The functional classification presupposes differentiation of verbs ac­cording to their ability to form a certain type of the predicate. This ability stems from the lexical meaningfulness of a verb. Notional verbs are lexi­cally meaningful verbs that denote an action or a state and perform in the sentence an independent function. In contrast, functional verbs exist […]

All English verbs are divided into two groups on the basis of their mor­phological peculiarities, i.e. on the basis of the forms of the Participle II and past tenses. The most numerous group within this division is that of regular verbs: regular verbs form their main forms by means of adding a dental ending to […]

Verb-forming derivational means are not numerous. The common de­vices are 1) affixation, 2) conversion, 3) verb+adverb combination, 4) back-formation. There is a rather short list of derivational affixes making English verbs. First, these are a limited number of suffixes such as the suffixes -en (to blacken, to strengthen, to toughen), -fy (to intensify, to ratify, […]

The verb is a part of speech that conveys a grammatical meaning of an action, i.e. of a dynamic quality developing in time. Here, the grammatical meaning of an action is stretched: it is understood not only as “action” proper but also as a state or a statement of existence of an object, or as […]

While the noun, the adjective, and the verb are characterized by all the three properties of a part of speech – morphological, syntactic and semantic, the numeral, like the pronoun, is distinguished only due to its lexical mean­ing. Numerals indicate exact number or the order of persons and things in a series. Accordingly, numerals are […]

Morphologically, pronouns represent quite a diverse group. Thus, the category of case is a property of the personal pronouns, in which one may observe the distinct opposition “nominative case – objective case”. The in­definite-personal pronoun one and derivatives with the components -body and -one are also marked for the case category, since they demonstrate the […]

Reciprocal pronouns are the group-pronouns each other and one an­other that express mutual action or relation. Semantic difference lies in that each other generally implies two, whereas one another two or more than two persons. This distinction, however, is not strictly observed. The reciprocal pronouns have two case forms, e.g. They looked at each other. […]

Defining pronouns are all, each, every, everybody, everyone, everything, either, both, other, another. On the whole, the defining pronouns may be fur­ther subdivided into those having a generalizing meaning (all, each, every, everybody, everyone, everything) and those pointing out one of the two per­sons, things, etc. (either, both, other, another). The defining pronouns are characterized […]

Most of the indefinite pronouns have the corresponding negative pro­nouns: some — no, none; something — nothing, none; somebody, someone — nobody, no one, none. The negative pronouns do not differ from indefinite ones either morphologically or syntactically. The only difference between these two groups lies in that the negative pronouns have the meaning of […]

Indefinite pronouns point out a person or a thing without naming them. This group of pronouns has no definite structure; its nucleus, however, is formed by the pronouns some, any and their derivatives something, any­thing; somebody, anybody, someone, anyone. These pronouns distinguish between “person” and “non-person”, which leads to the possibility to present this opposition […]