Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, A STUDENT'S INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

NOTES ON THE EXERCISES TO CHAPTER 3

Chapter is about verbs: their inflections, the categories of tense and aspect and modality that they express, and so on.

1. In this exercise you are provided with a list of ten verb lexemes the one lexeme is heart ((i) burn, (ii) buy, (iii) draw, (iv) drink, (v) fall, (vi) forget, (vii) hold, (viii) ride, (ix) run, and (x) sing). For some of these, but not all, the preterite and the past participle forms are different in their phonological shape (and their spelling). The exercise asks you to say for each of them whether the shapes are the same or different, and to make up examples to show that you are right.
Example: say
Answer: Same. Preterite: You said you'd help us. Past participle: You had said you'd help us.
      
Example: drive     
Answer: Different. Preterite: I drove to work in the morning. Past participle: I had driven to work in the morning.

2. The underlined verbs in the examples given in the exercise are forms of lexemes whose preterite and past participle have the same shape. You are asked to use the substitution test to determine which form occurs in these instances, and to cite the evidence you use.

What we mean by "use the substitution test" is that you should think of a verb that definitely has a shape difference between preterite and past participle (one of the verbs listed in exercise 1, for example) and could have been used in the same context as the underlined one (if there is a meaning difference it doesn't matter; what matters is that there should be some grammatical form of the verb that is allowed in that context). Then you simply see which form turns out to be grammatically permitted: the preterite or the past participle.

Here are a couple of examples.

Example: I wonder what they bought.
Answer: Preterite. If we substitute take, the form required is preterite took, not past participle taken: I wonder what they took.
  
Example: She had considered it irresponsible.
Answer: Past participle. If we substitute take, the form required is past participle taken, not preterite took: She had taken it seriously.

Note: in making the substitution we have changed not only the verb itself but a following dependent (irresponsible has been replaced by seriously). This is necessary because take doesn't combine with the same kind of complements as consider. Such changes do not invalidate the substitution test because it is the material preceding the verb, not any following dependents, that determine what inflectional forms are required or permitted.

3. You are asked to determine whether the underlined verbs below are plain forms or plain present tense forms, and present the evidence for your decision. Here's an example showing what you might write if you were given the example You look worried
Example: You look worried.
Answer:   Look is in the plain present tense form. Here are three pieces of evidence showing this.
1. If we change the reference to looking worried slightly we can see what happens when be is in the same position as look: we get You are looking worried, not *You be looking worried. The form required is the present tense form are, not the plain form be.
2. Look contrasts here with preterite looked: putting You look worried into the preterite gives us You looked worried.
3. If we change the subject to 3rd person sg, we have to replace look by looks: That is, we get He looks worried, not That is, we get *He look worried. So that gives us three pieces of evidence that look in You look worried is a plain present form.
  
Example:   You should try harder.
Answer:   Try is in the plain form. Here are three arguments for this claim:
1. If we change the bit about trying harder to a reference to being more determined (which means roughly the same), we can see what happens when be occurs here instead of try; and we find that the form required is the plain form be, not the present tense form are: we get You should be more determined.
2. There is no contrast here with preterite tried: *You should tried harder is not grammatical.
3. Changing to a 3rd person sg subject has no effect on the form of try: in the sentence He should try harder we do not see an -s (or -es) on try.

4. Here you are asked to construct examples with the verb beware, marking the sentences that turn out to be ungrammatical with *. Here's an example of what we mean:

Example of a clause with 3rd person singular subject and beware in the present tense:

*She bewares of the dog.

This is ungrammatical. Since nothing else about the construction could plausibly account for the unexpected ill-formedness, we conclude that apparently beware does not have a 3rd person singular present form.

5.  You are asked to classify the underlined clauses as finite or non-finite. (Keep in mind that finiteness often goes along with having a verb that is inflected for tense, but not always, the way we have drawn the distinction between finite and non-finite clauses.)

Example:   It's important that she finish the course.
Answer:   Finite (finish is the plain form of the verb; the construction is subjunctive)
  
Example:   We're determined for her to finish the course.
Answer:   Non-finite (finish is the plain form of the verb; the construction is infinitival)

6.  Here you are asked to change ten declarative clauses into interrogatives, write out the result, and whether the verbs underlined in the book are auxiliaries or lexical verbs.

