, nor even in the simple choice of person-identifying auxiliaries, but in the oppositional use of shall  will specifically marking the first person (expressing, respectively, voluntary and non-voluntary future), which is contrasted against the oppositional use of will  shall specifically marking the second and third persons together (expressing, respectively, mere future and modal future). These distinctions, which will be described at more length further on, are characteristic only of British English.

A trace of person distinction is presented in the past tense with the archaic form of the second person singular. The form is used but very occasionally, still it goes with the pronoun thou, being obligatory with it. Here is an example of its individualising occurrence taken from E. Hemingway: Thyself and thy horses. Until thou hadst horses thou wert with us. Now thou art another capitalist more.

Thus, the peculiarity of the archaic past tense person-conjugation is that its only marked form is not the third person as in the present tense, nor the first person as in the British future tense, but the second person. This is what might be called 'little whims of grammar'!

3. Passing on to the expression of grammatical number by the English finite verb, we are faced with the interesting fact that, from the formally morphemic point of view, it is hardly featured at all.

As a matter of fact, the more or less distinct morphemic featuring of the category of number can be seen only with the archaic forms of the unique be, both in the present tense and in the past tense. But even with this verb the featuring cannot be called quite explicit, since the opposition of the category consists in the unmarked plural form for all the persons being contrasted against the marked singular form for each separate person, each singular person thereby being distinguished by its own, specific form. It means that the expressions of person and number by the archaic conjugation of be in terms of the lexeme as a whole are formally not strictly

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separated from each other, each singular mark conveying at once a double grammatical sense, both of person and number. Cf.: am  are; art  are; was (the first and the third persons, i.e. non-second person)  were; wast (second person)  were.

In the common conjugation of be, the blending of the person and number forms is more profound, since the suppletive are, the same as its past tense counterpart were, not being confined to the plural sphere, penetrate the singular sphere, namely, the expression of the second person (which actually becomes non-expression because of the formal coincidence).

As for the rest of the verbs, the blending of the morphemic expression of the two categories is complete, for the only explicit morphemic opposition in the integral categorial sphere of person and number is reduced with these verbs to the third person singular (present tense, indicative mood) being contrasted against the unmarked finite form of the verb.

4. The treatment of the analysed categories on a formal basis, though fairly consistent in the technical sense, is, however, lacking an explicit functional appraisal. To fill the gap, we must take into due account not only the meaningful aspect of the described verbal forms in terms of their reference to the person-number forms of the subject, but also the functional content of the subject-substantival categories of person and number themselves.

The semantic core of the substantival (or pronominal, for that matter) category of person is understood nowadays in terms of deictic, or indicative signification.

The deictic function of lingual units, which has come under careful linguistic investigation of late, consists not in their expressing self-dependent and self-sufficient elements of meaning, but in pointing out entities of reality in their spatial and temporal relation to the participants of speech communication. In this light, the semantic content of the first person is the indication of the person who is speaking, but such an indication as is effected by no other individual than himself. This self-indicative role is performed lexically by the personal pronoun I. The semantic content of the second person is the indication of the individual who is listening to the first person speaking  but again such an indication as viewed and effected by the speaker. This listener-indicative function is performed by the personal pronoun you. Now,

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the semantic content of the third person is quite different from that of either the first or second person. Whereas the latter two express the immediate participants of the communication, the third person indicates all the other entities of reality, i.e. beings, things, and phenomena not immediately included in the communicative situation, though also as viewed by the speaker, at the moment of speech. This latter kind of indication may be effected in the two alternative ways. The first is a direct one, by using words of a full meaning function, either proper, or common, with the corresponding specifications achieved with the help of indicators-determiners (articles and pronominal words of diverse linguistic standings). The second is an oblique one, by using the personal pronouns he, she, or it, depending on the gender properties of the referents. It is the second way, i.e. the personal pronominal indication of the third person referent, that immediately answers the essence of the grammatical category of person as such, i.e. the three-stage location of the referent in relation to the speaker: first, the speaker himself; second, his listener; third, the non-participant of the communication, be it a human non-participant or otherwise.

