Comparative study of lexical and grammatical peculiarities of stative verbs in the English and Uzbek languages

According to English grammar, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static or unchanging throughout their entire duration, whereas dynamic verbs describe processes that entail change over time[1]. Many languages distinguish between these two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically. English verbs are generally classified as either stative or dynamic, where one of the main differences is said to be that stative verbs are inimical to the progressive aspect. Cases where such verbs do occur in the progressive are often explained away as involving a change in verb meaning. Another common approach to the progressive is to maintain that the progressive form as such can convey a range of meanings. Most commonly, a distinction is made between progressives with aspectual meaning and progressives with subjective meaning. In the present paper we take a functional-semantic approach and argue that all socalled stative verbs can potentially be used in the progressive. We further argue that the grammatical morpheme -ing has a synchronically invariant core meaning which can be pressed into service via the progressive construction to evoke a variety of messages – aspectual and expressive – depending on the context and the communicative needs of the speaker[2].

In English and many other languages, stative and dynamic verbs differ in whether or not they can use the progressive aspect. Dynamic verbs such as "go" can be used in the progressive (I am going to school) whereas stative verbs such as "know" cannot (*I am knowing the answer). A verb that has both dynamic and stative uses cannot normally be used in the progressive when a stative meaning is intended: e.g. one cannot normally say, idiomatically, "Every morning, I am going to school". In other languages, statives can be used in the progressive as well: for example,in Korean language we can found example for this issue. In English, a verb that expresses a state can also express the entrance into a state. This is called inchoative aspect[3]. The simple past is sometimes inchoative. For example, the present-tense verb in the sentence "He understands his friend" is stative, while the past-tense verb in the sentence "Suddenly he understood what she said" is inchoative, because it means "He understood henceforth". On the other hand, the past-tense verb in "At one time, he understood her" is stative.

The only way the difference between stative and inchoative can be expressed in English is through the use of modifiers, as in the above examples ("suddenly" and "at one time"). Likewise, in ancient Greek, a verb that expresses a state (e.g., ebasíleuon "I was king") may use the aorist to express entrance into the state (e.g., ebasíleusa "I became king"). But the aorist can also simply express the state as a whole, with no focus on the beginning of the state (eíkosi étē ebasíleusa "I ruled for twenty years"). Stative verbs are often divided into sub-categories, based on their semantics or syntax. Semantic divisions mainly involve verbs that express someone's state of mind, or something's properties (of course, things can also be expressed via other language mechanisms as well, particularly adjectives). The precise categories vary by linguist. Huddleston and Pullum, for example, divide stative verbs into the following semantic categories: verbs of perception and sensation (see, hear), verbs of hurting (ache, itch), stance verbs (stand, sit), and verbs of cognition, emotion, and sensation (believe, regret). Novakov, meanwhile, uses the slightly different categories: verbs denoting sensations (feel, hear), verbs denoting reasoning and mental attitude (believe, understand), verbs denoting positions/stance (lie, surround), and verbs denoting relations (resemble, contain). Syntactic divisions involve the types of clause structures in which a verb may be used[4]. In the following examples, an asterisk (*) indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical:

John believes that Fido is a dog.

*John believes on Fido barking.

John believes Fido to bark.

In Uzbek language voice as a special grammatical category fully covers the verb, all its microsystems. Verbs without voice do not exist , since the category of voice is considered to be «innate» grammatical, property, semantic potency of the verbal part of speech. «A voice is the category which formed by сontraring such series of morphological forms, meaning of different representations of the same relationship between the semantic subject, action and semantic object». The division of verbs into transitive and intransitive is closely related to the category of voice[5]. The relations between the movement (state) with subject and object are different. In one voice form, the direct connection of the movement (state) of the logical subject with the object is expressed, and in the other movement (state) of the subject is enclosed in it. The object and subject of the state has been processor at the same time . Compare: olmoq 'to take', qolmoq 'to stay', taramoq 'to comb', berishmoq 'to give'. A. Hojiyev correctly states that «... changing of voice form of the verb, the relation of movement to the subject and to the object will also change». However, regardless of the movement (state) relationship between subject and object, the movement (state) does not go beyond the limits of the circle of the logical subject and object, evaluated as their inherent dynamic or static attribute.

In summary, we have proposed that:

• 1)    speakers will use the progressive with stative verbs when motivated by a message which requires it (unless of course prescriptive considerations intervene);

• 2)    messages evoked by the progressive construction are ultimately answerable to the basic meaning of the construction;

• 3)    the use of progressives with statives does not result in a meaning shift of the verb;

• 4)    the simple and progressive forms of the verb are not interchangeable;

• 5)    directionality is not part of the basic meaning of the progressive construction;

• 6)    aspectual and subjective messages are not mutually exclusive; both occur simultaneously in utterances; and

• 7)    most meanings ascribed to the progressive in the literature are pragmatically modulated and not encoded in the basic meaning of the construction.

As we have seen, most statives can freely occur in the progressive when a communicative need particular to a specific situation arises. The low frequency of occurrence and limited distribution of some statives with the progressive reflects the fact that the messages which motivate them are fewer and less conventional. Simply put, there are just fewer life situations which might call forth such messages. Moreover, although their frequencies may not be statistically significant, what is important here is that such messages (unless written off as performance errors) occur at all.