Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Aspectual Auxiliary Verbs

2.9 Summary

To summarise this fairly long discussion of the structure of the VP, we can conclude
that strict adherence to the UTAH and the assumption that there is isomorphism
between event structure and VP structure leads us to sometime quite surprising but
enlightening analyses of the central part of the clause. The VP itself seems a hive of
activity, with verbs and arguments moving about from position to position which
obviously complicates its description. However, the reasons for the movements
themselves are fairly straightforward. The verb moves to support the abstract light
verbs which have a bound morpheme status, DP arguments move to Case positions
and clausal arguments move away from Case positions. Once such things are
understood, some rather mysterious properties of VPs become demystified.
Phenomena such as passivisation, double object alternation, the there construction,
cognate objects and phrasal verb constructions are given a fairly satisfying analysis
which we can take as encouraging for this approach.

3 Aspectual Auxiliary Verbs

We now move a little away from the thematic verb phrase to look at the aspectual
auxiliaries of English, have and be. As introduced in section 2 of this chapter, aspect is
a semantic phenomenon concerning the events described by verbs in terms of their
internal timing. We also pointed out that this is a rather complex issue which we will
not be investigating in this book. Instead, we will concentrate on the syntactic aspects
of the auxiliaries and associated elements trying to determine their structural positions
and syntactic nature.
In chapter 1, we established that the aspectual auxiliaries are non-thematic, non-
functional verbal elements, which are therefore categorially distinct from modal
auxiliaries which are functional verbs. We might assume that they are associated with
a phrase which they head and this phrase contains the thematic VP complex. A first
attempt to represent the structure is as in (154):

(154) VP

V'

V vP

has the electrician seen the light

Remember, that what we are looking at there is the D-structure, before movement
takes place. Thus this structure is that of a declarative VP, not an interrogative one. At
S-structure the subject will move out of the vP to the clausal subject position, where it
will get Case:

(155) the electrician 1 [VP has [vP t 1 seen the light]]

We will discuss this issue in the next chapter.