As we see, the category of person taken as a whole is, as it were, inherently linguistic, the significative purpose of it being confined to indications centering around the production of speech.

Let us now appraise the category of number represented in the forms of personal pronouns, i.e. the lexemic units of language specially destined to serve the speaker-listener lingual relation.

One does not have to make great exploratory efforts in order to realise that the grammatical number of the personal pronouns is extremely peculiar, in no wise resembling the number of ordinary substantive words. As a matter of fact, the number of a substantive normally expresses either the singularity or plurality of its referent ('one  more than one', or, in oppositional appraisal, 'plural  non-plural'), the quality of the referents, as a rule, not being re-interpreted with the change of the number (the many exceptions to this rule lie beyond the purpose of our present discussion). For instance, when speaking about a few powder-compacts, I have in mind just several pieces of them of absolutely the same nature. Or when referring to a team of eleven football-players, I mean exactly so many members of this sporting group. With the personal pronouns, though, it is 'different,

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and the cardinal feature of the difference is the heterogeneity of the plural personal pronominal meaning.

Indeed, the first person plural does not indicate the plurality of the 'ego', it can't mean several I's. What it denotes in fact, is the speaker plus some other person or persons belonging, from the point of view of the utterance content, to the same background. The second person plural is essentially different from the first person plural in so far as it does not necessarily express, but is only capable of expressing similar semantics. Thus, it denotes either more than one listener (and this is the ordinary, general meaning of the plural as such, not represented in the first person); or, similar to the first person, one actual listener plus some other person or persons belonging to the same background in the speaker's situational estimation; or, again specifically different from the first person, more than one actual listener plus some other person or persons of the corresponding interpretation. Turning to the third person plural, one might feel inclined to think that it would wholly coincide with the plural of an ordinary substantive name. On closer observation, however, we note a fundamental difference here also. Indeed, the plural of the third person is not the substantive plural proper, but the deictic, indicative, pronominal plural; it is expressed through the intermediary reference to the direct name of the denoted entity, and so may either be related to the singular he-pronoun, or the she-рrоnоun, or the it-pronoun, or to any possible combination of them according to the nature of the plural object of denotation.

The only inference that can be made from the given description is that in the personal pronouns the expression of the plural is very much blended with the expression of the person, and what is taken to be three persons in the singular and plural, essentially presents a set of six different forms of blended person-number nature, each distinguished by its own individuality. Therefore, in the strictly categorial light, we have here a system not of three, but of six persons.

Returning now to the analysed personal and numerical forms of the finite verb, the first conclusion to be drawn on the ground of the undertaken analysis is, that their intermixed character, determined on the formal basis, answers in general the mixed character of the expression of person and number by the pronominal subject name of the predicative construction. The second conclusion to be drawn, however, is that the described formal person-number system of

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the finite verb is extremely and very singularly deficient. In fact, what in this connection the regular verb-form does express morphemically, is only the oppositional identification of the third person singular (to leave alone the particular British English mode of expressing the person in the future).

A question naturally arises: What is the actual relevance of this deficient system in terms of the English language? Can one point out any functional, rational significance of it, if taken by itself?

The answer to this question can evidently be only in the negative: in no wise. There cannot be any functional relevance in such a system, if taken by itself. But in language it does not exist by itself.

5. As soon as we take into consideration the functional side of the analysed forms, we discover at once that these forms exist in unity with the personal-numerical forms of the subject. This unity is of such a nature that the universal and true indicator of person and number of the subject of the verb will be the subject itself, however trivial this statement may sound. Essentially, though, there is not a trace of triviality in the formula, bearing in mind, on the one hand, the substantive character of the expressed categorial meanings, and on the other, the analytical basis of the English grammatical structure. The combination of the English finite verb with the subject is obligatory not only in the general syntactic sense, but also in the categorial sense of expressing the subject-person of the process.

