This article is about the part of speech. For the physical activity program, seeVERB (program). For English usage of verbs, seeEnglish verbs. For the radio programme, seeThe Verb.
Averb is aword that generally conveys an action (bring,read,walk,run,learn), an occurrence (happen,become), or a state of being (be,exist,stand). In the usual description ofEnglish, the basic form, with or without theparticleto, is theinfinitive. In manylanguages, verbs areinflected (modified in form) to encodetense,aspect,mood, andvoice. A verb may also agree with theperson,gender ornumber of some of itsarguments, such as itssubject, orobject. In English, three tenses exist:present, to indicate that an action is being carried out;past, to indicate that an action has been done; andfuture, to indicate that an action will be done, expressed with theauxiliary verbwill orshall.
For example:
Lucywill go to school.(action, future)
Barack Obamabecame the President of the United States in 2009.(occurrence, past)
Mike Troutis a center fielder.(state of being, present)
Every language discovered so far makes some form ofnoun-verb distinction,[1] possibly because of thegraph-like nature of communicated meaning by humans, i.e. nouns being the "entities" and verbs being the "links" between them.[2] The wordverb comes from Latin verbum'word or verb' and shares the sameIndo-European root asword.[3]
In languages where the verb is inflected, it oftenagrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number or gender. With the exception of the verbto be, English shows distinctive agreements only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which are marked by adding "-s" (walks) or "-es" (fishes). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb (I walk,you walk,they walk, etc.).
Latin and theRomance languages inflect verbs fortense–aspect–mood (abbreviated 'TAM'), and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example inPolish) with the subject.Japanese, like many languages withSOV word order, inflects verbs for tense-aspect-mood, as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject—it is a strictlydependent-marking language. On the other hand,Basque,Georgian, and some other languages, havepolypersonal agreement: the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object, and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree ofhead-marking than is found inmost European languages.
Types
Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that accompany it and the relationship those words have with the verb itself. Classified by the number of their valency arguments, usually four basic types are distinguished: intransitives, transitives, ditransitives and double transitive verbs. Some verbs have special grammatical uses and hence complements, such as copular verbs (i.e.,be); the verbdo used fordo-support in questioning and negation; and tense or aspect auxiliaries, e.g.,be,have orcan. In addition, verbs can be non-finite (not inflected for person, number, tense, etc.), such special forms asinfinitives,participles orgerunds.[4]
Intransitive verbs
Anintransitive verb is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by anadverb (a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The womanspoke softly." "The athleteran faster than the official." "The boywept."
Transitive verbs
Atransitive verb is followed by a noun ornoun phrase. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns, but are instead called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friendread the newspaper." "The teenagerearned a speeding ticket."
A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaperwas read by my friend." "A speeding ticketwas earned by the teenager."
Ditransitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs (sometimes called Vg verbs after the verbgive) precede either two noun phrases or a noun phrase and then a prepositional phrase often led byto orfor. For example: "The playersgave their teammates high fives." "The playersgave high fives to their teammates."
When two noun phrases follow a transitive verb, the first is an indirect object, that which is receiving something, and the second is a direct object, that being acted upon. Indirect objects can be noun phrases or prepositional phrases.[5]
Double transitive verbs
Double transitive verbs (sometimes called Vc verbs after the verbconsider) are followed by a noun phrase that serves as a direct object and then a second noun phrase, adjective, orinfinitive phrase. The second element (noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive) is called a complement, which completes aclause that would not otherwise have the same meaning. For example: "The young coupleconsiders the neighbors wealthy people." "Some studentsperceive adults quite inaccurately." "Sarahdeemed her project to be the hardest she has ever completed."
The number of arguments that a verb takes is called itsvalency orvalence. Verbs can be classified according to their valency:
Avalent (valency = 0): the verb has neither a subject nor an object. Zero valency does not occur in English; in some languages such asMandarin Chinese, weather verbs likesnow(s) take no subject or object.
Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has asubject. For example: "he runs", "it falls".
Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and adirect object. For example: "she eats fish", "we hunt nothing".
Ditransitive (valency = 3, trivalent): the verb has a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object. For example: "He gives her a flower" or "She gave John the watch."
A few English verbs, particularly those concerned with financial transactions, take four arguments, as in "Pat1 sold Chris2 a lawnmower3 for $204" or "Chris1 paid Pat2 $203 for a lawnmower4".[7]
Impersonal and objective verbs
Weather verbs often appear to beimpersonal (subjectless, or avalent) innull-subject languages likeSpanish, where the verbllueve means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require adummy pronoun and therefore formally have a valency of 1. As verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1.
Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal andobjective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective, the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases.
Valency marking
Verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. In non-valency marking languages such as English, a transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, in English the verbmove has no grammatical object inhe moves (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as inhe moves himself); but inhe moves the car, the subject and object are distinct and the verb has a different valency. Some verbs in English have historically derived forms that show change of valency in some causative verbs, such asfall-fell-fallen:fell-felled-felled;rise-rose-risen:raise-raised-raised;cost-cost-cost:cost-costed-costed.
In valency marking languages, valency change is shown by inflecting the verb in order to change the valency. InKalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia, for example, verbs distinguish valency by argument agreement suffixes and TAM endings:
Nui mangema "He arrived earlier today" (mangema today past singular subject active intransitive perfective)
The verb stemmanga- 'to take/come/arrive' at the destination takes the active suffix-i (>mangai-) in the intransitive form, and as a transitive verb the stem is not suffixed. The TAM ending-nu is the general today past attainative perfective, found with all numbers in the perfective except the singular active, where-ma is found.
A single-word verb inSpanish contains information about time (past, present, future), person and number. The process of grammatically modifying a verb to express this information is calledconjugation.
Depending on the language, verbs may expressgrammatical tense,aspect, ormodality.
Tense
Grammatical tense[8][9][10] is the use ofauxiliary verbs orinflections to convey whether the action or state is before, simultaneous with, or after some reference point. The reference point could be thetime of utterance, in which case the verb expressesabsolute tense, or it could be a past, present, or future time of reference previously established in the sentence, in which case the verb expressesrelative tense.
Aspect
Aspect[9][11] expresses how the action or state occurs through time. Important examples include:
perfective aspect, in which the action is viewed in its entirety through completion (as in "I saw the car")
imperfective aspect, in which the action is viewed as ongoing; in some languages a verb could express imperfective aspect more narrowly as:
habitual aspect, in which the action occurs repeatedly (as in "I used to go there every day"), or
continuous aspect, in which the action occurs without pause; continuous aspect can be further subdivided into
stative aspect, in which the situation is a fixed, unevolving state (as in "I know French"), and
progressive aspect, in which the situation continuously evolves (as in "I am running")
perfect, which combines elements of both aspect and tense and in which both a prior event and the state resulting from it are expressed (as in "he has gone there", i.e. "he went there and he is still there")
discontinuous past, which combines elements of a past event and the implication that the state resulting from it was later reversed (as in "he did go there" or "he has been there", i.e. "he went there but has now come back")[12]
Aspect can either belexical, in which case the aspect is embedded in the verb's meaning (as in "the sun shines", where "shines" is lexically stative), or it can be grammatically expressed, as in "I am running."
Mood and modality
Modality[13] expresses the speaker's attitude toward the action or state given by the verb, especially with regard to degree of necessity, obligation, or permission ("You must go", "You should go", "You may go"), determination or willingness ("I will do this no matter what"), degree of probability ("It must be raining by now", "It may be raining", "It might be raining"), or ability ("I can speak French"). All languages can express modality withadverbs, but some also use verbal forms as in the given examples. If the verbal expression of modality involves the use of an auxiliary verb, that auxiliary is called amodal verb. If the verbal expression of modality involves inflection, we have the special case ofmood; moods include theindicative (as in "I am there"), thesubjunctive (as in "I wish Iwere there"), and theimperative ("Be there!").
Voice
Thevoice[14] of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are theactive voice (as in "I saw the car") and thepassive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").
Most languages have a number ofverbal nouns that describe the action of the verb.
In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally calledparticiples. English has anactive participle, also called a present participle; and apassive participle, also called a past participle. The active participle ofbreak isbreaking, and the passive participle isbroken. Other languages haveattributive verb forms with tense and aspect. This is especially common amongverb-final languages, where attributive verb phrases act asrelative clauses.
^Palmer, F. R.,Mood and Modality, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001.
^Klaiman, M. H.,Grammatical Voice (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics), Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991.
Bibliography
Jackendoff, R. (2002).Foundations of Language. Oxford University Press.
Morenberg, Max (2010).Doing Grammar (Third ed.). Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-1997-3288-3.
Further reading
Goldenberg, Gideon "On Verbal Structure and the Hebrew Verb", in: idem,Studies in Semitic Linguistics, Jerusalem: Magnes Press 1998, pp. 148–196 [English translation; originally published in Hebrew in 1985].
El verbo en español Downloadable handbook to learn the Spanish verb paradigm in an easy ruled-based method. It also supplies the guidelines to know whenever a Spanish verb is regular or irregular
