VERBAL GROUPS

THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF VERBAL GROUPS

We have seen that nominal groups have a logical structure in which a noun headword, which signifies the "thing" that is the primary referent, forms the semantic nucleus to which the other words which make up the nominal group are attached as additional elements of meaning. Verbal groups have a similar logical structure, which may be understood as comprising a MAIN VERB as the nucleus to which other verbal elements of meaning are added. These additional verbal elements are formed from AUXILIARY verbs. Where the noun headword in the nominal group refers to what we can loosely describe as a "thing", the referent for the main verb in a verbal group is some kind of process, state, event or relation.

These two classes of verbs were described earlier in the introductory chapter, and you will remember that the auxiliary verbs form a closed set of verbs which consists of only a few in number, whereas there are a great many main verbs in the language.

The auxiliary verbs fall into two groups:-
 

The logical structure of the verbal group is simply:-

AUXILIARY + MAIN VERB

This resembles the basic modifier + headword structure of the nominal group, and auxiliaries always function in the verbal group as premodifiers, with the main verb coming only in final position in the group. Here are some examples of verbal groups. The minimal verbal group consists of a single element, which is the main verb, as in (i) below.

As with nominal groups, verbal groups can consist of a number of functional elements. The final position is always the main verb in one of its forms, which we shall discuss later. The other structural elements in the group are formed from auxiliary verbs, and these may be found in both INITIAL and MEDIAL positions. The auxiliaries function differently according to which of these positions they have selected.

We shall begin by describing the systems which operate at the initial position of the verbal group. In example (i) above the verbal group consists of only one element, "works". There is no differentiation between initial, medial and final elements. In such cases this single element is then the initial one, and the functional systems which operate at the initial position are realised through it.

In examples (ii) and (iii) above, the verbal groups consist of only two positions, which are thus initial and final, and the elements occuring in initial positions are the auxiliaries "doesn't" and "must" respectively.

Examples (iv) and (v) comprise both initial, medial and final elements. In both cases, the initial element is the auxiliary verb "could".

Before we proceed to look in detail at how these systems function, we can summarise what we have said so far by showing once more the structure of the verbal group examples which were given above. We shall use the symbol "v" to indicate main verb, "o" to distinguish the auxiliary operator, and "a" to indicate medial auxiliary verbs.

INITIAL SYSTEMS

The auxiliary which functions in initial position is called the OPERATOR. It performs four main functions in the verbal group, which we shall shortly go on to describe. These will be discussed more fully individually, but can briefly be listed as follows:-
 

 
We shall describe the features of medial and final elements more specifically later. For the present, however, we can note that verbal group structure is subject to the following conditions:-
 

the initial position or operator can be any of the auxiliary verbs;

the modal auxiliary verbs can only function in the verbal group in initial position - i.e. as operators - they do not occur in medial or final positions;

only the initial element in the verbal group is finite; medial and final elements are non-finite.

 
We shall now go on to consider in more detail the initial systems which govern the functioning of the operator element in the verbal group.