An objection to this thesis can be made on the ground that in the text the actual occurrence of the subject with the finite verb is not always observed. Moreover, the absence of the subject in constructions of living colloquial English is, in general, not an unusual feature. Observing textual materials, we may come across cases of subject-wanting predicative units used not only singly, as part of curt question-response exchange, but also in a continual chain of speech. Here is an example of a chain of this type taken from E. Hemingway:

'No one shot from cars,' said Wilson coldly. 'I mean chase them from cars.'

'Wouldn't ordinarily,' Wilson said. 'Seemed sporting enough to me though while we were doing it. Taking more

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chance driving that way across the plain full of holes and one thing and another than hunting on foot. Buffalo could have charged us each time we shot if he liked. Gave him every chance. Wouldn't mention it to any one though. It's illegal if that's what you mean.'

However, examples like this cannot be taken for a disproof of the obligatory connection between the verb and its subject, because the corresponding subject-nouns, possibly together with some other accompanying words, are zeroed on certain syntactico-stylistical principles (brevity of expression in familiar style, concentration on the main informative parts of the communication, individual speech habits, etc.). Thus, the distinct zero-representation of the subject does give expression to the verbal person-number category even in conditions of an outwardly gaping void in place of the subject in this or that concrete syntactic construction used in the text. Due to the said zero-representation, we can easily reconstruct the implied person indications in the cited passage: 'I wouldn't ordinarily'; 'It seemed sporting enough'; 'It was taking more chance driving that way'; 'We gave him every chance'; 'I wouldn't mention it to any one'.

Quite naturally, the non-use of the subject in an actual utterance may occasionally lead to a referential misunderstanding or lack of understanding, and such situations are reflected in literary works by writers  observers of human speech as well as of human nature. A vivid illustration of this type of speech informative deficiency can be seen in one of K. Mansfield's stories:

'Fried or boiled?' asked the bold voice.

Fried or boiled? Josephine and Constantia were quite bewildered for the moment. They could hardly take it in.

'Fried or boiled what, Kate?' asked Josephine, trying to begin to concentrate.

Kate gave a loud sniff. 'Fish.'

'Well, why didn't you say so immediately?' Josephine reproached her gently. 'How could you expect us to understand, Kate? There are a great many things in this world, you know, which are fried or boiled.'

The referential gap in Kate's utterance gave cause to her bewildered listener for a just reproach. But such lack of positive information in an utterance is not to be confused with the non-expression of a grammatical category. In this

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connection, the textual zeroing of the subject-pronoun may be likened to the textual zeroing of different constituents of classical analytical verb-forms, such as the continuous, the perfect, and others: no zeroing can deprive these forms of their grammatical, categorial status.

Now, it would be too strong to state that the combination of the subject-pronoun with the finite verb in English has become an analytical person-number form in the full sense of this notion. The English subject-pronoun, unlike the French conjoint subject-pronoun (e.g. Je vous remercie  'I thank you'; but: mon mari et moi  'my husband and I'), still retains its self-positional syntactic character, and the personal pronominal words, without a change of their nominative form, are used in various notional functions in sentences, building up different positional sentence-parts both in the role of head-word and in the role of adjunct-word. What we do see in this combination is, probably, a very specific semi-analytical expression of a reflective grammatical category through an obligatory syntagmatic relation of the two lexemes: the lexeme-reflector of the category and the lexeme-originator of the category. This mode of grammatical expression can be called 'junctional'. Its opposite, i.e. the expression of the categorial content by means of a normal morphemic or word-morphemic procedure, can be, by way of contrast, tentatively called 'native'. Thus, from the point of view of the expression of a category either through the actual morphemic composition of a word, or through its being obligatorily referred to another word in a syntagmatic string, the corresponding grammatical forms will be classed into native and junctional. About the person-numerical forms of the finite verb in question we shall say that in the ordinary case of the third person singular present indicative, the person and number of the verb are expressed natively, while in most of the other paradigmatic locations they are expressed junctionally, through the obligatory reference of the verb-form to its subject.

