Verbs

Verbs

• A verb is a word (run) or a phrase (run out of) which expresses the existence of a state (love, seem) or doing of an action (take, play).

Verbs

• Two facts are basic:

• Verbs are used to express distinction in time (past, present, future) through tense (often with adverbials of time or frequency)

• Auxiliary verbs are used with full verbs to give other information about actions and states

Verbs

• The properties of the verb are: numbers, persons, voices, moods, tenses, aspects.

• There are three persons and two numbers of verbs.

Verbs

• The voices are: the active and passive• The active voice is that form of a verb in which

the subject denotes the doer of the action.• e.g. The postman delivers the mail twice a day.• The passive voice is that form of a verb in which

the subject denotes a person or a thing that suffers the action expressed by its verb.

• e.g. The mail is delivered twice a day.

Verbs

• The moods are: the indicative, the subjunctive and the imperative.

• The indicative represents something as a fact. E.g. The sun rises every morning.

• The subjunctive represents something not as a reality, or a fact, but only as a desire, plan, something we hope. It expresses a condition or supposition. E.g. I wish I were there.

• The imperative represents: commands, requests, wishes.

Verbs

• A tense is a form of the verb used to denote the time, continuance and completeness of an action. Tenses in English are formed by adding suffixes –es/s, -(e)d or by the aid of auxiliary verbs.

• An aspect denotes the development of an action. In English there are two aspects: the continuous and the infinite.

Verbs

• The indefinite aspect (static or perfective aspect) denotes that the action is regarded as complete, taken as a fact. E.g. The sun rises in the east.

• The continuous aspect (or the progressive aspect, which is sometimes called the durative, dynamic or imperfective aspect) denotes that the action is regarded as incomplete, being in progress. E.g. The sun is rising in the east.

Verbs

• Verbs can be divided into several groups

• Stative verbs are not generally used in progressive forms. They refer to states, experiences, conditions. E.g.: like, love, think, understand, prefer, want, hear, see…

• Dymamic verbs refer to action or changing situation. E.g.: make, play, dance, swim, run…

Verbs

• Regular verbs are those which have one stem ad three forms made by adding suffixes -es, -ed, -ing to the stem.

• Irregular verbs have one stem and add two suffixes -es and -ing to form two forms, while the third form the Preterit and the Past Participle is made:

• -by vowel change (find, found, found)• -by two vowel changes (sing, sang, sung)• -by using the stem (put, put, put)

Verbs

• Irregular verbs are those which have only one form, while a new form (which serves as the Preterit) is formed by vowel change. Those are modal verbs. E.g. can/could, may/might, shall/should, will/would.

Verbs

• Other group of irregular verbs is called auxiliary. Auxiliary verbs are those which help us to form tenses of another verb. E.g. Shall and will can be used as auxiliary verbs for future tense. Should and would for Present and Past Conditional.

• Verbs ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’ are called primary auxiliary verbs. They can be used as both main and auxiliary verbs

Verbs

• Impersonal verbs are those which are used only in the third person singular with it as a subject. E.g. It rains./It is raining./It snows./It is snowing.

Verbs

• A transitive verb is a verb that requires an object to complete its meaning. Object can be a noun, pronoun or a clause. E.g. I see the tracks in the snow.

• If the action passes back to the doer the transitive verb is called a Reflexive verb. E.g. They painted themselves blue.

Verbs

• An intransitive verb denotes a state or an action without reference to an object. E.g. I am sitting./He dreams.

• An intransitive verb can become transitive by taking an object noun of a meaning similar to that of the verb. E.g. He dreamt a terrible dream.