Universitatea valahia

Facultatea de stiinte economice

Sectia management

VERBS

Elev: Profesor:

Bucuroiu Nicoleta Popescu Nicoleta

1
 Verbs
What are Verbs?
The verb is king in English. The shortest sentence contains a verb. You can
make a one-word sentence with a verb, for example: "Stop!" You cannot make
a one-word sentence with any other type of word.

Verbs are sometimes described as "action words". This is partly true. Many
verbs give the idea of action, of "doing" something. For example, words
like run, fight, do and work all convey action.

But some verbs do not give the idea of action; they give the idea of existence,
of state, of "being". For example, verbs like be, exist, seem and belong all
convey state.

A verb always has a subject. (In the sentence "John speaks English", John is the
subject and speaks is the verb.) In simple terms, therefore, we can say that
verbs are words that tell us what a subjectdoes or is; they describe:

 action (Ram plays football.)

 state (Anthony seems kind.)

There is something very special about verbs in English. Most other words
(adjectives, adverbs, prepositions etc) do not change in form (although nouns
can have singular and plural forms). But almost all verbs change in form. For
example, the verb to work has five forms:

 to work, work, works, worked, working

Of course, this is still very few forms compared to some languages which may
have thirty or more forms for a single verb.

In this lesson we look at the ways in which we classify verbs, followed by a quiz
to test your understanding:

Verb Classification
We divide verbs into two broad classifications:

1. Helping Verbs

Imagine that a stranger walks into your room and says:

2
  I can.
 People must.
 The Earth will.

Do you understand anything? Has this person communicated anything to you?

Probably not! That's because these verbs are helping verbs and have no
meaning on their own. They are necessary for the grammatical structure of the
sentence, but they do not tell us very much alone. We usually use helping verbs
with main verbs. They "help" the main verb. (The sentences in the above
examples are therefore incomplete. They need at least a main verb to complete
them.) There are only about 15 helping verbs.

2. Main Verbs

Now imagine that the same stranger walks into your room and says:

 I teach.
 People eat.
 The Earth rotates.

Do you understand something? Has this person communicated something to

you? Probably yes! Not a lot, but something. That's because these verbs
are main verbs and have meaning on their own. They tell us something. Of
course, there are thousands of main verbs.

In the following table we see example sentences with helping verbs and main
verbs. Notice that all of these sentences have a main verb. Only some of them
have a helping verb.

  helping verb   main verb  

John     likes coffee.

You     lied to me.

They     are happy.

The children are   playing.  

We must   go now.

I do not want any.

Helping verbs and main verbs can be further sub-divided, as we shall see on the
following pages

3
Primary helping verbs (3 verbs)

These are the verbs be, do, and have. Note that we can use these three verbs
as helping verbs or as main verbs. On this page we talk about them as helping
verbs. We use them in the following cases:

 be
o to make continuous tenses (He is watching TV.)
o to make the passive (Small fish are eaten by big fish.)
 have
o to make perfect tenses (I have finished my homework.)
 do
o to make negatives (I do not like you.)
o to ask questions (Do you want some coffee?)
o to show emphasis (I do want you to pass your exam.)
o to stand for a main verb in some constructions (He speaks faster
than she does.)

Modal helping verbs (10 verbs)

We use modal helping verbs to "modify" the meaning of the main verb in some
way. A modal helping verb expresses necessity or possibility, and changes the
main verb in that sense. These are the modal verbs:

 can, could
 may, might
 will, would,
 shall, should
 must
 ought to

Here are examples using modal verbs:

 I can't speak Chinese.
 John may arrive late.
 Would you like a cup of coffee?
 You should see a doctor.
 I really must go now.

Main Verbs
Main verbs are also called "lexical verbs".

Main verbs have meaning on their own (unlike helping verbs). There are
thousands of main verbs, and we can classify them in several ways:
4
Transitive and intransitive verbs

A transitive verb takes a direct object: Somebody killed the President. An

intransitive verb does not have a direct object: He died. Many verbs, like speak,
can be transitive or intransitive. Look at these examples:

transitive:

 I saw an elephant.
 We are watching TV.
 He speaks English.

intransitive:

 He has arrived.
 John goes to school.
 She speaks fast.

Linking verbs

A linking verb does not have much meaning in itself. It "links" the subject to
what is said about the subject. Usually, a linking verb shows equality (=) or a
change to a different state or place (>). Linking verbs are always intransitive
(but not all intransitive verbs are linking verbs).

 Mary is a teacher. (mary = teacher)

 Tara is beautiful. (tara = beautiful)
 That sounds interesting. (that = interesting)
 The sky became dark. (the sky > dark)
 The bread has gone bad. (bread > bad)

Dynamic and stative verbs

Some verbs describe action. They are called "dynamic", and can be used with
continuous tenses. Other verbs describe state (non-action, a situation). They
are called "stative", and cannot normally be used with continuous tenses
(though some of them can be used with continuous tenses with a change in
meaning).

dynamic verbs (examples):

 hit, explode, fight, run, go

stative verbs (examples):

5
  be
 like, love, prefer, wish
 impress, please, surprise
 hear, see, sound
 belong to, consist of, contain, include, need
 appear, resemble, seem

Regular and irregular verbs

This is more a question of vocabulary than of grammar. The only real difference
between regular and irregular verbs is that they have different endings for their
past tense and past participle forms. For regular verbs, the past tense ending
and past participle ending is always the same: -ed. For irregular verbs, the past
tense ending and the past participle ending is variable, so it is necessary to
learn them by heart.

regular verbs: base, past tense, past participle

 look, looked, looked

 work, worked, worked

irregular verbs: base, past tense, past participle

 buy, bought, bought

 cut, cut, cut
 do, did, done

One way to think of regular and irregular verbs is like this: all verbs are
irregular and the so-called regular verbs are simply one very large group of
irregular verbs.

Often the above divisions can be mixed. For example, one verb could be
irregular, transitive and dynamic; another verb could be regular, transitive and
stative.