Compound verbs combine two or more words to form a complex predicate, with a main verb and auxiliary verb. They are commonly used in English to indicate time of action, while other languages may use verb conjugation or adverbial phrases. Separable verbs in German are also considered compound verbs. There is debate over whether certain structures, such as “He disappeared,” qualify as compound verbs.
A compound verb is a combination of two or more words that function as a single complex predicate. Typically, there is a main verb and an auxiliary verb. The use of this structure varies from language to language. Compound verbs are found frequently in English, most commonly in expressing tenses and less often in other languages.
Compound verbs are often used to indicate time of action in English. Most commonly, the combination of “will” followed by a verb indicates an action in the future, and the present tense of the verb “to be” combined with a present participle is a present tense form indicating the action occurring, such as “He is playing baseball”. The present tense of the verb “to have” combined with the past participle of the main verb creates the perfect tense to indicate an action that took place in the past but may not be completed. “I lived here for 20 years” is an example.
In present English, the verb can be simple or compound, with slightly different meanings for each structure. “I eat” is a generic phrase which could mean that a person is not starving or that he is eating now. “I’m eating” is more explicit and “I eat” is an emphatic way of expressing the fact that the speaker is not starving. The infinitive also forms a common compound verb construction. “I have to eat”, “I want to eat” and “I’m going to eat” express different thoughts about eating.
While English relies heavily on compound verbs to express the time in which an action takes place, in Spanish, this is sometimes accomplished by conjugating the verb. The conditional and future tense in Spanish are produced in this way. In some languages, such as Thai, there is no conjugation and the tense of an action is given by the present tense of the verb plus an adverb or adverbial phrase to identify when the action takes place.
A serial verb is sometimes mistaken for a compound verb. The difference lies mainly in the equality of the verbs and is usually given by a connecting conjunction. “He up and left the table” is an example of a serial verb that has become an English colloquial idiom where the word “up” is used as a verb.
There is some difference of opinion as to the exact meaning of the phrase “compound verb”. Some authorities include structures like “He disappeared” as an example of a compound verb. Others believe that “missing” is best identified as a gerund used as a noun.
In German, separable verbs, of which there are many, are sometimes called compound verbs. These verbs consist of a main verb plus a prefix which in English would take the form of a preposition. The prefix is often unrelated to the main verb, but the meaning is the same as if the parts of the “compound verb” were not separated.
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