Imperative modality

3. Imperative modality

e.g. He tried to brush Anthony aside. But Ahthony firmly stood his ground. «I’m sorry,» he said, his teeth together,

«You’re not going in there». (Gordon)

NOTE: You are not going is SYNONYMOUS with Don’t go! = Don’t you go!

[N.M. Rayevska, 29; l45].

e.g. «We’re going after buff in the morning», he told her.

«I’m coming», she said.

«No, you’re not».

«Oh, yes, I am. Mayn’t I, Francis?»

«We’ll put on another show for you tomorrow», Francis Macomber said.

«You are not coining», Wilson said.

[Hemingway, 29; 145].

There are a lot of the subtle meaning associated with the progressive aspect. Syntagmatic connotative meanings of the Present Continuous signalled by different context, linguistic or situational, may denote: expression of anger or irritation; future arising from present, arrangement, plan and programme; the imperative modality and other expressive elements. We used literary texts to illustrate how various features of the continuous tense can be used in spoken English.

Transposition of grammatical forms will lead to their synonymic encounter:

-  the Past Tense and the Historical Present;

-  the Future Tense and the Present Tense;

– verb-forms of the Imperative and the Present Tense, and others.

2.2 The types of transpositions of verbal forms as stylistic means in the category of aspect

1. Iterative aspect

a) USE + TO infinitive: may denote not only repeated action in the past but permanent state in the remote past:

e.g.: «I had a look at Brane yesterday; he’s changed a good deal from when I used to know him. I was one of the first to give him briefs».

[Galsworthy, 29; 133]

e.g.: There used to be a cinema here before the war. Life is not so easy here as it used to be.

[Hornby A.S., 45; 153]

e.g. «The workshops have been shut up half-an-hour or more in Adam Bede’s timber yoard which used to be Jonathan Bridge’s».

[Eliot, 29; 133]

e.g. «There used to be an old apple tree in the garden. Oh, did there?»

[C.E. Eckersley, 3v; 255]

NOTE: «used to V» is used by 39 from 42 of Englishmen.

[A.I. Dorodnykh, 8; 148]

It is important to mark that in this situations in Spoken English used to V is practised with verbs: to be (to exist), to grow, to know, to love, to hate, to work, to belong, to own.

e.g. «I had a look at Brane yesterday; he’s changed a good deal from when I used to know him.»

[Galsworthy, 3; 109]

e.g «Michael went up to Fleur in the room she used to have as a little dirl- a single room, so that he had been sleeping elsewhere.»

[Galsworthy. 29; 133]

b) Would + V – infinitive as an action in the past:

e.g. «Catherine, weak-spirifed, irritable, and completely under Lydia's guidance, had been always affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and bare less, would scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while Meryton was within a walk of Long-bourn, they would be going there for ever».

[J. Austen. Pride and Prejudice, 4; 216]

e.g. «Sometimes Strickland would go down to the reef and come back wit a basket of small, coloured fish that Ata would fry in coconut, or with a lobster…»

[S. Maugham, 3; 111]

e.g. «Stimulated in course of time by the sight of so many successes, he would make another sally, make another loop, would all but have his foot on opposite pavement, would see or imagine something coming, and would stagger back again. There he would stand making spasmodic preparations as if for a great leap, and at last would decide on a start at precisely the wrong moment, and would be roared at by drivers, and would shrink back once more, and stand in the old spot shivering, with the whole of the proceedings to go through again».

[Ch. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 5; 505]

The historical past tense of «will» is «would», often reduced in speech to «d. The combination of remoteness and likelihood as the conceptual basis of would generally leads to an interpretation of some event as being distant in time or possibility from the moment of speaking. The remoteness element in would, combined with the epistemic interpretation (deductions or conclusions made by the speaker) is an interpretation of the past habitual behavior.

c) Iterative aspect expressed by Verb + ON and ON / OVER and OVER AGAIN / TIME and TIME AGAIN.

e.g. «Remembering Mr. Dawson’s caution to me, I subjected Mrs. Rublle to a severe scrutiny at certain intervals for the next three or four days. I over and over again entered the room softly and suddenly, but I never found her out in any «suspicious action.»

[W. Collins. The Woman in White, 2; 329]

e.g. «She had hovered for a little while in the near neighborhood of her abandoned dwelling, and had sold, and knitted and sold, and gone on. In the pleasant towns of. Chertsey, Walton, Kingston, and Staines her figure came time and time again to be quite well known for some short weeks, and then again passed on.»

[C. Dockens. 5; 477]

e.g. On and on stormed the loud applause. He has gone through all that over and over again. «You could have let that rom time and time again», says she. (Mansfield) [29; 134]

e.g. It was easy to talk on and on.

Men did the same job over and over.

[49, l002, 1025]

d) Syntactic reduplication:

e.g. «Hear the sledges with the bells-Silver bells! What a world a merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night! [E.A. Po. The Bells, 9; 58]

NOTE: The frequentive character of the action (tinkle) is intensified by syntactic reduplication.

e.g. «He talks, talks, talks about protecting women, and when the time comes for him to do some protecting, where is he?» [Mitchell, 29; 134].

The important components of the peripheral field of aspect are the ways of actions which find their positions in such verbal patterns as Verb + on and on/over and over again/time and time again and syntactic reduplications.