The full verb in English consists of the main verb and accompanying auxiliary verbs. Adverbs and infinitives are not part of it. Auxiliary verbs come after the main verb. Participles need auxiliary verbs.
The full verb of a sentence in English grammar consists of the main verb and the auxiliary verbs that accompany it. It could contain up to four verbs, and words that function as adverbs or infinitives are not part of it.
To determine the full verb of a sentence, one should first identify the main verb. The main verb tells what the subject of the sentence is doing. For example, in the sentence “Jane was working on an essay,” the main verb is “working” because that’s what Jane, the subject, was doing.
All auxiliary verbs are identified after the main verb. Helping verbs take different forms of the verbs “to have” or “to be”. In the sentence “Jane was working on an essay,” the word “was” functions as an auxiliary verb. The full verb in this sentence is “she was working”.
Adverbs, such as the word “not” and all words that form contractions using “not”, are not part of the full verb. For example, in the sentence “He didn’t like the movie,” the word “didn’t” be contracted with the word “he did.” The contraction “n’t” shouldn’t be included, so the full verb in this sentence is “enjoyed”.
Even the infinitives, which usually start with the word “to”, are not part of the full verb. In this sentence, “They were going to party all night,” the phrase “party” works as an infinitive. The full verb in this sentence is “we were going”.
Full verbs can stand alone when used with verbs in the present and past tense. In the sentence “I took the test”, the past tense verb “took” serves as the main verb and there are no auxiliary verbs in the sentence. The same goes for the verb “to take” in the sentence “I’m taking a geometry lesson.”
Present and past participles cannot stand alone and must be accompanied by an auxiliary verb. The present participle form of “to take” is “to take” and the past participle form is “to take”. In the sentence “I will take piano lessons”, the verb “to take” is accompanied by the auxiliary verbs “will be”.
In the sentence “I took dance lessons”, the verb “to take” is accompanied by the auxiliary verb “to have”. The full verb for this sentence is “to have taken”. An example of a sentence with one that has four words is “By then I will have been taken to the emergency room.”
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