Example:   They knew the answer.
Answer:   Did they know the answer? Knew is a lexical verb since it cannot invert with the subject in the formation of an interrogative.
Example:   It will be over soon.
Answer:   Will it be over soon? Will is an auxiliary verb since it can invert with the subject in the formation of an interrogative.

7. Use the two negation tests to determine the status of the underlined verbs as auxiliaries or lexical verbs. Cite the evidence on which you base your answer.

Example:   They know her.
Answer:   Lexical verb. Can't be negated by not: *They know not her. Doesn't have negative inflectional form: *They known't her.
Example:   We must tell them.
Answer:   Auxiliary verb. Can be negated by not: We must not tell them. Has negative inflectional form: We mustn't tell them.

Two of the examples in this exercise are less straightforward than the above.

(a) In [iii] we can insert not after tend: They tend not to disagree. But it is important to see that this not relates to disagree, not tend: the main clause is positive. Our discussion of the first negation test pointed out that auxiliary verbs don't combine with do in negatives (compare [18b] with [18a] on p. 38): does tend behave like a lexical verb or an auxiliary in this respect?

(b) Example [viii] differs from all the others in that the underlined verb is a secondary form rather than a primary one. The distinction between lexical and auxiliary verbs applies to lexemes, not just inflectional forms, but the tests given apply directly only to primary inflectional forms. This means that in order to deal with this example it is necessary to construct sentences where the lexeme go appears in a primary form — a preterite or present tense form, as, for example, in I go to bed early.

8.This exercise involves examples using three verbs, namely be, have, and do, in ways that give them some semantic and/or syntactic similarity to the modal auxiliaries, but not a sufficient similarity to justify actually including them in the class of modals. The examples are:

i You are to report for duty by 8 a.m. Monday morning.
ii We have to consider what is best for the child.
iii They don't like it.

You have to take the three verbs in turn and determine which, if any, of the three modal auxiliary properties described in this chapter apply to them.

The three properties given in §3.2 are:

You can test for property [c] by simply inspecting the sentences given. For [b] you need to see what happens when you change to a 3rd person singular subject. And for [a] you can switch to a perfect or progressive construction, requiring a past participle or gerund-participle respectively.

Here is a crucial hint: When you are doing this, make sure that the meaning or use of the verb under consideration remains constant. So don't construct examples like You have been careless, We've had our house burgled, They'd done their best: the meanings of the underlined words here do not match those in [i-iii] above.

9. You need to determine whether the underlined verb-forms in the examples in the book are instances of the auxiliary lexemes have, need and dare or instances of the corresponding lexical verbs. Here are some written-up examples. (The use of have in the first one is more typical of British English than American; so if you are an American speaker and find it a bit odd, don't worry about that; the facts as discussed here assume the construction where have a swim means go for a swim.)

Example: She had a swim before breakfast.
Answer: Lexical verb.
  • Doesn't permit subject-auxiliary inversion: *Had she a swim before breakfast?
  • Doesn't satisfy the negation texts for auxiliaries: *She had not a swim before breakfast; *She hadn't a swim before breakfast.
Example: She has read your letter.
Answer: Auxiliary verb
  • Permits subject-auxiliary inversion: Has she read your letter?
  • Satisfies the negation tests for auxiliaries: She has not read your letter; She hasn't read your letter.

10. This exercise is for discussion rather than evaluation, and (instructor please note!) shouldn't be used for assessment. The answer is fairly easy to find on the web: the topic was discussed in this post on Language Log (see the update at the end).

11. Which of the following allow a perfective interpretation? Consider just the main clauses, ignoring any subordinate ones embedded within them.

Example She lives in Boston.
Answer No: imperfective. The clause describes a state which obtains at the present time, but is not simultaneous with it.
Example She read your letter.
Answer Yes: perfective. The clause describes a past event considered in its totality.

