Verb

A verb is a word showing action, movement or being. An English full (lexical) verb has several forms such as present, past, and gerund and past participle.

Classification

Verbs may be classified in various ways including:

• Lexical verbs - the most common type which are also content words.
  • regular and irregular verbs.
  • Catenative verbs - verbs which can be followed by other verbs.
• Modal verbs - which express mode.
• Auxiliary verbs - used for making other aspects.
• Copular verbs - used to unite a subject with an adjective.

Regular and irregular

'Read' and 'have' are examples of lexical verbs. For the purposes of conjugation there are two types of verbs in English: regular and irregular verbs.

In many languages verbs are altered with various spelling and pronunciation changes to indicate various tenses. Listing these numerous tenses is called "conjugating" the verb.

English regular verbs have a predictable, standardized conjugation adding "-ed" to the end of the present tense to form the past tense or the past participle.

Although the vast majority of verbs in English are regular, many verbs are irregular - that is, they are conjugated in a unique way, which is often, but not always, unpredictable. As such, they must be learned and memorized one at a time. An exceptional example is the verb "be", where the present tense is "am", "are" or "is" and the past tense is "was" or "were". That said, the verb "be" is unique, and all the other irregular verbs are much simpler in their conjugation.

Tense, time, aspect and mode

These concepts can be difficult to tease apart in English.

Tense

See main article tense.

There are, in fact, only two tenses to an English verb - if by "tense" we mean the addition of a suffix which apparently tells something about time.

In point of fact English tense tells us remarkably little about time. The present tense is more often used to describe a constant or repeated situation. "I drive to work." "My dog chases rabbits.", and the "past tense" is likewise not uniquely associated with the past.

Time and aspect

See main article aspect.

The sense of time in English is, in fact, indicated by aspect and by the use of auxiliary verbs to make continuous and perfect aspects.

Mode

See main article mode.

Mode is used to express information from the point of the view of the speaker and thus express concepts such as probability, possibility compulsion etc through the use of modal verbs.

See also

• Content word
• Auxiliary verb
• The English Verb (Book)