What Is a Verb?

Verbs refer to actions or states. For example, ‘to eat,’ ‘to sing ‘ and ‘to play’ are all verbs describing actions. The verbs ‘to be,’ ‘to seem’ and ‘to resemble’ are all verbs that refer to states.

What Is the Infinitive?

All verbs have an infinitive form, which means it is not restricted to a time or person. It is constructed with the preposition ‘to’ plus the verb, as in ‘to run.’ The infinitive can be used after other verbs to extend the meaning, such as, “He agrees to run.” In English, many verbs are followed by the bare infinitive. This is an infinitive form which does not include the preposition ‘to,’ such as, “He can run.”

When not in the infinitive form, a verb will generally be accompanied by a subject (a noun or pronoun) to complete the meaning of a sentence.

What Are the Properties of Verbs?

Also when not in the infinitive, verbs have many other forms, which can express certain characteristics or other information about how or when the action being referred to is taking place. These are called properties of verbs.

Different languages use some or all of the properties listed below, and each language will have different ways of expressing these properties, including through the use of endings or in constructions with other verbs.

Often ‘to have’ and ‘to be’ are used in English as the basis for expressing the different properties, which we will see in the examples.

The properties of a verb can include:

– Voice – whether the subject is causing the action or is on the receiving end of the action
– Mood – how the speaker would like the verb to be received or understood
– Modality – the way in which the action takes place
– Tense – when the action takes place
– Aspect – the completeness of the action
– Person – how the actor relates to the speaker
– Number – the number of actors included as part of the action

A perfect verb system might include endings for all these different properties. However, in reality, languages are very economical. Many endings are (or have become) the same, especially where another word in the sentence makes the same meaning clear. Or, as discussed, the properties are conveyed instead by using verb constructions, where another verb helps to provide the information.

What Is the Voice of a Verb?

The voice of a verb can be either active or passive.

The active voice refers to when the subject of the verb is causing the action to happen. For example, “The dog eats the fish.”

The passive voice refers to when the subject of the sentence is the recipient of the action of the verb. For example, “The fish is eaten (by the dog).”

In the second case, the passive voice is created by using the verb ‘to be’ and a past form of the verb, called the past participle, in this example, ‘eaten.’

What Is Mood?

Verbs can be described as being in the following moods:

– Indicative
– Subjunctive
– Conditional
– Imperative
– Interrogative

Indicative

The most frequent mood used in English is the indicative mood.

A verb in the indicative mood represents a fact or that the action being described is real and tangible. For example, “I am here,” is a statement of reality, so this is indicative, in contrast to being subjunctive.

Subjunctive

If, on the other hand, one says “I wish I were there,” it is in the subjunctive mood. In this case, it is an unreal, hypothetical scenario. Unlike the indicative, we have to use our imagination, so it runs contrary to fact.

The subjunctive mood means that the verb is in a form that is expressing something uncertain or unreal from the perspective of the speaker: it could be a wish, desire or an imagined state that is dependent on some external condition.

Conditional

This refers to a mood of verb which is being used to describe an action that would occur should another condition be fulfilled.

In English, it is constructed by using ‘would’ plus the bare infinitive.

For example, ‘would play’ in the sentence, “He would play football, if he had the time.”

Imperative

This mood of verb is used to express a command or give an order.

For example, if you say to the dog, “Eat the fish,” then you are giving a command with the verb in the imperative mood.

In English, the imperative is formed by using the bare infinitive.

Interrogative

Interrogative refers to any statement, phrase or sentence clause that functions as a question.

It is constructed by either using an inverted form of ‘to do’ plus a bare infinitive, or by inverting the subject and the verb. For example, “Do you eat fish?” and “Can you swim?”

What Is Modality?

Modality is the way in which an activity might be done or how something might exist from a speaker or writer’s point of view.

It may express, for example, ability, fondness, permission, likelihood, obligation, desire, want or need.

In English it is used by using a modal verb, such as ‘can,’ ‘will,’ ‘shall,’ or ‘must,’ followed by the bare infinitive.

For instance, in the sentence, “The dog can eat the fish,” we might be expressing the ability of the dog, or more likely in this context, the permission the dog has been granted to eat the fish.

What Is Tense?

The form of a verb frequently relays information about when an action occurs in relation to time.

In English, there are two tenses, present and past.

For example, “She sings” is an example of the present tense. It is relevant to the current time. “She sang,” is in the past tense and the verb has been modified to express that.

Frequently, other verb forms might be described as tenses, such as, “She is singing.” In many learning materials, this might be described as the present continuous tense. In fact, to give it is full classification, this is the present tense with a progressive (or continuous) aspect.

What Is Aspect?

The aspect of a verb is a sub-category of tense.

It expresses how a verb is performed in relation to time and the completeness of the action.

A verb always has a tense, but it doesn’t always have a defined aspect. For instance, “The dog eats the fish,” is in the present tense with no defined aspect. Sometimes this is called the simple aspect, so you may encounter the term ‘simple present tense.’ Similarly, “The dog ate the fish,” is the simple past tense.

