Basic English Grammar with Exercises

A Typology of Word Categories

stands for finite and [–Fin] for non-finite. Thus, we have the following classification of
complementisers:

(185)^ Wh

• –


• if that
  Fin

• for

Obviously, there is one missing complementiser, the [+Wh, –Fin] one. We will put this
apparent gap in the system to one side until we are in a better position to deal with it.
The lexical entries for complementisers can be given as follows:

(186) that category: [+F, –N, –V]
subcat: [clausal]
features: [–Wh, +Fin]
for category: [+F, –N, –V]
subcat: [clausal]
features: [–Wh, –Fin]
if category: [+F, –N, –V]
subcat: [clausal]
features: [+Wh, +Fin]

3.6 Functionally underspecified categories

We have now discussed all eight of the categories that we listed at the start of this
section. However, there are some categories that we have not yet discussed and some
members of the categories that we have which do not seem to fit well in them. In this
section we will briefly discuss the possibility or four extra categories which differ from
the previous ones in that they are not specified for the [±F] feature. This means that
they differ from each other in terms of the specification of the [±N] and [±V] features,
but they differ from the other categories in that they are neither functional nor
thematic.
We will start with the aspectual auxiliaries. We have pointed out that these
auxiliary verbs do not behave like modals as they are not in complementary
distribution with them. In fact, aspectual auxiliaries are not in complementary
distribution with any I element:

(187) a he may have been shopping
b ... for him to have been shopping
c he had been shopping

This would suggest that they are not categorised in the same way as inflections. They
appear to be verbal elements as they inflect for almost the same set of things that verbs
do (perfective have inflects for tense (has/had), progressive be inflects for tense
(is/was) and perfect aspect (been) and passive be inflects for tense (is/was), perfect
aspect (been) and progressive aspect (being)). However, they are clearly not thematic
elements in that they play no role in the thematic interpretation of the sentence.
Aspectual auxiliaries therefore share properties with verbs and inflections, but they
cannot be categorised as either. We can capture this situation if, like verbs and