BEGINNING

Semantically, the verbs of this type divide into three groups: (i) begin, start, commence; (ii) continue (with), keep (on (with)); go on (with); (iii) finish, cease, stop, complete, discontinue.

We suggested that a BEGINNING verb should be followed by another verb, which it modifies and which may in certain circumstances be omitted, e.g. The choir started (singing) ‘Messiah’ at two o’clock, Mary continued (with) (writing) her book after a short holiday, Tommy has finished (shelling) the peas, I’ve completed (grading) these assignments. This statement of usage will be expanded and refined below.

There are two kinds of verbs that may readily be omitted after a member of the BEGINNING type:

(i) Verbs concerned with making or preparing or performing something, such as cook, knit and tell, e.g. He began (cooking) the supper, She began (knitting) a sweater, My uncle began (telling) another joke. Other verbs of similar meaning that may be omitted include: build, perform, write, copy, type, print, bind, weave, sew, mend, cook, boil, peel, scrape, shell, chop; clean, wash, polish, sweep.

 (ii) Verbs concerned with consumption, such as read, eat, drink and smoke, e.g. I started (reading) ‘Great Expectations’ last night, John began (eating) the chocolate cake.

Note that when a verb is omitted after a BEGINNING item its object NP is left behind. This NP should be something that is a typical object of the omitted verb, so that the nature of the verb can with a degree of probability be inferred from it. From John began building Mary’s house last February it is permissible to omit build, since house is a prototypical object of that verb. However, from Mary began liking her new house after she’d been living in it for six months it is not possible to omit liking since this is a verb that can take any sort of object. As mentioned before, there may be more than one verb that is omissible before a given object NP, e.g. John began (building/ painting) Mary’s house, Hosanna began (reading/writing) a new detective novel, Junior began (shelling/cooking/eating) the peas; a speaker will not normally omit a verb unless they think the addressee has enough background knowledge to be able to retrieve it, e.g. it might be known that John is a painter and not a builder, that Hosanna writes detective stories but seldom reads them.

The verbs which can be omitted after a BEGINNING item mostly come from the AFFECT, CORPOREAL and SPEAKING types (but are only a selection of verbs from these types, e.g. omission is quite impossible from John began caning the children). It would be highly unusual to omit a verb that belongs to MOTION, REST, GIVING, THINKING, DECIDING, LIKING or ANNOYING—that is, from sentences like The old lady started fetching the firewood, Mary began choosing dresses, The army finished crossing the river.

Verbs that are omitted normally have two stated NPs (in A and O syntactic relations) and both are retained. It is interesting that a verb for which three roles are stated is not open to omission, e.g. no GIVING items (not even from She started giving alms to the beggars). Telling may not be omitted from any sentence where all of Speaker, Addressee and Message are stated, e.g. not from He began telling another joke to the delegates (although they hadn’t laughed at the previous one) nor from He began telling the delegates another joke ( . . . ). But it may be omitted from He began (telling) another joke ( . . .), where just two roles are stated.

If the subject NP is a description of a person such that it indicates their habitual activity then it may be possible to omit an object NP together with a transitive verb, or to omit an intransitive verb. Parallel to Mary started (cooking) the dinner at four o’clock, we can have The chef started (cooking) (the dinner) at four o’clock. In the Mary sentence the NP dinner should be included to enable the listener to retrieve the verb cook; but if the chef is subject NP this is not necessary. Similarly, on hearing The juggler finished two minutes before the conjuror appeared, one would assume that the juggler had finished juggling; if the message to be conveyed were that he had finished eating then the verb should not be omitted and/or an object NP should be retained, e.g. The juggler finished (eating/his dinner/eating his dinner) two minutes before the conjuror appeared. (It goes without saying that more drastic omission is possible if relevant circumstances are known to all participants in the speech activity, e.g. Mary has finished may be said if everyone knows what Mary has been doing. My point is that Mary has finished the jumper or The choir started five minutes ago could be said in neutral circumstances, with the verbs knitting and singing being understood—as implied—by a stranger.)

When a BEGINNING verb modifies an intransitive verb, or a transitive verb that has no object stated, then this verb may often be replaced by an ACTIVITY or SPEECH ACT noun derived from the verb, e.g. John began the apology before you arrived corresponds to John began apologizing/to apologize before you arrived, and Mary started her swim at two o’clock corresponds to Mary started swimming/to swim at two o’clock. There is a recurrent meaning difference—the noun may refer to some unit of activity (it might be a cross-Channel swim, for instance) and the verb just to the fact that the activity happens.