However, we may want to express whether we action has been completed or not and how it relates to the present time. For this, there are three aspects:

– Progressive (or continuous) aspect. This means that the action is ongoing.
– Perfect aspect. This means the action is complete.
– Progressive perfect aspect. Indicates that the action started in the past and continues into the present.

Progressive aspect

This is formed by using the verb ‘to be’ and the present participle (i.e. the ‘-ing’ form of a verb).

For example, “She is singing,” means that the action is ongoing. This is the present progressive, or present continuous. We can describe an ongoing action in the past with the form, “She was singing,” where there is no defined start or end point.

Perfect aspect

This refers to a completed action and one that was completed recently.

For example, compare, “The dog ate the fish,” to “The dog has eaten the fish.” In both cases, the action is complete, but the second statement suggests a recentness that is not implied in the first.

It is formed by using ‘to have’ and the past participle of a verb.

Perfect progressive aspect

This aspect refers to an action that started in the past but with the implication that it has a link to the present.

For example, we might say, “The dog has been eating fish,” as a precursor to adding a present impact, such as, “… and so it has bad breath.”

It is formed with the phrase ‘has been’ or ‘have been’ (or ‘had been’) followed by the present participle.

What Is Person?

Person can be described as first person, second person or third person.

Imagine you are telling a story from your own perspective and you are talking about yourself. This is the first person and you would use ‘I’ in the narrative, such as “I awoke early.”

The second person reflects those who are being addressed from the speaker’s perspective and is represented by ‘you.’ For the first and second person perspectives, there is a relationship between the speaker and the person.

If the person, animal or thing being referred to is outside of this speaker-audience relationship at this time, then we use the third person, represented by ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘it,’ or ‘they.’

Whether an action being described is in the first, second or third person governs the form of the verb.

What Is Number?

This is a sub-category of person. A verb is impacted by whether the person is singular or plural.

For example, “The dog eats the fish,” is singular, whereas, “The dogs eat the fish,” is plural. The corresponding pronouns would be ‘it’ and ‘they,’ as in, “It eats the fish” and “They eat the fish.”

What Types of Verb Are There?

We have already seen that a verb can refer to an action or a state. Verbs that refer to a state are called stative verbs.

There are many other ways to group verbs based on the behaviour they exhibit.

What Are Regular and Irregular Verbs?

For example, verbs are also referred to as regular or irregular.

A regular verb follows a set pattern of predictable endings when it is being formed for different uses.

For example, ‘I play’ in the present tense becomes ‘I played’ in the past tense. Similarly, ‘I watch’ becomes ‘I watched.’ On the other hand, ‘I drink’ becomes ‘I drank’ and this is therefore irregular.

What Do the Terms Transitive and Intransitive Mean?

Another way of classifying verbs is as transitive or intransitive.

If a verb is being used transitively, it has a direct object – something upon which the verb is acting.

For instance, in the sentence “The dog eats the fish,” the verb is being used transitively. The fish is being eaten, so it’s the direct object. If you can answer the question “What is being acted on?” then a verb is being used transitively.

However, if the sentence were “I am eating,” the verb ‘to eat’ is being used intransitively. We cannot answer the question about what is being eaten. Other intransitive uses of verbs include, “I smile,” or “He lives.”

Verbs are extremely flexible in English, to the extent that grammarian, Josephine Turck Baker, wrote in 1907, “The distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs is not an important one, for the reason, that most verbs are capable of either a transitive or an intransitive use.”

However, the distinction can be important in other languages. For example, a verb in French may form its perfect past tense with either avoir or être depending on whether it is being used transitively or intransitively respectively. The same is true with haben and sein in German. Other languages do not allow the same degree of flexibility as English in terms of transitive or intransitive use.

What Are Auxiliary and Modal Verbs?

Auxiliary verbs are those that can be used to help provide additional contextual meaning to a main verb – they are used in various ways to express the properties we have covered in this article.

For example, in the phrase, “I have played,” ‘have’ is an auxiliary verb as it is helping to put the verb into the perfect past tense.

Modal verbs are a subset of auxiliary verbs that help express the modality property of a verb. In the phrase, “I can play,” ‘can’ is an auxiliary verb as it expresses the ability of the speaker to be able to perform the action.

What Is a Phrasal Verb?

A phrasal verb is when another word type is added to a verb to give it another meaning.

For instance, the basic meaning of ‘to get’ is ‘to obtain.’ However when combined with another word, such as the preposition ‘by’ it takes on a new meaning, ‘to get by, to cope.’

Similarly, a noun may be used. We can add ‘place’ to ‘take’ and create ‘to take place,’ or in other words, ‘to occur.’

We can expand this further and say ‘to take the place of,’ meaning ‘to replace.’

These are examples of phrasal verbs.

What Is a Linking Verb?

A verb can be described as a linking verb when it is used to describe the state of existence of something.

These are usually verbs that relate to appearance, such as, “He looks angry,” or other verbs that relate to sensory perception, such as, “It smells funny,” or, “It tastes good.”

The verb ‘to be’ is the most frequently used linking verb, in phrases such as, “It is cold,” while ‘to become’ is another example, such as, “She becomes a doctor.”