This truth, not incapable of inviting an objection on the part of the learned, noteworthily has been exposed from time immemorial in practical grammar books, where the actual conjugation of the verb is commonly given in the form of pronoun-verb combinations: I read, you read, he reads, we read, you read, they read.

In point of fact, the English finite verb presented without its person-subject is grammatically almost meaningless. The

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presence of the two you's in practical tables of examples like the one above, in our opinion, is also justified by the inner structure of language. Indeed, since you is part of the person-number system, and not only of the person system, it should be but natural to take it in the two different, though mutually complementing interpretations  one for each of the two series of pronouns in question, i.e. the singular series and the plural series. In the light of this approach, the archaic form thou plus the verb should be understood as a specific variant of the second person singular with its respective stylistic connotations.

6. The exposition of the verbal categories of person and number presented here helps conveniently explain some special cases of the subject-verb categorial relations. The bulk of these cases have been treated by traditional grammar in terms of 'agreement in sense', or 'notional concord'. We refer to the grammatical agreement of the verb not with the categorial form of the subject expressed morphemically, but with the actual personal-numerical interpretation of the denoted referent.

Here belong, in the first place, combinations of the finite verb with collective nouns. According as they are meant by the speaker either to reflect the plural composition of the subject, or, on the contrary, to render its integral, single-unit quality, the verb is used either in the plural, or in the singular. E.g.:

The government were definitely against the bill introduced

by the opposing liberal party.------------ The newly appointed

government has gathered for its first session.

In the second place, we see here predicative constructions whose subject is made imperatively plural by a numeral attribute. Still, the corresponding verb-form is used to treat it both ways: either as an ordinary plural which fulfils its function in immediate keeping with its factual plural referent, or as an integrating name, whose plural grammatical form and constituent composition give only a measure to the subject-matter of denotation. Cf.:

Three years have elapsed since we saw him last.

Three years is a long time to wait.'

In the third place, under the considered heading come constructions whose subject is expressed by a coordinative

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group of nouns, the verb being given an option of treating it either as a plural or as a singular. E.g.:

My heart and soul belongs to this small nation in its desperate struggle for survival. My emotional self and rational self have been at variance about the attitude adopted by Jane.

The same rule of 'agreement in sense' is operative in relative clauses, where the finite verb directly reflects the categories of the nounal antecedent of the clause-introductory relative pronoun-subject. Cf.:

I who am practically unacquainted with the formal theory

of games can hardly suggest an alternative solution.-------- Your

words show the courage and the truth that I have always felt was in your heart.

On the face of it, the cited examples might seem to testify to the analysed verbal categories being altogether self-sufficient, capable, as it were, even of 'bossing' the subject as to its referential content. However, the inner regularities underlying the outer arrangement of grammatical connections are necessarily of a contrary nature: it is the subject that induces the verb, through its inflexion, however scanty it may be, to help express the substantival meaning not represented in the immediate substantival form. That this is so and not otherwise, can be seen on examples where the subject seeks the needed formal assistance from other quarters than the verbal, in particular, having recourse to determiners. Cf.: A full thirty miles was covered in less than half an hour; the car could be safely relied on.

Thus, the role of the verb in such and like cases comes at most to that of a grammatical intermediary.

From the functional point of view, the direct opposite to the shown categorial connections is represented by instances of dialectal and colloquial person-number neutralisation. Cf.:

'Ah! It's pity you never was trained to use your reason, miss' (B. Shaw). 'He's been in his room all day,' the landlady said downstairs. 'I guess he don't feel well' (E. Hemingway). 'What are they going to do to me?' Johnny said.  'Nothing,' I said. 'They ain't going to do nothing to you' (W. Saroyan).

Such and similar oppositional neutralisations of the

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surviving verbal person-number indicators, on their part, clearly emphasise the significance of the junctional aspect of the two inter-connected categories reflected in the verbal lexeme from the substantival subject.