Verbs In Peercy's Class

Front 1

Functional Definition of a Verb

Back 1

A word may be a verb if it can accept an inflective morpheme [s, ed, en]
A word may be a verb if it contains a typical verb forming derivational affix.
A word may be a verb if it can be preceded by a word that typically precedes a verb.

Front 2

A verb provides 5 (+1) pieces of information [beyond the obvious]. Memorize these, they’re important!

Back 2

1. Voice – Active/Passive
2. Aspect – Simple [0], Progressive, Perfect, Perfect Progressive
3. Tense – Past, present, future
4. Person – 1st, 2nd, 3rd
5. Number – Singular/Plural
6. (Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive: most of the time we speak in Indicative, our superlative and subjunctive moods exist, but we don’t generally use formal markers, which is why this is in parentheses.)

Front 3

English is classified as a 2 tense system of________

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Past and Present
We don’t classify it as a 3 tense system because in order to get a future-tense we have to add in extra words; by modifying the infinitive stem we can only achieve past and present tense.

Front 4

Verb + Modification [internally or affix] =

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Tense

Front 5

4 Principle parts of a verb

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1. Infinitive Stem – The simplest form of the word which we can then modify. Drink
2. Past – Defines the difference between regular/irregular verbs. Drank
3. Past Participle – Ven, irregular verb forms have marked past participle morphemes. Drunk
4. Present Participle – Stem + Ing. That’s all it is. Many grammarians don’t classify this as a major verb part. Drinking

Front 6

the past form of a verb defines __________

Back 6

the difference between regular (weak) and irregular (strong) verbs.

Front 7

Regular verbs – form the past-tense by using a ________.

Back 7

detal suffix.

Front 8

the detal suffix comes in 3 forms – 2 of which assimilate, 1 which is dissimilate.

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Regular +d voiced assimilation, +t unvoiced assimilation and + ed dissimilation

Front 9

If the word ends in a D or T sound [like Put  Putted] there needs to be a distinction between the end of the word and the __________

Back 9

detal suffix.

Front 10

Past and participle forms of regular verbs are _______.

Back 10

identical.

Front 11

Irregular verbs – form the past tense by an ____________.

Back 11

ablaut change.

Front 12

The Ablaut is a ____________________________.

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vowel gradation within the verb – it is a change in pitch/locus of the tongue. Air is directed over different parts of the tongue, causing
Sing – infinitive stem. Sang – past. Sung – past participle. Drink, Drank, Drunk – same principle.
If there is a change in the vowel between the infinitive stem and the past-tense it IS irregular. Even if there is a detal suffix, if there is a vowel change in the verb, it IS irregular.

Front 13

Past Participle Functions: Can be used in

Back 13

Perfect aspect,
Perfect Progressive aspect,
Passive voice,
or adjectivally.

Front 14

3 ways to Differentiate between past and past-participle forms:

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When the verb is simply past, we can’t use any other verb form. [simple, past]
When the construction is N - Verb, it’s a past form. The noun is acting out the verb.
When the construction is N - Verb, it’s past-participle. The noun is being acted on.

“The dog walked by me” – the dog is walking, therefore it’s simply a past-form verb
“The dog, walked by me, got off it’s leash and ran across 11th Ave.” In this case, since “me” is walking the dog, it’s a past-participle form.

Front 15

Modals:

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Auxiliary verbs which place a condition on a main verb.

Front 16

Whether it is a true modal or a periphrastic modal, they fulfill the same 5 conditions which are:

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Futurity
Obligation
Ability
Permission
Necessity.

Front 17

There are how many true modals? (They cannot be conjugated. With modals there is no specific tense associated, just a syntactic tense.

Back 17

10

Front 18

Syntactic Present Modals:

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May
Can
Will
Shall
Must
Ought [to]

Front 19

Syntactic Past Modals:

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Might
Could
Would
Should

Front 20

Modals fulfill 3 functions -

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Question, Emphasis, and Negation

Front 21

Periphrastic Modals:

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Fulfill the same functions as true modals and place the same conditions on the verb, but use more words to do it.

Front 22

The formula for creating periphrastic modals is:

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(Be/Have) X to
Where X is the adjective or noun which provides information.
We have homework to finish. [We have to finish our homework?]
I am able to breathe. Most days, anyway. Not today, but most days.

Front 23

Voice – Active and passive voice are

Back 23

a question of who does what to whom.

Front 24

In active voice, the Verb is

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Doing. “I am hugging Lily.” The verb “hug” is performing the action. I, the subject, am performing the action of hugging my dog, Lily. Lily is very huggable.
“Lily is being hugged by me.” the sentences are equivalent in that the dog is hugged, hugging is happening to the dog and I am the person doing it, but the verb form has changed. The dog is also getting tired of my demonstrating on her.

Front 25

Sentence patterns 1-6 cannot be

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passifised. Only a sentence with a TRANSITIVE VERB can be passifised, everything else is automatically active.

