Практична граматика англійської мови для першокурсників. Частина II: Навчально-методичний посібник з граматики, страница 5

1. Terminative verbs contain the idea that the action they express must come to an end, reaching some point where it has logically to stop. 

This group includes such verbs as:

e.g.  When you close (terminative) the front door, don’t put (terminative) the key under the door mat.

2. Durative verbs contain the idea that the action they express may go on indefinitely without reaching any logically necessary final point. 

This group includes such verbs as:

                              e.g.  Do you speak English well?

                                      My parents are living and working in Brazil at the moment.

3.  The end of the action in durative verbs can be shown by an adverbial modifier of time, e.g. Jo will have read the book by Monday.

4.  Some English verbs can be either terminative or durative according to the context, in which they are used,

e.g.  Hey! What makes it so long? Peter is still opening the door. Something is wrong with the key. (durative)

Oh, he has opened it at last! (terminative)

**TASK 3.  Decide if the underlined verbs in the jokes below are terminative or durative.

Insufficient Local Knowledge

A Londoner who was going to the West of England for a holiday arrived by train at a town, and found that it was pouring with rain.  He called a porter to carry his bags to a taxi. On the way out of the station, partly to make conversation and partly to get a local opinion on prospects of weather for his holiday, he asked the porter: "How long has it been raining like this?"

"I don't know, sir, I've only been here for fifteen years," was the reply.

Much More Difficult

A famous doctor was protesting to the owner of a garage about the large sum of money he had to pay for repairs to his car.

"All this for a couple of hours' work," he exclaimed.  "Why, you people are paid at a higher rate than we are."

"Well, you see," replied the garage man, "you've been working on the same model since the beginning of time, but we have to learn all about a new model every year."

Functional Classification of the Verb

Verb

Notional verb             Link Verb                  Auxiliary Verb                       Modal Verb

Pat enjoys discos.   Mr. Brown is a doctor.   Sue is reading now.        You should go there.

**TASK 4.  Define the function of the underlined verbs in the joke below.

A Crazy Language

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, aren't meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of ‘tooth’ is ‘teeth’, why isn't the plural of ‘booth’ is ‘beeth’? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?