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English Verbs

Part 1: Basic Terms

Part 2

This article reviews some basic terms relating to English verbs. Being familiar with these terms will help you understand language points as they appear in the course of your English studies, as well as other articles on our English lessons portal, and of course the grammar corrections offered by the WhiteSmoke writing software grammar engine.

1. A verb is a word that expresses an action ( to run), occurrence ( to happen), or state of being ( to appear). It is one of the nine parts of speech in English grammar. Non-action verbs are also referred to as linking or stative verbs, such as to be, to seem, to sound. Verbs comprise the third largest group of words in English (about 10%) and appear in any sentence as a major mandatory element tying the subject and predicate together. Verbs indicate time (past, present, future) and are used in English in relatively many verb tenses. The verb can be thought of as the center, heart, or anchor of an English sentence.

Verbs of...	Examples
action	Maria dances at the studio and performs every Sunday.
occurrence	occurrence Maria became a professional dancer.
state of being	Maria's studio has stood there ever since she was a child.

2. Tests for verbs: A good way to identify a verb when a word is in doubt is to ask, Can I do it? I can succeed (do it) is correct but I can success is incorrect. This means succeed is a verb and the related part of speech success is not a verb; in this case, success is a noun.

Another test for verbs is to use the word in question in a different verb tense. If the sentence still makes sense, the word is a verb.
Original: That’s the updated version of the software.
Test: That’s the will update version of the software.
[the word updated here is not a verb because using it in the future simple tense in the second sentence does not result in a logical sentence; It is an adjective describing the noun version]

3. Verbs can also be recognized by some common verb suffixes and prefixes.

Suffix or Prefix	Meaning	Examples
-ate	to cause, make	to activate, to differentiate
-fy or -ify	to transform into	to signify, to clarify
-ize (British -ise)	to make like	to realize, to criticize
-en	to make/turn into	to redden, to soften
be-	forms transitive verbs that mean "cause"	to befriend, to beseech
en-	to bring into the condition of	to encode, to engender

4. Verbs in English indicate the following grammatical categories:

Categories	Type	Examples
person	1st person 2nd person 3rd person	I go You go She goes
Number	singular plural	He has written They have written
Tense	present past future	I eat I ate I will eat
Aspect	simple, progressive, perfect, perfect-progressive	I study every day. I am studying today. I have studied for years. I have been studying for hours.
Mood	indicative imperative subjunctive	I am always on time. Be there on time ! If I were on time, I would…
Voice	active passive	Germans consume a lot of beer. A lot of beer is consumed in Germany.

As there are relatively many English verb tenses, verbs in English come in many forms that provide different shades of meaning. However, English verbs comprise a much easier verb system than that of other languages that have distinct inflectional verb endings for different persons and number, or even change the verb stem with various tenses and aspects. In English only one verb ending remained, for verbs in the third person singular in the Present Simple tense.
Dan cooks dinner for us 3 times a week.
[3rd person, singular, present, simple, indicative, active,
meaning: habit in the present]

Yesterday we were cooking for hours on end.
[1st person, plural, past, progressive, indicative, active,
meaning: action in the past that continued over an extended period of time]

She would have cooked if you had asked her to.
(but in reality you didn’t ask so she didn’t cook)
[ would have cooked: 3rd person, singular, past, conditional, active,
meaning: hypothetic outcome in the past, contrary to fact]
[ had asked: 2nd person, singular, past, perfect, subjunctive, active,
meaning: hypothetic assumption in the past, contrary to fact]

I suggest that dinner be cooked no later than 20:00.
[3rd person, singular, present, subjunctive, passive,
meaning: strong recommendation which will not necessarily be fulfilled]

5. English verbs have 5 principal parts with which other forms are derived using verb auxiliaries: base/stem, simple past/preterit, past participle, present participle and the infinitive (the “name” of the verb). Some also include the third person singular in the present tense as a principle part, as it is the only verb form that kept its inflectional ending in Modern English.

Grammatical term	Symbol	Regular Verb	Irregular Verb
Infinitive	to + V1	to watch	to see
Base Form / Stem	V1	watch	see
Present Simple third person singular	V1+s	watches	sees
Past Simple / Preterit	V2	watched	saw
Past Participle	V3	watched	seen
Present Participle	Ving	watching	seeing

This has been the first of a two-part review on The English Verb. Click here forPart 2.