A BEGINNING verb may also appear in an intransitive construction where the subject is an ACTIVITY, STATE or SPEECH ACT noun, e.g. The game continued after tea, John’s jealousy first began when he saw Mary out with Tom, The offer finishes on Friday. For each of these sentences there is a near-paraphrase that includes a related verb or adjective in a complement clause—(Some) people continued playing the game after tea, John first began to be jealous when he saw Mary out with Tom, (Someone) finishes offering (something) on Friday (the constituents introduced by some here could be replaced by more specific NPs, on the basis of information shared by speaker and hearer). There are some peripheral members of the BEGINNING type which can only be used intransitively, with an ACTIVITY noun in subject slot, e.g. set in and break out as in The rains have set in for the monsoon season, Fighting broke out at midday.

Some nouns with CONCRETE reference refer to things extended in space. A river moves in space, and it is appropriate to refer to the place where it begins moving, e.g. The Murrumbidgee River rises on the Dividing Range, or The Murrumbidgee River starts on the Dividing Range. A road does not move but, by analogy with a river, one can say The Bruce Highway starts/ begins in Brisbane and finishes at Cairns (or, depending on one’s ethnocentric focus, The Bruce Highway starts/begins at Cairns and finishes in Brisbane). Begin, start and finish cannot here be related to any underlying verb, and such ‘extended in space’ usages of items from the BEGINNING type have to be considered additional senses of the verbs.

(1a) John finished (painting) the wall on Tuesday

(1b) John stopped/ceased painting the wall on Tuesday

Turning now to semantic analysis, we can first note a clear contrast between finish on the one hand and stop and cease on the other: Finish has ‘object orientation’; sentence (1a) implies that the activity terminated because the wall was fully painted. Cease and stop have ‘subject orientation’; the activity terminates (perhaps only temporarily) because of something to do with the person doing it—it could be that on Tuesday John decided he’d had enough of painting, irrespective of the job not being completed. Cease and stop most often refer to the volition of the subject, but need not always do so, e.g. His heart stopped beating, He ceased breathing. It is because of their subject orientation that cease and stop— unlike other verbs in this type—scarcely allow a following verb to be omitted. These verbs mark the involvement of the subject in the activity referred to by the verb (here, painting) and because of this that verb should be retained.

The difference in meaning between these two verbs is that stop tends to refer to something happening suddenly (often, unexpectedly) while cease may describe a general winding down to nothing, e.g. The clock stopped (going) at five past three (it had been going perfectly until then) and My starter motor finally ceased to work (it had been in poor shape for months).

There is a meaning contrast of a different sort between begin and start. Consider

(2a) The marathon race begins at Santa Monica

(2b) The marathon race starts at three o’clock

Start tends to refer to a time and begin to a place—He’ll start the public reading from his new book after dinner, and I can assure you that he’ll begin at page one, right at the beginning, and he won’t stop until he’s finished the whole book. Another example combining several of these verbs is The three o’clock race began at the 500-metre mark (place); it started ten minutes late (time); James Donohue finished first (i.e. he finished the course—‘object orientation’) and Tubby Arbuckle stopped racing (‘subject orientation’) a hundred yards from home because his horse lost a shoe.

Wierzbicka (1988: 78V.) has pointed out that the noun start refers to the first moment of some activity—which relates to my observation that the verb start tends to refer to a time—and the noun beginning to the first segment—see also Freed (1979: 77). Note that for a race we have both a starting time and a starting point (not a *beginning time or *beginning point).

In many sentences start and begin may be substituted one for the other with little or no change in meaning (as may finish and stop and cease). But there do appear to be semantic preferences for each verb, which motivate their use to an appreciable extent.

Both commence and complete tend to be used for some definite and significant piece of work, not just any everyday job, e.g. He has commenced (writing) his new symphony, John should complete the wall tomorrow. One would be less likely to say They commenced breakfast at 8.30 or John has completed the peas (to say this implies that it was a fairly significant event!). Commence has orientation to time, similar to start—note that we can say restart or recommence (i.e. at a new time), but not *rebegin. Complete is like other verbs in the type (except stop and cease) in that it may omit a following verb referring to making, preparing or performing, but complete differs in that a verb referring to consumption would not normally be omitted, e.g. They completed the meal implies that they finished cooking it, not eating it.

