Mohammad Abdullah
Categories of verbs
There are many different categories of verbs that describe different kinds of actions or states of being.
Action (Dynamic) Verbs:-
Action verbs (also known as dynamic verbs) describe an active process that results in an effect. For example:
- “I ran to school.”
- “She read a book.”
- “They talked during lunch.”
- “We swam for over an hour.”
Stative Verbs:-
In contrast to action verbs, stative verbs describe states of being of a subject. These include linking verbs, such as be and verbs of the senses, which are used to describe or rename a subject using a predicative adjective or noun. For example:
- “I am”
- “You sound”
- “He seems like a bully.”
Other stative verbs are those that express emotions, possession, cognition, and states or qualities. For example:
- “She likes old movies.”
- “They own three cars.”
- “I understand the issue.”
- “Your happiness depends on doing something you enjoy.”
Light Verbs:-
Light verbs do not carry unique meaning on their own, but instead rely on another word or words that follow them to become meaningful. Common examples include do, have, and take, as in:
- “Do your homework!”
- “Why don’t we have something to eat?”
- “I took a shower before breakfast.”
In many cases, the same light verb will have different meanings, depending on the word or words it is paired with. For instance:
- “Please don’t make a mess.”
- “Please make your bed.”
Phrasal Verbs:-
Phrasal verbs are verbs that pair with prepositions or particles to create unique, specific meanings. These are largely idiomatic, which means that they don’t make literal sense according to their individual parts. For example:
- “I can’t believe that you’re giving up!”
- “The plane took off an hour late.”
- “He has been looking after his mother.”
- “Stop picking on your brother!”
Conditional Verbs:-
The term conditional verbs refers to verb constructions that are used in conditional sentences, which describe a hypothetical outcome that is reliant upon another conditional situation being true. These sentences most often use the conjunction if with one of the verbs to express the conditional situation, and often use modal auxiliary verbs to describe the hypothetical outcome. For example:
- “The leaves will fall if the wind blows.”
- “If you had done your chores, you could have had an ice cream cone.”
- “You would get better grades if you studied”
Causative Verbs:-
Causative verbs are used to indicate that a person or thing is causing another action or an event to happen. They are generally followed by a noun or pronouns and an infinitive verb that is not causative, which describes the action that was caused to happen. For example:
- “He let his dog run through the field.”
- “The bigger house enabled the family to have more room for their belongings.”
- “The new dress code forced the students to wear different shoes.”
- “The law requires a person to obtain a permit before hunting on public land.”
Factitive Verbs:-
Factitive verbs are used to indicate a condition or state of a person, place, or thing that results from the action of the verb. For example:
- “She was appointed commissioner by the mayor.”
- “The committee elected Fuller chairman of the board.”
- “The jury judged the defendant not guilty.”
Reflexive Verbs:-
Reflexive verbs have subjects that are also their direct objects—that is, the action of the verb is both committed and received by the same person or thing. The objects of transitive reflexive verbs are usually reflexive pronouns. For example:
- “I accidentally burned myself with the hairdryer.”
- “The problem seems to have worked itself out in the end.”
- “This car doesn’t drive properly anymore.” (intransitive—no direct object)
Conjugation:-
When we discuss verbs, we usually must touch upon conjugation. This is the inflection (changing of form) of verbs to create new meaning in specific contexts. We generally refer to tense (which we looked at briefly above) when we talk about conjugation, but verbs experience a large amount of inflection depending on how they are being used in a sentence. For more information, go to the chapter on Conjugation in the part of this guide called Inflection (Accidence).
Quiz
- What is the function of verbs in a sentence?
- To identify the person or thing performing or controlling an action
- To describe an action, state of being, or condition performed or experienced by someone or something
- To identify the person or thing directly receiving the effect of an action
- To add descriptive information about another part of the sentence
- The predicate of a sentence always contains what kind of verbs?
- Regular verbs
- Transitive verbs
- Finite verbs
- Non-finite verbs
- Unlike regular verbs, irregular verbs usually have different:
- Past tense and past participle forms
- Present tense and present participle forms
- Past tense and present tense forms
- Present tense and past participle forms
- Unlike transitive verbs, intransitive verbs are not able to take which of the following?
- Subjects
- Direct objects
- Indirect objects
- Modifiers
- A & C
- B & C
- All of the above
- Identify the form of the verb in bold in the following sentence: “We were looking for a place to eat.”
- Transitive verb
- Auxiliary verb
- Infinitive verb
- Participle
- What is the term for changing a verb’s form to reflect things like tense?
- Conscription
- Transformation
- Conjugation
Answer:-
Source:- The Farlex English Grammar Book By Peter Herring.