Front 26

Passive voice is marked by B+ ________

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Past Participle. Difficult to tell just here because “hugged” is a regular verb, but it’s the past participle form.

Front 27

4 parts of Aspect:

Back 27

Simple
Progressive
Perfect
Perfect Progressive

Front 28

Aspect Define:
Simple
Progressive
Perfect
Perfect Progressive

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Simple – This is unembellished action. The baseline against which we can compare the other three aspects. Bite.
Progressive – Denotes on-going action.
Perfect – The action has been completed by the time of report
Perfect-Progressive – The action, which was ongoing, has been completed by time of report.

Front 29

Formulas/Active Markers– What would the word bite be in active/simple, progressive, perfect, perfect progressive

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Simple – No formula. 0 “I bite”
Progressive – Be+Ving [present participle]. “I am biting”
Perfect – Have/Has/Had + Ven [past participle] “I have bitten.”
Perfect-Progressive –Has/Had/Have+[Ven+Be={been}]+Ving “I have been biting”

Front 30

Formulas/Passive Markers – What would the word bite be in passive/simple, progressive, perfect, perfect progressive

Back 30

Simple – Be+ven. “I am bitten”
Progressive – Be+(be+Ving{being})+Ven. “I am being bitten”
Perfect – Have/Has/Had +(Be+Ven {been})+ ven “I have been bitten.”
Perfect-Progressive - Has/Had/Have+[Ven+Be={been}]+[be+ving]+Ven “I have been being bitten”

Front 31

Verp+Particle forms are

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an up and coming pattern in English that we’re beginning to see more and more of. They’re composed of a verb and a particle [go freaking figure] treated as one semantic unit. The particle tends to be a preposition.
Examples: Run in. Throw up. Look Up. Etc.
When we see a sentence like “Jack looked up the dress” we’re not sure whether Jack is doing a job or being a jerk,

Front 32

There are 5 tests for determining whether a verb is a verb+particle form.

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1. Close 1-word synonym – if there is a single word we can use to replace the potential Verb+Part, it is one. This is the best test, the other four are more… support. Eg. “Jack looked up the dress.” Could easily be “Jack googled the dress.” Yes. I did just use google as a verb.
2. Movement – “Jack looked the dress up.” We move the particle “Jack threw up his breakfast.”  “Jack threw his breakfast up.”
3. Pronoun Replacement – if we take the noun to be the object, and pronominalize it, “Jack looked up it” changes the intended meaning, so we have to do the same thing we did with movement: “Jack looked it up.”
4. Passification - The dress was looked up by Jack” “looked up” is still the same semantic unit, “Up the dress looked Jack” makes… very little sense. And sounds a bit twisted fairy-tale. Haha. Breakfast was thrown up by Jack. XD
5. Pseudo-clefting. – cutting something loose, in clefting you move it, in pseudo-clefting you do not. “Jack looked up what” becomes “What Jack looked up was the dress.” We cleave apart “looked up” from the object. John likes apples. What John likes is apples. What + be

Front 33

Mood -

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Expresses the speaker/narrator’s attitude towards both audience and object.

Front 34

Indicative mood-

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conversational mood, normal dialogue mood. This is the mood we use when we talk about conjugating verbs.

Front 35

Imperative

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the mood of command
 Imperatives are GENERALLY without a head. The only time an imperative has a head is when the subject is an indefinite pronoun. “Somebody get me a laudanum!” Otherwise, the subject is an implied “you.”
 Proof of the implied subject can be found by adding “Yourself” or “will you” to the end of the imperative, the reflexive pronoun “yourself” can only reflect on the subject “you.” “Get me a cup of coffee, will you?” - “Go get it yourself, Jerk.”
 The verb in the imperative mood has no tense, it has to be the infinitive stem. “Stand up.” Versus “Be standing!” or “Have been stood!”  I like that one.
 Only effective when: Speaker fulfills an appropriate social condition. [has the authority to make demands]
 Only effective using a performative verb [if the verb cannot be performed, the imperative is useless. “Grow taller!” doesn’t work except for in bad humor]

Front 36

Subjunctive –

Back 36

the mood of doubting, tentative, cautious, contrary to fact, wish fulfillment.
If the statement fulfills any of the above definition, IT IS SUBJUNCTIVE
 There are 3 formal markers of the subjunctive mood
 there are 3 conditions of the subjunctive mood
 Hypothetical syllogism is the basis of the subjunctive mood.

Front 37

3 Conditions of Subjunctive:

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1. Sufficient condition [If  Then]
2. Necessary condition [Only if  then]
3. Necessary and sufficient condition [If and only if  then]

Front 38

The basic premise of the subjunctive mood is

Back 38

“If X, then Y.”
“If Alison were queen, we would all lose our heads” the “then” is implied, but it is still subjunctive.

