Verb
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This article is about the part of speech. For the physical activity program, see VERB (program). For English usage of verbs, see English verbs.
"Verbs" redirects here. For the Christian gospel rapper, see Verbs (rapper).
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Examples
• I washed the car yesterday.
• The dog ate the homework.
• John studies English and French.
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read, walk, run, learn), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Agreement
• 2 Valency
• 3 Tense, aspect, and modality
• 4 Voice
• 5 Verbal noun and verbal adjective
• 6 See also
o 6.1 Verbs in various languages
o 6.2 Grammar
o 6.3 Other
• 7 References
• 8 External links
Main article: Verb conjugation
In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number and/or gender. With the exception of the verb to be, English shows distinctive agreement only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which is marked by adding "-s" (I walk, he walks) or "-es" (he fishes). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb (I walk, you walk, they walk, etc.).
Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tense/mood/aspect and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish) with the subject. Japanese, like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense/mood/aspect as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject - it is a strictly dependent-marking language. On the other hand, Basque, Georgian, and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement: the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages.
[edit] Valency
Main article: Valency (linguistics)
The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence. Verbs can be classified according to their valency:
• Avalent (valency = 0): the verb has neither a subject nor an object. Zero valency does not occur in English; in some languages such as Mandarin Chinese, weather verbs like snow(s) take no subject or object.
• Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has a subject. For example: "he runs", "it falls".
• Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and a direct object. For example: "she eats fish", "we hunt nothing".
• Ditransitive (valency = 3, trivalent): the verb has a subject , a direct object, and an indirect object. For example: "He gives her a flower."
Weather verbs are often impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in null-subject languages like Spanish, where the verb llueve means "It rains". In English, they require a dummy pronoun, and therefore formally have a valency of 1.[dubious – discuss]
Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases. Tlingit lacks a ditransitive, so the indirect object is described by a separate, extraposed clause.[citation needed]
English verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. A transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, the verb move has no grammatical object in he moves (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as in he moves himself); but in he moves the car, the subject and object are distinct and the verb has a different valency.
In many languages other than English, such valency changes are not possible; the verb must instead be inflected in order to change the valency.[citation needed]
[edit] Tense, aspect, and modality
A single-word verb in Spanish contains information about time (past, present, future), person and number. The process of grammatically modifying a verb to express this information is called conjugation.
Main articles: Grammatical tense, Aspect (linguistics), Linguistic modality, and Tense-aspect-mood
Depending on the language, verbs may express grammatical tense, aspect, or modality. Grammatical tense[1][2][3] is the use of auxiliary verbs or inflections to convey whether the action or state is before, simultaneous with, or after some reference point. The reference point could be the time of utterance, in which case the verb expresses absolute tense, or it could be a past, present, or future time of reference previously established in the sentence, in which case the verb expresses relative tense.
Aspect[2][4] expresses how the action or state occurs through time. Important examples include:
• perfective aspect, in which the action is viewed in its entirety though completion (as in "I saw the car")
• imperfective aspect, in which the action is viewed as ongoing; in some languages a verb could express imperfective aspect more narrowly as:
• habitual aspect, in which the action occurs repeatedly (as in "I used to go there every day"), or
• continuous aspect, in which the action occurs without pause; continuous aspect can be further subdivided into
• stative aspect, in which the situation is a fixed, unevolving state (as in "I know French"), and
• progressive aspect, in which the situation continuously evolves (as in "I am running")
• perfect, which combines elements of both aspect and tense, and in which both a prior event and the state resulting from it are expressed (as in "I have studied well")
Aspect can either be lexical, in which case the aspect is embedded in the verb's meaning (as in "the sun shines", where "shines" is lexically stative); or it can be grammatically expressed, as in "I am running".
Modality[5] expresses the speaker's attitude toward the action or state given by the verb, especially with regard to degree of necessity, obligation, or permission ("You must go", "You should go", "You may go"), determination or willingness ("I will do this no matter what"), degree of probability ("It must be raining by now", "It may be raining", "It might be raining"), or ability ("I can speak French"). All languages can express modality with adverbs, but some also use verbal forms as in the given examples. If the verbal expression of modality involves the use of an auxiliary verb, that auxiliary is called a modal verb. If the verbal expression of modality involves inflection, we have the special case of mood; moods include the indicative (as in "I am there"), the subjunctive (as in "I wish I were there"), and the imperative ("Be there!").
[edit] Voice
The voice[6] of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the active voice (as in "I saw the car") and the passive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").
[edit] Verbal noun and verbal adjective
Main article: Non-finite verb
Most languages have a number of verbal nouns that describe the action of the verb. In Indo-European languages, there are several kinds of verbal nouns, including gerunds, infinitives, and supines. English has gerunds, such as seeing, and infinitives such as to see; they both can function as nouns; seeing is believing is roughly equivalent in meaning with to see is to believe. These terms are sometimes applied to verbal nouns of non-Indo-European languages.
