Karen Elizabeth Gordon, author of 'The Transitive Vampire', dubbed the verb the ‘heart-throb’
of the sentence. Verbs should do most of the work in a sentence. They describe the state
of being of the subject of a sentence, such as ‘I am a writer’, express an action,
such as ‘I wrote a book’, or describe an occurrence of the subject of a sentence,
such as 'something terrible happened'.
For example: 'I am here in the studio so that I can record this week’s introduction to
verbs', where 'am' and 'can record' are verbs.
Another example is
You are watching this video so that you can use verbs well in your writing.
Verbs are divided into two classes: finite and non-finite. We’ll first deal with finite
verbs, before moving on to non-finite verbs in this week’s second lecture.
The base form of a verb is what you see in a dictionary. It will have the marker ‘to’
in front of it: for example, ‘to read’ or ‘to watch’.
Finite verbs can be joined by linking verbs and helping verbs. They are classified as
either transitive or intransitive, according to whether or not they act upon an object
in the sentence.
Verbs form the tense of a sentence, which indicates the time of the action. They can
also express mood: that is, whether a sentence is a statement, an order, or expresses a potentiality
or something hypothetical. Finally, verbs can indicate whether the subject of a sentence
is acting or being acted upon. This is called the voice of the verb.
Linking, or copular, verbs link a subject with a complement that describes or explains
it, restates the subject, or describes its state of being. They include sensory verbs,
like hear, look, taste, smell, feel, and verbs such as be, appear, seem, become, grow, remain,
stay, prove, sound, and turn (when referring to a state or condition).
For example, in ‘Agatha seems intrigued', 'seems' is a verb linking the subject, 'Agatha',
with her state of being, 'intrigued'. Other examples include 'we remain committed
to our cause' and 'you appear to have arrived'.
Helping, or auxiliary, verbs assist in forming tenses when combined with a main verb. Parts
of the verb ‘to be’, the verb ‘to do’, and the verb ‘to have’ are the primary
auxiliary verbs.
In the sentence, ‘I am getting used to the dragon’, 'am', a part of the verb 'to be', is
a helping verb, as are 'have' and 'do' in the following sentences.
Modal auxiliary verbs, or simply modal verbs, indicate modality. When combined with a base
verb form they suggest a condition, need, likelihood or probability, requirement or
obligation, ability, or permission.
For example, in the sentence ‘you should read this book next’, 'should' is a modal
auxiliary verb. It combines with 'read', the main verb, and indicates a suggestion or obligation.
After this lecture, we have a drag-and-drop exercise where we’ll ask you to place auxiliary
verbs into their correct slots.
Transitive verbs are verbs that express an action carried out on one or more objects.
While they require a direct object to complete their meaning, they can also relate to an
indirect object.
Consider the sentence ‘I made a cake.’ 'Made' is a transitive verb because it takes
on the direct object cake. In ‘I wrote the Queen a letter’, 'wrote' is a transitive verb,
'letter' is the direct object, and 'Queen' is an indirect object.
Intransitive verbs don’t require an object to complete their meaning. They are complete
in themselves.
If I wrote ‘ice melts in the sun’, the word 'melts' is an intransitive verb. It describes
what the ice does, but not in relation to any object.
‘My dog lay down on the floor’ could just as well read ‘my dog lay down’, whereas
‘I made a cake’ could not rightly read ‘I made’.
Let’s move now on to other kinds of verbs.
Verb phrases are compound verbs. That is, they comprise a main verb and a helping verb.
For example, 'I can read', 'the film has started', 'I have been there', et cetera, where the main
verbs are 'read', 'started', and 'been', and the helping verbs are 'can', 'has', and 'have'.
Not to be confused with verb phrases, which we have just looked at, phrasal verbs, or
prepositional verbs, as they are sometimes known, are very different. A phrasal verb is a two-
or three-word verb consisting of a main verb plus a preposition or adverb vital to the
meaning of that verb. Note that you must take care never to hyphenate a phrasal verb.
Take ‘let’s turn on the light’, or ‘I’ll climb up that tree’ as examples, where the
words 'turn on' and 'climb up' are phrasal verbs.
Non-finite verbs, also referred to as verbals, consist of the infinitive, participle, and
gerund verb forms. Unlike finite verbs, they can’t complete an independent clause nor
does their form change.
Participles can be either present or past tense, and require the addition of a helping
verb to make a verb phrase.
The present participle always ends in ‘-ing’, such as in the sentence ‘I am riding north
tonight’. In this example, 'am' is the helping verb and 'riding' is the present participle.
The past participle ends in '-d' or '-ed' most of the time, but can have an irregular
ending, such as '-t'. In the sentence ‘I have cooked dinner tonight’, cooked is the
past participle. In ‘I have broken my curfew’, broken is the past participle, and, as you
can see, has an irregular ending. The sentence ‘bored students need extra work to do’
is an example of how a past participle—in this case 'bored'—can function as an adjective.
The gerund is a non-finite verb that always ends in ‘-ing’, and always functions as
a noun. For example, in ‘swimming can be therapeutic’, the gerund 'swimming', acts
as a noun. The same goes for 'dancing', as in ‘Boris loves dancing’.
Both present participles and gerunds end in ‘-ing’. Whether a verb is a present participle
or a gerund depends on its function in a sentence. Some grammarians call both gerunds and participles
‘gerund-participles’.
Our last non-finite verb form is the infinitive. The infinitive form of a verb is its ‘base'
form, and is most often introduced by the marker ‘to’, as in ‘I want to breed
show ponies’.
Some people believe that it’s wrong to split an infinitive. This rule came about because
the infinitive in Latin is a single word, and so cannot be split. In English, the infinitive
is two words, and so can be freely split, as in ‘to boldly go’, or ‘to gradually
disperse’.
One final addition to this lecture is the verbal phrase. Recall that non-finite verbs
are sometimes called verbals. A verbal phrase consists of a non-finite verb and the words
that modify it. For example, in the sentence ‘when examined carefully, the substance
did not seem to be harmful’, 'examined', a past participle, is paired with 'carefully', an adverb.
Remember, verbs form the core of the sentence, usually doing most of its work.