• Verb. Aspect.

The morphological system of the English includes a set of continuous forms. The essence of these forms and their place in English have been interpreted in a number of ways.

Pr. Бархударов, Блох, Смирницкий found it possible to regard the cont. forms as a categorical forms of a separate grammatical category of the verb – the category of aspect (the category of development – Blokh).

There are 2 members:

• Continuous aspect

• Non-continuous aspect (common aspect – Ильиш).

In the terms of the opposition theory the cat. of aspect is a privative binary opposition.

Continuous – the marked member. Non-cont. – unmarked.

The meaning of the continuous aspect may be defined as continuity, but Бархударов adds one more – concreteness. The form of it: be+Ving.

The meaning of non—continuous – in negative term – it doesn’t express continuity and concreteness.

Pr. Бархударов notes that the category is not the property of all verbs in English. The verbs denoting process don’t have it: consist, belong, own, have, possess, believe, link verbs: love, smell, wish, adore…, verbs of mental activity, feel, look.

But there are a lot of exceptions.

• Verb. Correlation.

The morphological system of the English verbs includes a set of perfect forms. The essence of them is not probably clear even today.

Pr. Смирницкий expressed an idea that the perfect forms may be regarded as a categorical forms of a separate gr.category of the verb – category of time relation.

Pr. Ильиш joined pr. Смирницкий’s idea that the perfect forms should be looked upon as a separate gr. Category of verb. But he preferred not to term the of relation, but correlation. In his opinion the presents of the word “time” in the first term seems to bring back to the old idea that the perfect is a tense category. The term “correlation” eliminates the possibility of confusing this new gr.category with the cat. of tense.

This view was supported by number of scholars (Бархударов – phase of action development, Хаймович, Роговская - order, Блох – the category of retrospective coordination). But they all have their own term to name this category.

Opposition theory. 2 member – perfect (marked) and non-perfect unmarked) – the privative binary opposition.

The meaning of the marked member – precedence or priority of the action to a certain moment of time or to certain action.

• Verb. Voice.

Voice is the gram.category of verb showing the direction of the process as regards the participant of the situation reflected in the syntactic construction (Blokh).

• I invited my friends.

• I was invited by my friends.

The difference is made by means of the grammatical forms invited and was invited. These forms belong to the category of the process.

In the 1 sentence the actions begin from the subject and go on to the object.

In the 2 sentence the direction as a quite different. The action issues from the object and goes onto the subject.

• Most scholars agree that the main position lies between the active and passive voices. But some other scholars say about the 3rd voice – reflexive which finds its expression in the self-pronoun.

He washed himself.

Роговская, Хаймович: The predicate – washed himself and it can hardly be regarded as a unique gr.element. They believe that the verb may have the category of gender.

• But some others speak about also reciprocal voice, which finds its expression in the pronoun “each other”, “one another” that are looked upon as a gr.elements.

• Still others speak about the middle-voice.

The door opened.

Роговская, Хаймович presume that there are some verbs that have 2 gram.categories.

He opened the door.

The door opened.

So, there are 2 voices:

• Non-passive

• Passive

The oppositional theory. This is a privative binary opposition.

Бархударов found the term “active” not quite suitable, it doesn’t fully correspond the character of voice meaning. Therefore it is better to use “non-passive” to name the unmarked member.

The meaning of the marked member is passivity. This member has a positive morpheme of the passive voice – a broken morpheme be+Ven.

The meaning of the unmarked is non-passivity. V.