Verbs: introduction

To someone learning English as a second language, verbs probably give more trouble than any other part of the language, because changes in the form of the verb or the way it is used produce different meanings in English.

The verbs make up the group of words that tells us what happens to or within a person or thing; what he, she or it does or What is done to the person or thing, (or what he thinks, feels or experiences).

Examples

'I stand', 'it breaks', 'they felt'.

Changes in the form and the use of the verb can be shown:

1. When it happened. These changes we call changes of tense.

Example

'He does it', 'He did it'.

2. How many people or things were involved in the happening, one or more than one.

For example 'He does it', 'They do it'. This we call a change of number.

3. Whether the person talking does it, as in 'I do it'; or whether it is the person he is talking to who does it _ 'you do it', or whether it was some other person or people _'he does it' or 'they do it'.

This we call a change of person.

4. Whether the person involved did the action himself or had it done to him by someone else.

Example

'I chased a goat'. compared with 'I was chased by a goat'. The first we call Active; the second passive.

Much more information than this can, in fact, be given by changes in the verb form, or by using other verbs with the main verb in various ways. We can tell, for example, whether it really happened or likely to happen, or never happened; whether it happened before or after another action; whether it went on happening continually or happened only once and was finished.

Some tenses of verb are very simple. For example, I study, or he ran. Here the verb consists of only one word. These are called simple tenses.

But in some cases verb tenses are built up of a chain of words. If i say, 'It ought not to be happening', the main verb there is 'happening', but i have added five other words to do it. By this combination of words i am able to tell you that it has been happening repeatedly for some time, but it should have been prevented.

Verbs, then, are very important in English because, by using them correctly, you can give a great deal of information very economically without using a lot of words.

In my next post i Will be sharing with us hints that Will be useful in writing English, to make sure that you are using verbs correctly.