Front 39

3 Formal Markers of the Subjunctive:

Back 39

was-were, invariant be, dropping s
Was  Were
“If Alison were queen, we would all lose our heads.” “Alison” is a singular noun, so the Be verb functioning here SHOULD be singular, but because it’s in the subjunctive mood, it’s plural. This discrepancy between the singular subject and plural verb is the key to all three formal markers.
The distinction between was/were is largely due to dialect, but in formal speech/writing, “were” is correct.
“If Alison was queen, we would all lose our heads.” Is still the subjunctive mood because it fulfills the definition of being contrary to fact and [in Alison’s case] a wish. 

Invariant Be
“I recommend that Rachel be beheaded.” Rachel is a 3rd person Singular Noun in the present tense, in the indicative mood the verb would also be 3rd person singular, present “is” but this creates a logical snafu. “I recommend that Rachel is beheaded” makes no sense, because you cannot recommend a statement of fact.

Dropping S
“I recommend that Rachel retire from active combat.” Again, Rachel is 3rd person Singular noun in the present tense, so the verb should also be singular, but it is plural here because otherwise it makes no sense. Norm didn’t really go into details on why this is logically nonsensical, but “I recommend that Rachel retires from active combat” is … just not right. Or how about “Rachel should retire from active combat.” Also Singular/Plural Noun/Verb mismatching, but makes more sense to me. Should gives us the modal but it’s also subjunctive.

Front 40

Syllogism – functions in 3 parts.

Back 40

Major Premise – General condition
Minor Premise - Specific
Conclusion - Therefore, includes both major and minor terms.
In all introductory logic classes we see this syllogism

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
This is a categorical syllogism, there are no conditions placed on the major premise.

Front 41

There are 4 possible outcomes of a major premise such as “If X =Y”

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1. Affirming the antecedent to affirm the consequent.
2. Denying the antecedent to deny the consequent.
3. Affirming the consequent to affirm the antecedent
4. Denying the consequent to affirm the antecedent.

Of these four possible outcomes, only 2 are actually VALID arguments.
If we use Norm’s example from class, the major premise is:
“If a girl has sexy legs, she’ll pass HPR101”

1. If a girl has sexy legs, she’ll pass HPR101. Jenny has sexy legs. Therefore, Jenny will pass HPR101.
This is valid. Jenny fulfills X, therefore she will fulfill Y.

2. If a girl has sexy legs, she’ll pass HPR101. Jenny has thunder thighs. Therefore Jenny will not pass HPR101.
This is invalid. Jenny does not have Y, but she might be really smart, so she still has the potential to pass.

3. If a girl has sexy legs, she’ll pass HPR101, Jenny Passed HPR101, therefore Jenny has sexy legs.
This is invalid. Again, Jenny may have passed on her academic merits, not on the sexiness of her legs.

4. If a girl has sexy legs, she’ll pass HPR101. Jenny Failed HPR101, therefore Jenny does not have sexy legs.
This is valid. Jenny failed to fulfill Y, therefore she cannot have fulfilled X.

Front 42

Selectional Restriction-

Back 42

Words use that we restrict simply because we do.

Eg. “Ray is pretty.” We generally don’t refer to men as “pretty” once they’re past the baby stage because of certain amounts of cultural conditioning etc. Men have to be handsome, or rugged, or whatever, rarely “pretty.”

Metaphors play on this concept a lot. When we say things like “My lawnmower eats rocks” we accept that as a metaphor, and we accept the image that comes with it because to “eat” a thing [the subject] must generally be living and animate; a lawnmower is neither, but we still contextually accept, for the moment, that “Lawnmower” may be +/- Animate. Also, the object “rocks” has to be, in this context, Edible. Rocks are not edible. That may be the one part of my education that I didn’t have to learn the hard way, but rocks are not edible. Except… in this particular context, rocks are edible by an animate lawnmower. So the metaphor works.
A phrase functions because of subject/verb and object/verb arrangement, and the context in which those arrangements are read. Taken completely literally, and using absolutely strict selectional restriction, “My lawnmower eats rocks” wouldn’t function at all.

Front 43

Do Verbs – Do verbs function in 2 ways –

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as do-support and as proverbs.

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Pro-verbs:

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if the pronoun replaces a noun but functions as a full reference, the do-verb acts as a proverb, replacing a verb and functioning as a full reference.
For this reason, “the first reference must be a full reference, the second and all subsequent references can be proverbalized until there is an intervening reference.” Sound familiar?

Front 45

Do-support:

Back 45

are essentially modals. Any time there is no auxiliary verb [including be] we add in do-support which serves the same 3 functions of modals. Question. Emphasis. Negation.

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Emphasis (do support)

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I do run
I will run
I can run

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Negation (Do support)

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I don’t run
I won’t run
I can’t run

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Question (Do support)

Back 48

Do I run?
Will I run?
Can I run?

Front 49

Word Order – The first and last of everything are

Back 49

points of emphasis. The last item in a sentence, paragraph, book, whatever is rhetorically more important than the first, but we PAY ATTENTION to the ends. Word order gives us cohesive language, putting two items [or like-things] close together better connects them rhetorically, which is why passification is such a productive process.

“I like him” versus “Him, I like.” Getting “Him” and “I” as close as possible in the same sentence cements that relationship.