Verbs

Verbs constitute a very large words category (a.k.a. part of speech) containing thousands of the most straightforward ways of talking about:

  • Actions: voluntary or involuntary - Announce, Educate, Shiver, …

  • Relations: Admire, Dislike, Precede, ….

  • Auxiliary: There is a tiny but extremely important subcategory called the auxiliary verbs (the commonest ones are Be, Can, Do, Have, May, Must, Ought, Shall, and Will).

Verbs are not just actions: seems, contain, have, justify, languish. These refer to being in a certain states

Nearly all verbs have basic form, in CGEL it’s called plain form

Form (inflection)

Primary forms

  • Preterite

I took her to school

  • 3rd sg (singular) present tense

He takes her to school

  • Plain present tense

They take her to school

Secondary forms

  • Plain form

I need to take her to school

  • Gerund participle

We taking her to school

  • Past participle

They have taken her to school

Notes:

  • For most verbs, the primary form preterite and the second form part-participle look the same (“believed”)

  • The verb “be” has two preterite forms (was, were), and three present tense forms (am, is, are)

  • English has no mood inflection system, but “were” is still used as relic of an older system:

I wish she were here (the “were” here is not preterite but an old mood inflection)

an older system now found only with the verb be with a 1st or 3rd person singular subject

Auxiliary verbs

  • Have negative form

She isn’t here

I can’t help it

Tense

  • Employed to show how an event or state is located in time

  • Present: current moment, or timeless

People always say that

  • Past: to locate events or states in the past, or an unreal hypothetical world, and sometimes politely

If I investigated further, would I find out anything bad? I wondered if I could possibly borrow your book

Classifications

Functional

Valency is the functional classification.

  • Transitivity: intransitive, mono-transitive, ditransitive , complex-transitive

  • Copular

Situation type: stative vs. dynamic

  • Stative: describe a state that is continuous over time (know, believe, love)

  • Dynamic: activities, achievements, accomplishments. The key differentiator is the stopping point.

Constructions

The plain form occurs in three main constructions.

These are clause constructions, not inflectional forms of the verb.

  • Imperative

Take great care!

  • Subjunctive

It is essential [that he take great care] (not “takes”)

  • Infinitival

I advise you [to take great care] (to infinitival, “to” is a VP subordinator, not part of the verb)

You must [take great care]