MARTIN JOOS THE ENGLISH VERB, FORM AND MEANINGS THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

PRESS MADISON & MILWAUKEE 1964

This linguist is a descriptive linguist working on British English, though he is not British. This book is
entirely based on one book by novelist Sybille Bedford on the longest murder trial in England at the time at
the Old Bailey in March 1957. The title of the book was The Best We Can Do in the UK and The Trial of Dr
Adams in the US. This gives absolute unity to the corpus used here, and yet that corpus is very
circumstantial since many people of different cultural circles met and spoke in this court, some of them
having to use a very standardized legal language or even interrogation language: you do not speak in a court
of justice the way you speak in the street. And the whole thing is seen, through the pen and the mind of one
person who is a novelist, hence a creative writer who has her style and cannot depart from it. Some of the
remarks I will do depend on this fact. Martin Joos would have been well inspired to widen his corpus to other
British genres, not to mention of course American English. The circulation between the two dialects of
English started to be very important in the late 1950s thanks to tourism and to television and cinema
exchanges.
THE GERUND
My first remark will be on what he calls the gerund that he opposes to the present participle. He
reduces the present participle to a simple adjective and eventually an adverb. He is more or less scrambling
his mind when this present participle has an obvious subject and wonders whether it should be the subject
personal pronouns or the object personal pronouns. The case of these pronouns is determined by the
function they hold as to the main verb in the main clause and the present participle cannot be a gerund
because it is a simple apposition to that pronoun, or a noun, hence an adjectival modifier. When I say:
I dont like Peter/him reading Hamlet.
The case of the pronoun (or the noun) depends on their function as to the verb like and in no way
as to the present participle reading. In fact I dont like the person known as Peter, circumstantially engaged
in the reading of Hamlet. This explanation introduces the third use of the Ving form, but more in a moment.
We have a present participle when the subject is NOT in the genitive and when the object is in the normal
objective case using no preposition to introduce itself because it is a direct object, the way it is in my
example.
That makes Martin Joos slightly fuzzy when he deals with the gerund: he accepts the two cases as
for the subject, both objective case and genitive. He does not see that in the first case we have a real
present participle that is apposed to a noun or pronoun giving him thus a deep subject function it does not
really have in the sentence. This apposition behaves like an adjective but it keeps its verbal syntax as for its
own complements.
The real gerund has a real subject in the genitive case. The genitive is the case of the agent in the
nominal field whereas the nominative is the case of the agent (subject) in the verbal field. But this gerund
keeps its verbal syntax as for its complements. It can even take adverbs:
I dont like Peters/his dramatically reading Hamlet in every meeting of ours.
These first two cases are clear: they deal with the action of reading itself and nothing else.
The third case is not at all considered and Martin Joos misses a point then. The third Ving form can
be a real verbal NOUN, a NOUN built on a verbal root. But then this noun has a nominal syntax both before
and after. It can take genitives and adjectives before or simple articles, and only nominal complements after
introduced by prepositions.
I dont like Peters amorous reading of Hamlet as if it were a romantic if not melodramatic story.
Obviously we have shifted from the action of reading to the interpretation (as an actor or as a critic)
of the play. We can note the play itself is introduced with the preposition of because it no longer is a direct
object but a nominal complement to a noun.
THE VERBAL PHRASE
My second remark is going to be extremely positive. The way he spreads out the structure of the
verbal phrase (reduced of course to the verb and its direct auxiliaries and not including anything else like
complements or adverbs). Page 55 he exemplifies this structure in a clear table and page 76 then page 81

he summarizes the whole approach in two clear tables. He thus considers the verbal phrase can be
decomposed in six successive verbal elements from left to right (seven if we consider the subject):
[0- Subject, my addition]
1- Tense that can be actual and remote, opposing the unmarked present to the marked preterit (D).
2- Assertion that can be factual or relative, opposing simple tenses or the use of modals of various
types (WILL, etc.).
3- Phase that can be current or perfect opposing simple perspective tenses looking at the action as
a whole and the perfective phase as he calls it which looks at an action that started in some past moment
and is still going on at the moment of utterance (HAVE-N).
4- Aspect that opposes generic to temporary, meaning the full action as opposed to an action seen
in its temporal development and as unfinished at the time of utterance or reference. We are dealing here with
the progressive form (BE-ING).
5- Voice that opposes neutral to passive and the fact that he does not say active is a good thing
because there are quite a few verbs who do not imply an action with an agent (He lies on the ground as
apposed to He lies to his father all the time.) or some intransitive verbs who cannot be set in the passive
because they are both active and passive (He runs everyday at seven a.m. He is obviously both the
person who is doing the action and the person who is being transported by this running person from point A
to point B. To introduce a passive would be tricky: He is run by his brother every morning for thirty minutes,
doctors orders! on the model of Paul is walking the dog or The dog is walked by Paul every night.). We
are thus dealing here with the passive voice (BE-N).
6- Function that opposes the propredicate (mostly DO or any anaphoric verbal reduction for simple
back references to previously used verbal phrases and actions (Paul cannot really have been working all
night since he looks fresh and rested, can he? Oh yes he has!), hence to a full verb (V).
What his presentation does not make visual is the fact that at every level what he gives as the
second element is in fact governed by the first but on the next level, as shown in the following table.
1
SUBJECT