12. We have seen in this chapter that subordinate clauses functioning as complement of before, if and hope can have a future time interpretation. For example, if it rains in We'll postpone the match if it rains doesn't mean ``if it is raining now'', it means ``if rain falls at some future time''. For each of the following five prepositions and five verbs, construct an example to show whether or not it permits a future time interpretation of a present tense in its complement.

Example Preposition once
Answer: Yes I'll give you a call once I have the results of the test.
Present tense have refers to future time, not the present.
Example: Verb believe
Answer No I believe they live in London.
Present tense live must refer to present time, not the future.
Item [10] in our list, the verb wish, differs from all the others, and strictly speaking the question as formulated does not apply to it. This is because wish does not take a present tense clause as complement: you can't say, for example, *I wish he has a car. A finite complement of wish has a preterite verb (I wish he had a car) or else irrealis were (I wish she were here). Thus the question of whether a present tense verb can have a future time interpretation does not arise. The preterite after wish, however, has a modal meaning: it doesn't indicate past time (see pp. 46-47); in I wish he had a car, for example, it is a matter of his having a car now. We can therefore ask whether a preterite in the complement of wish can have a future time interpretation: what is the answer to this question?

Note that wish is semantically quite similar to hope. The main difference is that with wish it is taken for granted that the situation described in the complement is counterfactual: I wish he had a car conveys that he doesn't have one. Hope, however, leaves the matter open: with I hope he has a car he may or may not have one. But what about the temporal issue? Is wish like hope in allowing a future interpretation for the primary verb-form in its complement?

13. Classify the following conditional constructions as open or remote. For the open ones, give their remote counterparts, and conversely for the remote ones give their open counterparts.
Example: It will be a pity if you miss them.
Answer: Open. Remote counterpart: It would be a pity if you missed them.
Example: If you told her the full story she would forgive you.
Answer: Remote. Open counterpart: If you tell her the full story she will forgive you.

14. We have already supplied a model answer for exercise 14 in the book: if you were given the sentence It's too late you would be expected to supply as the answer Jill said it was too late (that's the backshifted version) and Jill said it's too late (that's the non-backshifted version, which is also grammatical).

15. For the following examples, give counterparts in which the clause with the underlined verb has been put in the perfect tense.
Example: I apologised for my mistake.
Answer: I had apologised for my mistake.
Example: He claims to know her.
Answer: He claims to have known her.

16. Describe, as carefully as you can, the difference in meaning or use between the [a] and [b] members of the following pairs.
Example: a. I promised to help her.
b. I have promised to help her.
Answer: The version with the preterite, [a], simply describes the past time event of my promising to help her; I may or may not have subsequently fulfilled the promise. Version [b], with the present perfect, strongly suggests that the promise is still operative in the present: that I have not yet helped her but am committed to doing so.

17. As in Exercise 13, classify the following conditionals as open or remote, and give the counterpart of the opposite category. These examples differ from the earlier ones in that they all involve the perfect construction.
Example: If you have read the report you will know that no disciplinary action has been recommended.
Answer: Open; remote counterpart: If you had read the report you would know that no disciplinary action has been recommended.
Example: If he had left at six he would have easily caught the train.
Answer: Remote; open counterpart: If he left at six he will have easily caught the train.

18. Give progressive aspect counterparts to the following examples.
Example: We enjoyed our holiday.
Answer: We were enjoying our holiday.

19. Discuss the difference in meaning or use between the [a] and [b] members of the following pairs.
Example: a. She wrote the foreword to their book.
b. She was writing the foreword to their book.
Answer: The [a] version presents the event in its totality: it has a perfective interpretation. The [b] version is imperfective: at the past time under consideration the event was in progress, but we are not told whether it was subsequently completed.

20. Discuss the interpretation of the following examples with respect to the distinction between epistemic, deontic,and dynamic modality, bearing in mind that some of them are ambiguous.
Example: He can't understand what you're trying to do.
Answer: This is ambiguous between a dynamic and an epistemic interpretation. In the former case it means "He is unable to understand what you're trying to do": here it is a matter of his ability to understand. In the epistemic interpretation I am making an inference: "On the basis of the evidence (e.g. his behaviour) I am forced to conclude that he doesn't understand what you're trying to do".

Thanks to Zoltan Galsi for his work.