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Endi Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

Periphrastic models

0 Some of you are familiar with my Venn diagram.02br
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00Thing is, I've never been 100% happy with it. The thing that's bugging me right now is the idea of purpose. Verbs followed by to+infinitive usually expresses a strong purpose, but there are some verbs that don't. Many of these are modal equivelents that is they have near equivelents among the true modals They are sometimes known as periphrastic modals.02br
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00You will see that I have made a space for such verbs on my diagram. I am interested in your opinion on a few verbs that I havent put there yet:02br
00Appear02br
00Happen02br
00Proceed02br
00Seem02br
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00All seem to lack a clear purpose, and I'm not sure about all of the others. Should these verbs be consided to be 02br
00periphrastic modals, or would you categorise them differently?0250hrefhttp://www.geocities.com/endipatterson/Cat.html
  

Top answer

0 Hello Endi02br 02br 00Quirk uses a term "catenative (=chain)" for such verbals. "Appear to", "come to", "fail to", "get to", "manage to", "seem to", "tend to", "turn out to" are examples he gives. They are semantically similar to modal auxiliaries in that they carry a sense of aspect or modality, but structurally similar to common or true verbs in that they take DO support.

— Paco2004

  • 0 Hello Endi02br 02br 00Quirk uses a term "catenative (=chain)" for such verbals.
  • "Appear to", "come to", "fail to", "get to", "manage to", "seem to", "tend to", "turn out to" are examples he gives.
  • They are semantically similar to modal auxiliaries in that they carry a sense of aspect or modality, but structurally similar to common or true verbs in that they take DO support.
  • 02br 00 (OK) He appeared to attack the burglar.
  • 02br 02br 00paco 010id40
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8 Answers
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0 Hello Endi02br
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00Quirk uses a term "catenative (=chain)" for such verbals. "Appear to", "come to", "fail to", "get to", "manage to", "seem to", "tend to", "turn out to" are examples he gives. They are semantically similar to modal auxiliaries in that they carry a sense of aspect or modality, but structurally similar to common or true verbs in that they take DO support
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0 Although I have seen this statement before, I just don't quite get it. Is Quirk merely saying that intransitivity is a necessary precondition for a verb to be a catenative? If so, why? Is it that he sees a sharp cut off in that the existance of an object implies more than just a philosophical framing of the action by the first verb. If so, it seemes wrong headed because the existance of an o
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0 Hello Endi02br
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00Yes… An "intransitive" verb means the verb cannot take an object and a "transitive" verb means the verb takes an object, don't they? In another words, "to attack" in "appear to attack" is genuinely a verbal complement to "appear", but "to attack" in "attempt to attack" can be taken as a nominal phrase functioning as a verbal object. I took Quirk's expl
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01cite10Paco200412cite10Hello Endi12br
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10Yes… An "intransitive" verb means the verb cannot take an object and a "transitive" verb means the verb takes an object, don't they? In another words, "to attack" in "appear to attack" is genuinely a verbal complement to "appear", but "to attack" in "attempt to attack" can
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0Aktionsart? What's that? Is it an English word?02br
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00paco0-
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Paco200412cite10Aktionsart? What's that? Is it an English word?12br
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10paco12br
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10Yes, but borrowed from German. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish aspect and aktionsart as they are not exactly the same thing.02br
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0I didn't know for what purpose you made the question, but I gave you some information that seems related to your question. But it is likely you are not satisfied with it (because I haven't heard anything "thanks" or like that from you). If you want to make a linguistic discussion, here they have a special forum "Linguist Discussion Forum". I feel there you might get better answers from experts
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Paco200412cite10I didn't know for what purpose you made the question, but I gave you some information that seems related to your question. But it is likely you are not satisfied with it (because I haven't heard anything "thanks" or like that from you). If you want to make a linguistic discussion, here they have a special forum "L
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