2
TENSE
Present
Preterit

or s
-D
ASSERTION
Factual
Modals:
WILL, etc.
HAVE, OUGHT

+
+ TO
Phase
Current
Perfect: HAVE

-N
Aspect
Generic
Temporary: BE

-ING
Voice
Neutral
Passive: BE

-N
VERB
PROPREDICATE

I have kept most of Jooss terms though I would favor others. He then exemplifies his approach by
using 0 for the first choice at each level and 1 for the second choice at each level. The most complete
example he gives is 111101: She (1) would (2+3) not have (4) been (5) having (7) much. He does not
provide an example for 111111 and that is probably because his corpus does not contain one that could be in
the same genre: She (1) would (2+3) not have (4) been (5) being (6) murdered (7) when I arrived if the
murderer had been arrested after his first crime. Note the shortest possibility is Paul (1) runs (2+7). Due to
the neutralization of 3 to 6 strata.

MODALS
The third remark is that he does not approach modals properly. He does not approach them
syntactically but only semantically and thus he cannot understand the opposition between CAN in Yesterday
he could run two miles with the alternative yesterday he was able to run two miles, and MAY in Yesterday
he may have run two miles: I dont actually know with the alternative Yesterday he might have run two
miles: I dont actually know.
The first use is deictic because it refers to a real action that was possible and was performed. In the
second case we are dealing with an epistemic modal since the prediction of a probability is always positioned
in the present (a neutral probability with may and a reduced probability with might, both reflecting the level
of prediction implied by the utterer) and the action is positioned in the past by the perfective auxiliary have.
We are dealing here with syntax and not semantics and it is these syntactic structures that determine our
understanding of the modals. The chart presented above then has to be modified to integrate this case.
Actually Martin Joos, due to his corpus I guess, practically only examines the permissive value of
may and might though he calls it the archaic sense. But he does not seem to really explore the nonarchaic sense, the sense of probability. Its obvious the permissive meaning is archaic but whats more it is
absurd in sentences like: The doctor said the baby may die tonight. It cannot be a permission, of course
not. Might will make the probability more relative, hence lower or higher but a permission is out of place in
the context and the use of may and might for probability prediction is absolutely modern and common..
Same thing of course in sentences like: The parents were extremely anxious about their baby who may die
tonight. No one has given the permission that the baby should die tonight which would become an order and
hence a criminal action.
SHALL
The last remark is about shall. Here again he is conscious that shall is not a simple future
auxiliary. He is conscious that it is not a simple first person auxiliary. He is also aware that shall in an
assertive sentence is not the same thing as in a question or in a suggestion (What shall it be, gin or vodka?
and Shall I suggest a glass of Port?)
But he is entangled in court language in Great Britain in the 1950s when shall was still used as a
future auxiliary, marginal, for all persons, but yet still a future auxiliary. Since then this value has practically
disappeared but contractual language has valorized the basic meaning of shall as being the future
prediction of something that depends on some authority of some kind over the person who is supposed to
perform the action, which gives in the interrogative form the value we have just quoted (someone asking a
person what he/she would like to have or a suggestion from someone but submitted to the agreement of the
other person.) It is the basic value and has always been. In King James Bible we have: Thou shalt not kill.
(Exodus, 20:13) and it is systematically used in second person singular or generic (plural) in that version of
the Bible. Today it is only used in situation where someone is confronted to a strong authority that dictates
their actions. Of course he shall do it, since I am his boss on this question. And there is no other way to say
it with that meaning and that force. In a contract it has exactly the same value that must, have to, or
ought to do not carry. To have the same power as shall we should say something like: you must
absolutely do this. You do not find such a phrase in a contract or even in a users manual of some industrial
machine. In fact in a users manual the equivalent could be a simple imperative.
He is right though that shall should be used in contexts that absolutely require that modal, and
these contexts are rare and certainly not in colloquial everyday language. The only common use is in the
interrogative form though it is always a little bit stilted and formal. In the underground if someone is blocking
the way out of the carriage you may say: Shall I push you or shall you move? but you might be confronted
to some surprising reactions. Not everyone speaks like the upstairs gangs of Downtown Abbey.
Apart from that it is an interesting and useful book, even if it is not a highly computerized model of
the English language. At times it is necessary to wean ourselves from all Universal Grammar of any type that
turns us into some translating machine producing gibberish codes of signals instead of language.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
There is a lot of good in prestructural linguistics that is coming back to the front
http://drjacquescoulardeau.blogspot.fr/
MARTIN JOOS THE ENGLISH VERB, FORM AND MEANINGS 1964

This linguist is a descriptive linguist working on British English, though he is not British. This book is
entirely based on one book by novelist Sybille Bedford on the longest murder trial in England at the time at
the Old Bailey in March 1957. []