ct in this construction to the limited use of the possessive case in modern English in general. As regards this interpretation, we should like to say that an appeal to the limited sphere of the English noun possessive in an attempt to prove the wholly gerundial character of the intermediary construction in question can hardly be considered of any serious consequence. True, a vast proportion of English nouns do not admit of the possessive case form, or, if they do, their possessive in the construction would create contextual ambiguity, or else some sort of stylistic ineptitude. Cf.: p align="justify"> The headlines bore a flaring announcement of the strike being called off by the Amalgamated Union. (No normal possessive with the noun strike); I can't fancy their daughter entering a University college. (Ambiguity in the oral possessive: daughter's - daughters '); They were surprised at the head of the family rejecting the services of the old servant. (Evading the undesirable shift of the possessive particle - 's from the head-noun to its adjunct); The notion of this woman who had had the world at her feet paying a man half a dollar to dance with her filled me with shame. (Semantic and stylistic incongruity of the clause possessive with the statement)
However, these facts are but facts in themselves, since they only present instances when a complete gerundial construction for this or that reason either cannot exist at all, or else should be avoided on diverse reasons of usage. So, the quoted instances of gerundial participle phrases are not more demonstrative of the thesis in question than, say, the attributive uses of nouns in the common form (eg the inquisitor judgement, the Shakespeare Fund, a Thompson way of refusing, etc.) would be demonstrative of the possessive case "tendency" to coincide with the bare stem of the noun: the absence of the possessive nounal form as such can't be taken to testify that the "possessive case" may exist without its feature sign .
XII. FINITE VERB: INTRODUCTION
The finite forms of the verb express the processual relations of substances and phenomena making up the situation reflected in the sentence. These forms are associated with one another in an extremely complex and intricate system. The peculiar aspect of the complexity of this system lies in the fact that, as we have stated before, the finite verb is directly connected with the structure of the sentence as a whole. Indeed, the finite verb, through the working of its categories, is imme diately related to such sentence-constitutive factors as morphological forms of predication, communication purposes, subjective modality, subject-object relation, gradation of probabilities, and quite a few other factors of no lesser importance ..
As has been mentioned elsewhere, the complicated character of the system in question has given rise to a lot of controversies about the structural formation of the finite verb categories, as well as the bases of their functional semantics. It would be not an exaggeration to say that each fundamental type of grammatical expression capable of being approached in terms of generalised categories in the domain of the finite verb has created a subject for a scholarly dispute. For instance, taking as an example the sphere of the categorial person and number of the verb, we are faced with the argument among grammarians about the existence or non-existence of the verbal-pronominal forms of these categories. In connection with the study of the verbal expression of time and aspect, the great controversy is going on as to the temporal or aspective nature of the verbal forms of the indefinite, continuous, perfect, and perfect-continuous series. Grammatical expression of the future tense in English is stated by some scholars as a matter-of-fact truth, while other linguists are eagerly negating any possibility of its existence as an element of grammar. The verbal voice invites its investigators to exchange mutually opposing views regarding both the content and the number of its forms. The problem of the subjunctive mood may justly be called one of the most vexed in the theory of grammar: the exposition of its structural properties, its inner divisions, as well as its correlation with the indicative mood vary literally from one linguistic author to another.
On the face of it, one might get an impression that the morphological study of the English finite verb has amounted to interminable aimless exchange of arguments, ceaseless advances of opposing "points of view", the actual aim of which has nothing to do with the practical application of linguistic theory to life. However, the fallacy of such an impression should be brought to light immediately and uncompromisingly. p align="justify"> As a matter of fact, it is the verb system that, of al...
