VERBS

The notional, oremantic, definition of a verb is

that it is a word that denotes an action or state of being.


 

Four inflections can be used with English verbs:
1) -s of third person singular present tense verbs : Sue jogs every day.
2) -ed of past tense verbs : She jogged yesterday.
3) -en of the past participle : He has seen the movie three time already.
4) -ing of the present participle : I am teaching three course this term.
In terms of their position, verbs follow nouns and may be followed in turn by adjectives,adverbs, or other nouns.

Here we simply categorize verbs by what follows them syntactically. According to Chalker (1984), there are six type :
1) intransitive verbs,which take no following object : Mavis smokes.
2) Transitive verbs, which require an object : David raises Illamas.
3) Distransitive verbs, which take two  objects (directs and indirects) : I handed Mary the fax.
4) Complex transitive verbs, where what follows the object relates to the object : They considered the project a waste of time.
5) Linking verbs,where what follows the verbs relates back to the subject : We are teachers.
6) Prepositional verbs, which require a prepositional phrase to be complete : Steve glanced at the headlines.



To illustrate aspect, compare the following two sentences, where the have verb + the present participle of the second sentence shows the action is in progress :

John has written his term paper.
Now he is studying for his final exams.

To conclude our discussion of verbs, we should point out that verbs, too, are marked for number, but only with subjects in the third person singular in the  present tense or with the verb be. In such instances, subject-verb agreement occurs, and  the verb is marked to agree with the singular or plural subject noun.