Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

3. The Category of Person
As it can be seen, in Russian person is fully grammaticalized in the present
tense; grammatically, the personal pronouns are redundant: they merely reduplicate
the person information contained in the verb form.
In English, only the third person present tense singular form expresses
person grammatically; therefore, the verb forms are obligatorily associated with
personal pronouns. Special mention should be made of the modal verbs and the
verb be. Modal verbs, with the exception of shall/should and will/would, do not show person grammatically.
The verb be is more grammaticalized in this respect: it takes an exception to
the other verbs.
As can be seen, it has two grammaticalized persons in the singular – first and third
person – and no grammaticalized persons in the plural. In the past tense, the verb
be does not distinguish person – without a personal pronoun we cannot say which
person the form expresses.
To sum up, the category of person is represented in English by the twomember
opposition: third person singular vs. non-third person singular. The
marked member of the opposition is third person; the unmarked member is nonthird person (it includes the remaining forms – first person, second person forms – singular and plural). The opposition is privative both in the plane of content and in the plane of expression.
4. The Category of Number
The category of number shows whether the process is associated with one
doer or with more than one doer, e.g. He eats three times a day. The sentence
indicates a single eater; the verb is in the singular despite the fact than more than
one process is meant.
The category of number is a two-member opposition: singular and plural. An
interesting feature of this category is the fact that it is blended with person: number
and person make use of the same morpheme. As person is a feature of the present
tense, number is also restricted to the present tense.
Some verbs – modals – do not distinguish number at all. Still others are only
used in the plural because the meaning of ‘oneness’ is hardly compatible with their
lexical:
The boys crowded round him. vs.
*The boy crowded round him.
The soldiers regrouped and opened fire. vs.
*The soldier regrouped and opened fire.
The analysis of the examples demonstrates the weakness of the English verb
as concerns the expression of person and number and its heavy reliance on the
subject: it is the subject that is generally responsible for the expression of person
and number in English.
The forms of the type livest, takest, livedst, tookest stand outside the
grammatical system. They are associated with the personal pronoun thou and are
only used in religious and occasionally in poetical texts and among Quakers. With
these forms the category of number appears within the category of the 2nd person
and the whole system of person and number (including the past tense) must be
presented in a different shape.