In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally called participles. English has an active participle, also called a present participle; and a passive participle, also called a past participle. The active participle of break is breaking, and the passive participle is broken. When used adjectivally, the active participle describes nouns that perform the action given in the verb, e.g. I heard the sound of breaking glass. The passive participle describes nouns that have been the object of the action of the verb, e.g. I saw the broken glass scattered across the floor.
Other languages have attributive verb forms with tense and aspect. This is especially common among verb-final languages, where attributive verb phrases act as relative clauses.
Parts of Speech
Chapter 3 - Verbs
A verb is often defined as a word which shows action or state of being. The verb is the heart of a sentence - every sentence must have a verb. Recognizing the verb is often the most important step in understanding the meaning of a sentence. In the sentence The dog bit the man, bit is the verb and the word which shows the action of the sentence. In the sentence The man is sitting on a chair, even though the action doesn't show much activity, sitting is the verb of the sentence. In the sentence She is a smart girl, there is no action but a state of being expressed by the verb is. The word be is different from other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb.
Unlike most of the other parts of speech, verbs change their form. Sometimes endings are added (learn - learned) and sometimes the word itself becomes different (teach-taught). The different forms of verbs show different meanings related to such things as tense (past, present, future), person (first person, second person, third person), number (singular, plural) and voice (active, passive). Verbs are also often accompanied by verb-like words called modals (may, could, should, etc.) and auxiliaries(do, have, will, etc.) to give them different meanings.
One of the most important things about verbs is their relationship to time. Verbs tell if something has already happened, if it will happen later, or if it is happening now. For things happening now, we use the present tense of a verb; for something that has already happened, we use the past tense; and for something that will happen later, we use the future tense. Some examples of verbs in each tense are in the chart below:
Present Past Future
look looked will look
move moved will move
talk talked will talk
Verbs like those in the chart above that form the past tense by adding -d or -ed are called regular verbs. Some of the most common verbs are not regular and the different forms of the verb must be learned. Some examples of such irregular verbs are in the chart below:
Present Past Future
see saw will see
hear heard will hear
speak spoke will speak
The charts above show the simple tenses of the verbs. There are also progressive or continuous forms which show that the action takes place over a period of time, and perfect forms which show completion of the action. These forms will be discussed more in other lessons, but a few examples are given in the chart below:
Present Continuous Present Perfect
is looking has looked
is speaking has spoken
is talking has talked
Simple present tense verbs have a special form for the third person singular. Singular means "one" and plural means "more than one." Person is used here to show who or what does the action and can have the following forms:
1st person or the self (I, we)
2nd person or the person spoken to (you)
3rd person or a person not present (he, she, it, they)
The third person singular forms are represented by the pronouns he, she, it. The chart below shows how the third person singular verb form changes:
Singular Plural
1st Person (I) see
hear
come 1st Person (we) see
hear
come
2nd Person (you) see
hear
come 2nd Person (you) see
hear
come
3rd Person (he, she, it) sees
hears
comes 3rd Person (they) see
hear
come
A verb must "agree" with its subject. Subject-verb agreement generally means that the third person singular verb form must be used with a third person subject in the simple present tense. The word be - the most irregular and also most common verb in English - has different forms for each person and even for the simple past tense. The forms of the word be are given in the chart below:
Number Person Present Past Future
Singular 1st (I) am was will be
2nd (you) are were will be
3rd (he, she, it) is was will be
Plural 1st (we) are were will be
2nd (you) are were will be
3rd (they) are were will be
Usually a subject comes before a verb and an object may come after it. The subject is what does the action of the verb and the object is what receives the action. In the sentence Bob ate a humburger, Bob is the subject or the one who did the eating and the hamburger is the object or what got eaten. A verb which has an object is called a transitive verb and some examples are throw, buy, hit, love. A verb which has no object is called an intransitive verb and some examples are go, come, walk, listen.
As you can see in the charts above, verbs are often made up of more than one word. The future forms, for example, use the word will and the perfect forms use the word have. These words are called helping or auxiliary verbs. The word be can serve as an auxiliary and will and shall are also auxiliary forms. The chart below shows two other verbs which can also be used as auxiliaries:
Number Person Present Past
Singular 1st (I) have
do had
did
2nd (you) have
do had
did
3rd (he, she, it) has
does had
did
Plural 1st (we) have
do had
did
2nd (you) have
do had
did
3rd (they) have
do had
did
There is a type of auxiliary verb called a modal which changes the meaning of a verb in different ways. Words like can, should, would, may, might, and must are modals and are covered in other lessons.
There are other lessons that cover the use of verbs. This lesson presents some of the important features of verbs and also shows some common forms. Review this lesson as many times as you want, and when you are ready, take the pop quiz on this chapter
