Verbs are used to indicate action or existence, and act as building blocks in sentences. They can take infinitive or conjugated forms, and can be regular or irregular. Verbs can provide action or link ideas, and can be primary or auxiliary. The focus of a verb can be active or passive, and different types of conjugation and inflection can indicate tense, appearance, and mood. Verbs can also be transitive, intransitive, or reflexive.
Writers and speakers mainly use verbs to indicate a type of action, such as “to fly,” or to indicate a general state of existence, such as “to live.” A special type of verb, known as a copula or linking verb, describes the subject of the sentence, commonly through the term “to be” in English. Verbs act as one of the basic building blocks of a sentence in many languages; most English grammatical sentences require at least one noun to serve as the subject and a predicate that typically includes one or more verbs.
The form and function of verbs
Within a sentence, a verb usually takes an infinitive or conjugated form. In English, the infinitive form typically includes the word “to” such as “to run” or “to jump.” Conjugated verbs, however, drop the word “a” and have forms like “run” and “jumped” in “He runs every day” or “She jumped the hurdle”. These conjugated forms are typically inflected or modified in some way to indicate something about the sentence that the verb is a part of, such as “tense” or “voiced.” The rules for conjugation vary from one language to another, those that follow a simple conjugation rule are called “regular” while those that don’t are “irregular”.
In terms of function, verbs within a sentence provide action or link one idea to another. Using action verbs like “run,” “walk,” and “swim” indicate what the subject of a sentence does, like “Run” or “The cat sleeps.” A copula, on the other hand, connects two ideas by equating them, such as “He is my teacher” or “The car was red.” In any usage, these verbs typically come after the subject of a sentence, to which they refer or describe.
Primary and auxiliary verbs
Primary verbs express the main action or relationship within a sentence. In the sentence “Corre” the word “corre” indicates the action. Auxiliary verbs, on the other hand, provide secondary information or help conjugate primary verbs. For example, the word “was” in the sentence “He was going to the store” is an auxiliary of the primary verb “andare” and conjugates it in a new tense.
Active and passive voice
“Voice” indicates the focus of a verb. The most basic distinction is found between active, subject-focused sentences such as “I cooked broccoli” and passive or object-focused sentences such as “Broccoli was cooked by me”. People generally find the active voice more appealing and stronger in writing than the passive voice, and writers often create active sentences by correctly arranging the subject, object, and verbs within it.
Different types of conjugation and inflection
“Tense” indicates the tempo in which an action takes place. In English this usually distinguishes between past, present and future. For example, inflecting verbs in the following sentences creates three different tense states: “The woman sits in the chair” or “The woman sits in the chair” or “The woman sits in the chair.” Some languages make little distinction through inflection, using adverbs or auxiliaries instead; English doesn’t actually inflect between the present and the future, but uses an auxiliary to change from “sits” to “will sit”.
“Appearance” describes something about the nature of the verb. This can distinguish between progressive and non-progressive, for example inflecting the sentence “I take the bucket” could mean that someone picks up the bucket eternally, at a set time every day, or just once. Distinguishes between a static and dynamic state; a particular event versus a changing situation.
“Mood” gives the relationship of the verb with the intent or reality. English doesn’t use many moods, but does use the indicative, describing facts and opinions as in “Ursula sat down”; the imperative, describing the command or prohibition as in “Ursula, sit down”; and the subjunctive, which is quite open and includes requests like “Jim suggested Ursula sit down.” Other languages use a negative mood, instead of using a negating word like “not,” which creates statements like “Ursula doesn’t sit.”
Transitivity
Most sentences include transitive, intransitive or reflexive verbs. Transitive verbs act on the object of the sentence, such as “He threw the ball”, where “He” is the subject and “the ball” is the object acted upon. Intransitive verbs, however, simply act without an object, such as “The cat was sleeping.” Reflexive verbs act on the subject itself, seen in sentences such as “He threw himself down the stairs”, in which a transitive verb is followed by an object that refers to the subject.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
