What Is a Verb

Types of Verb

Action (Dynamic) Verbs

Action verbs express actions. The action must not be physical only.

Examples:

Stative (state of being) Verbs

Stative verbs express state or feeling including likes and dislikes. They can’t be used in continuous tense form. They stick to the simple tense form or occasionally used in perfect form.

Examples:

• Want, need, prefer, love, seem, believe, involve, realize (Some verbs can be dynamic and stative both. When these verbs are used for specific, voluntary actions/events, they can be dynamic and can be used in continuous tense form.)

Examples:

• Perception words: see, hear, taste, smell, feel
• I can’t see in sunlight.
• I haven’t been seeing well in sunlight.
• The cake of her birthday tastes great.
• They were tasting the cake of her birthday.

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary verbs are used to change the voice, tense or mood of the sentence. They are always used with the main verb to represent main action. They must be used correctly.

Examples:

• I have eaten this ice cream many times.
• This ice cream was eaten by me.
• Did you eat that ice cream?

Modal Verbs

Some auxiliary verbs express possibility, capability or necessity. They are not the main verbs but they do change the meaning of the sentence.

Examples:

• Can, could, may, might, should, would, must, ought

Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are phrases that act individual combining two or more words to change their meanings. Mostly prepositions are added with verbs to form phrasal verbs.

Examples:

• Get by, look into, brought up

Verb Categories

Transitive Verbs

A transitive verb is one that is followed by a direct object.

Examples:

• Ali often takes a nap in the afternoon.

Intransitive Verbs

An intransitive verb is one that is not followed by either a direct or an indirect object.

Examples:

• Ali often sleeps in the afternoon.

(An intransitive verb may be followed by adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases but it is not followed by a noun or a pronoun functioning as direct object.)

Ditransitive Verbs

A ditransitive verb is one that is followed by both direct and indirect objects. Though they don’t always need indirect object, but they have the option.

Examples:

• Throw, make, buy, sell, give, lend, bring, read

Verb Forms

There are up to five forms for each verb: root, third-person singular, present participle, past, and past participle.

Root Form of the Verb

The root form of a verb is the base form of the word. Roots do not include prefixes or suffixes.

Examples:

• run, think, sleep, meditate

The root form of the verb is the same as the infinitive form. The difference is with infinitive form requires “to” before the root form of verb.

Examples:

• Feel – to feel
• Walk – to walk
• Run – to run

Third Person Singular Form of a Verb

For the third person singular (he/she/it/one) form of verb, the root verb ends in s (or sometimes es).

Examples:

• He runs
• She cooks
• It flies
• One loathes

Participle Form of a Verb

The participle verb form is created by adding -ing to the root word. It is used in the past, present, and future progressive and perfect continuous verb tenses.

Examples:

• We are leaving the party at four. (leave – leaving)
• Children have been playing since morning. (play– playing)
• We were preparing for party last week. (prepare ─ preparing)
• He will be asking for support for his new business. (ask ─ asking)

Past Form of the Verb

The past verb form for regular verbs is the root word + ed. It is only used with the past tenses.

Examples:

• We played for hours on Sunday afternoon. (play – played)
• The books were packed on the shelf. (pack – packed)

For irregular verbs past form of verb is different from root form of verb.

Examples:

• Children ate pizza. (eat – ate)
• I drank water. (drink— drank)

Past Participle Forms of the Verb

The past participle form of verb is used in present, past and future perfect sentences. They are used with has, have and had. Past participle form of verb is also used in passive voice sentences.

Like past form of verb, regular verbs become past participle form of verb by adding –ed to root verb. For irregular verbs it is different.

Examples:

• Children have eaten pizza by 12. (eat — eaten)
• I have drunk water in break. (drink— drunk)

Examples:

• Children ate pizza. (eat – ate)
• I drank water. (drink— drank)

Few Examples of Irregular form of verbs

Infinitives and gerunds

An infinitive adds the preposition ‘to’ in front of a verb’s root form.

Examples:

• Jim always forgets to drink.
• You promised to buy me a new dress.
• To travel around the world requires a lot of money and time.
• Ahmad has the ability to succeed.
• Do you want to call the police?
• Doctor convinced me to eat vegetables.

A gerund is a verb in the progressive (present participle) form that functions as a noun, naming an activity.

Examples:

• Jogging is a hobby of mine.
• Aslam quit smoking a year ago.
• She looks forward to helping you paint the room.
• She avoids using chemicals on the plants she grows.

(Gerund and Infinitives can replace a noun in a sentence.)