The verbal group is unarguably the most studied, difficult, complex, and challenging but interesting aspect of the grammar of English for those who have encountered it in whatever form. These paradoxes surrounding a single grammatical unit stem from its centrality to the clause structure: It is the unit that realises the only obligatory element of structure of the clause, the predicator; it is central to meaning realisation, by implication. The verbal group is extensive and has been mostly studied in bits and pieces, although attempts at comprehensively describing it have also been made. Its study has been approached from different theoretical and descriptive viewpoints, which define the methodologies employed and the nature of the data used. The verbal group has been comprehensively described using corpus data from an L2 use situation, for instance. But there are still gaps, which needs to be filled. This special issue therefore presents new perspectives on the description of the English verbal group as a grammatical unit that functions in different naturally occurring language use situations. It exposes readers to the description of its various aspects using a variety of data that reflects the diversity of standard English usage in the world.

Aims and Scope:
The verbal group as a grammatical unit: its relation to the clause
Theoretical viewpoints: grammatical models
Descriptive and related issues
The verb lexeme: its morphology and diversity
Verbs in auxiliary function
Formal and textual functions of the verbal group
Structure of the verbal group
Catenatives and the catenated verbal group
The verbal group’s systems: finiteness, tense, aspect, mood, modality, transitivity, voice
The verbal group in texts (spoken and written): scientific, political, legal, literary, religious etc
ESL teaching and the verbal group
The verbal group in the acquisition of English