42 Chapter 3 Verbs, tense, aspect, and mood
It is worth emphasising again, however, that a general definition of a category
does not provide criteria for deciding which expressions in English belong to that
category: it provides a principled basis for naming a category that has grammati
cally distinctive properties in a range of languages (see Ch.I, §3). To determine
which verbs in English are auxiliaries we need to apply the grammatical criteria
relating to subject-auxiliary inversion and negation.
In the first place this excludes verbs like begin, continue, keep, stop even though
in constructions like They beganlcontinuedlkeptlstopped interrupting her the mean
ing belongs in the same family as that of progressive be in They were interrupting
her -and indeed a good number of traditional grammars do analyse these verbs as
auxiliaries of aspect.
Conversely, be qualifies as an auxiliary verb not just when it is marking progres
sive aspect or passive voice, but also when it is the only verb in the clause, taking a
complement with the form of an AdjP, NP, etc. Its behaviour with respect to inver
sion and negation is the same in this construction as in those where it is marking
progressive aspect or passive voice. This is shown in [27], where this use of be is
compared with the one marking progressive aspect:^2
[27] be AS ASPECT MARKER be AS ONLY VERB
a. He is acting strangely. b. He is insane.
II a. Is he acting strangely? b. Is he insane?
1Il a. He isn 't acting strangely. b. He isn 't insane.4 Perfective and imperfective interpretations
In the remainder of this chapter we examine the meaning and use of four sys
tems associated with the verb that are marked by the formal devices described above -by
inflection or by auxiliary verbs. There are two systems of tense to consider: a 'primary'
one marked by the inflectional contrast between preterite and present tense, and a 'sec
ondary' one marked by the the perfect auxiliary have. The other two systems we shall be
dealing with are progressive aspect, marked by the progressive auxiliary be, and mood,
marked by the modal auxiliaries.^3 The four systems are shown with examples in [28]:
[28] SYSTEM TERMS MARKING EXAMPLE
Primary tense Preterite preterite inflection went
Present present tense inflection goes
II Secondary tense Perfect have with past participle has gone
Non-perfect [no special marking] goes
iii Aspect Progressive be with gerund-participle is going
Non -progressive [no special marking] goes
iv Mood Modal modal with plain form can go
Non-modal [no special marking] goes2 Traditional grammar does not analyse the be of the [b I examples as an auxiliary, but since it does not
provide syntactic criteria for determining what verbs are auxiliaries in English, membership of the
class is ill defined and varies from one grammar to another.
J The use of auxiliary be in It was written by Kim is not covered in this chapter. It marks passive voice. The
passive is one of the constructions described in the chapter on information packaging (see Ch. 15, §2).