Continue (with) is often used when someone has stopped doing something and then starts again; keep on (with) and go on (with) imply no cessation of activity. Keep (on)—without the with—can be used to describe relentless (and, often, unreasonable) repetition of some activity, e.g. He kept on mowing the grass could be used to refer to someone cutting his lawn twice a week, even though the grass had scarcely grown during that interval. All three verbs may optionally omit their preposition(s) before an ING complement but must include them before an NP, e.g. John kept (on (with)) building the wall, but John kept on with the wall. Discontinue implies a temporary or permanent cessation, e.g. They discontinued (having) the daily paper (delivered) (while they were away on holiday).

Start, stop and keep can all be used causatively. The official started the jockeys racing implies The jockeys started racing; The official started the race on time implies The race started on time; Peter stopped John chopping wood implies John stopped chopping wood; Mary kept her horse galloping at full pelt across the plain implies Her horse was galloping at full pelt across the plain. Begin may also be used causatively, e.g. The master began the boys racing as they passed the copse; but it is used in a causative construction less often than the other three verbs.

The fact that stop has a causative use whereas finish does not is related to their semantic orientation. Stop generally refers to something done at the subject’s instigation, and this can be transferred to a Causer, e.g. John stopped chopping firewood (he was tired) and Fred stopped John chopping firewood (Fred considered that John was tired). But finish refers to the referent of the O NP being fully satisfied, e.g. Jack finished chopping firewood (all the wood was chopped up); it would not be plausible to transfer this ‘reason for termination’ to a Causer; hence we do not get *Fred finished John chopping firewood. It is mildly surprising that there is no causative use of cease; this may relate to its meaning of ‘gradually falling away’; if a Causer makes someone halt in a task they are likely to do it reasonably abruptly, and stop is then the appropriate verb.

A sentence like The parents started the game at three o’clock is ambiguous between a non-causative use of start with the verb of the complement clause omitted, e.g. The parents started (playing) the game at three o’clock, and a causative sense, which could be an abbreviated version of The parents started the children playing the game at three o’clock (i.e. gave the signal to start). This ambiguity does not apply to stop, simply because that verb generally does not permit omission of a complement clause verb, i.e. playing cannot be dropped from They stopped playing the game, thus, They stopped the game at three o’clock has only a causative sense.

BEGINNING verbs are restricted to ING and Modal (FOR) TO complement clauses with subject omitted, e.g. Mary began to like John, Mary began liking John. Mary and John are in the same semantic roles and syntactic relations for begin to like and begin liking as they would be for like. Begin to like and begin liking are each, in one sense, a single syntactic unit. (But there is a difference—an adverb may intervene between a BEGINNING verb and to, e.g. John began, after breakfast, to load the truck, but not between a BEGINNING verb and a following verb in -ing form, e.g. we cannot say *John began, after breakfast, loading the truck, only something like John began loading the truck after breakfast.)

All BEGINNING verbs may take an ING complement; just some of them also accept a Modal (FOR) TO clause:

ING and modal (FOR) TO complements—begin, start, continue (with), go on (with), cease

only ING complements—commence, keep (on (with)), finish, stop, complete, discontinue

We should also note the verb begin on, which can be used in some circumstances where begin is appropriate. But begin on—unlike begin—also has a special anaphoric sense, referring back to the verb of a previous clause. In The compe`re described the new season’s fur coats and then began on the new winter dresses, the began on in the second clause is equivalent to began describing (that is, the on of begin on signals a kind of gapping). In contrast, a sentence like He began the winter dresses would be taken to have an underlying verb of making, etc., such as design or produce (but certainly not describe). Begin on can make anaphoric reference to any sort of verb, within the limits of discourse organization and semantic plausibility.

There is one important point of similarity between some BEGINNING verbs and MODALS and SEMI-MODALS; this concerns passives. One can say both Mary might victimize John and John might be victimized (by Mary), where the modal might precedes either active victimized or passive be victimized. In similar fashion, one can say either Mary began to victimize John or John began to be victimized (by Mary). (Note that begin cannot itself be passivized when followed by a complement clause; that is, one cannot say *John was begun to be victimized (by Mary) or *John was begun to victimize (by Mary).)