3. The verb and its grammatical categories

Grammatically, the verb is the most complex part of speech. This is due to the central role it performs in the expression of the predicative function of the sentence, i.e. the functions establishing the connection between the situation named in the utterance and reality.The complexity of the verb is inherent not only in the intricate structure of its grammatical, categories, but also in its various subclass divisions.A verb is a word (e.g.: to run) or a phrase (e.g.: run out of), which expresses the existence of a state (love, seem) or the doing of an action (take, play).

Categories	Type	Examples
Person	1st person 2nd person 3rd person	I go You go She goes
Number	Singular Plural	He has written They have written
Tense	present past future	I eat I ate I will eat
Aspect	simple, progressive, perfect, perfect-progressive	I study every day. I am studying today. I have studied for years. I have been studying for hours.
Mood	indicative, imperative, conditional, subjunctive
Voice	indicative imperative subjunctive	I am always on time. Be there on time! If I were on time, I would…

The category of Voice expresses relations between the subject and the object of the action or between the subject and the action.

The opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form of the verb expresses the voice of the English Verb. E.g.: writes - is written. The passive form is the strong member of the opposition. On the plane of expression it is marked by the combination of the auxiliary be with the Past Participle of the notional verb. The active form as a weak member of the opposition expresses "non-passivity". The Active Voice shows that the subject of the sentence is the doer of the action. The Passive Voice shows that the subject is acted upon. The agent may be expressed in the sentence and it's usually introduced with the help of the preposition by. Ex. The book is written by a young writer.

The Category of Tense is the basic verb category. It expresses the correlation between the action and event and objective time. We know that the actions or event can exist and develop only in time. The morphological category of tense reflects the objective logical category of time. But the difficulty is that the morphological category of tense doesn't always express the objective time. We should differentiate the notions of the objective and relative time. In the language we mostly deal not with objective but with relative time. We can speak of the objective-time only in those cases wnen the moment of speaking coensides with a developing action. But actually we take some moment of time as a starting point in reference to which all the actions are expressed.

The category of Mood is the most controversial category of the verb.

B.A. Ilyish: " The category of mood in the present English verb has given rise to so many discussions, and has been treated in so many different ways, that it seems hardly possible to arrive at any more less convincing and universally acceptable conclusion concerning it."

Among the scholars to be named in the first place in relation to the problem are A.I. Smirnitsky, whose theories revolutionized the presentation of English verbal grammar; then B.A. Ilyish , a linguist who made a great contribution to the general problem of mood; then Y.N. Vorontsova; Z.S. Khlebnikova.

The category of Mood expresses the relations between the action, denoted by the verb, and the actual reality from the point of view of the speaker. The speaker may treat the action/event as real, unreal or problematic or as fact that really happened, happens or will happen, or as an imaginary phenomenon.