§ 251. When used in speech a word has but one of its lexical meanings and all of its grammatical meanings (see § 21). Thus in the sentence He writes to me every week, the verb writes conveys only one of its lexical meanings ('communicates in writing'), whereas it has seven elementary grammatical meanings: 1) active voice, 2) non-perfect order, 3) non-continuous aspect, 4) present tense, 5) indicative mood, 6) third person, 7) singular number.
Since each of these elementary meanings can be singled out in a certain opposeme, the entire grammatical meaning of a grammeme as a unit of language must be regarded as the sum of its elementary grammatical meanings (present tense + active voice + indicative mood, etc.).
When used in speech, however, in diverse speech situat
ions, in various lexical and syntactical surroundings, with
verbs of different lexical meanings, a grammeme l may acquire
some complex meaning which cannot be directly inferred from
the meanings of its constituents. In other words, the entire
meaning of a grammeme in speech is often not equal to the
sum of it* elementary meanings and we may speak, in some
sense, of idiomatic meanings of grammemes. Hence the neces
sity of analysing the meanings of grammemes not only as
units of language, but as units of speech as well. ^
§ 252. The systems of different moods, as we know, contain different grammemes. We shall therefore discuss the grammemes of the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods separately.
Within the indicative mood the meanings of 'tense', 'aspect' and 'order' are closely interlaced in speech. This is one of the reasons why linguists often do not distinguish them as separate categories of the language system. We shall study these meanings together.
1 See note, p. 66.
The meanings of 'voice', 'person' and 'number' rarely mix with the other meanings, so that they can be studied separately. But the more or less simple meanings of 'number' and 'person' hardly need any special analysis *.
Now a few remarks about the names of grammemes. When we speak about 'passive voice' grammemes, we do not mean that there exist in English such grammemes whose only meaning is that of 'passive voice'. We simply unite all the grammemes that contain among others the meaning of 'passive voice', and exclude those that do not contain this meaning. When we deal with the 'present perfect continuous', we unite all the grammemes that have the meanings of 'present tense', 'perfect order' and 'continuous aspect', and exclude those that do not possess at least one of these meanings.