Definition
Verb can be defined as “A word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.”
Explanation
Verb is a parts of speech. It is a special word which tells us about an action or a state in the sentence. It is considered as the main part and king of a sentence as it is contained by every sentence. Without verbs, we cannot make a sentence.
Using verb we can make a one word sentence such as ‘Stop’, ‘Go’, etc. We cannot make a one word sentence using any other parts of speech like noun, pronoun, adjective, etc. According to the English grammar, verbs are only kind of word in the sentence which gets changed according to the tense to show present, past, or future tense.
Verbs are used by all the languages in the world however, not used in the same ways. They are used in different languages with different properties. For English language, it gets changed according to the tense however, for other languages like Chinese and Indonesian, it does not change for past, present or future tense.
We use sixteen verbs in the Basic English such as be, have, let, do, go, see, keep, come, give, take, send, seem, make, put, say, and get. Generally, verbs in a sentence give an idea of action or doing something so called action verbs. However, somewhere they give an idea of existence or state of being such as be, seem, exist, and belong, so called stative verbs.
A verb always comes with a subject and tells us what a subject does or is.
For example:
Action Verb:
- He plays football daily.
State Verb:
- Mohan seems very kind.
Types of Verb
Various types of verb are described below with their proper definition and examples:
1) Action Verb
Action verb tells us about the action by the subject in the sentence such as do, go, sit, eat, help, laugh, weep, etc.
For example:
- He eats healthy food.
- He plays sports daily.
- He goes to school daily.
Action verb is categorized into two types of verbs named as transitive or intransitive. Sometimes verbs are used with direct objects (like persons or things receiving action of a particular subject) however, sometimes don’t. Both are described below:
Transitive verbs are those verbs which we use together with a direct object (a thing or a person). Transitive verbs are like lift, owe, make, feed, drive, etc.
For example:
- My friend owes me some money.
- She feeds her kids daily.
- She drives car to the market.
Intransitive verbs are those verbs which do not have a direct object to express their meaning. Generally, intransitive verbs are followed by adjectives, adverbs, verb complements or prepositions. Intransitive verbs are like die, wait, respond, sit, look, arrive, etc.
For example:
- My father died of Dengue.
- My class teacher arrived in class very late.
- We wait for the exam from months.
Auxiliary verbs are those verbs which come before the main verb in the verb phrase such as be, shall, may, could, etc.
For example:
- If everything is right, I will be going school today.
- We shall meet tomorrow in the meeting to discuss some important matters.
3) Lexical Verb
Lexical verbs are main verbs other than the auxiliary verbs. Such as organize, come, rest, handle, etc.
For example:
- He will come home for lunch.
- Animals take rest in the shadow after grazing in the garden for long time.
4) Dynamic Verb
Dynamic verbs are verbs which we use to show an action, process, or sensation instead of a state. Such as throw, drive, grow, repair, hit, etc.
For example:
- He drives car carefully on the zig-zag roads.
- My father is growing
- He threw a book in the class
5) Stative Verb
Stative verbs are verbs which we use to define a situation or state in the sentence. Such as seem, know, have, etc.
For example:
- I would like to have my all friends in the class room.
- I seem very tired after long working day.
6) Finite Verb
Finite verb is a verb which we use along with the given subject in a sentence. This verb justifies the state of subject. Such as love, hate, appear, enjoy, promise, etc.
For example:
- She enjoys
- He appears
- He promised to behave well in future.
- She hates bad habits.
Nonfinite verbs are verbs having no differentiation in different tense and cannot be used as main verb alone in a sentence. Such as leave, expand, smile, etc.
For example:
- I need to expand my working hours.
- I leave the office daily after 10 pm.
- I have no reason to smile.
8) Regular Verb
We can get past participle and past tense of a regular verb by adding ‘d’, ‘ed’ or ‘t’ to the word. Regular verb is also called as weak verb. Such as accept, arrive, etc.
For example:
- He accepted my offer.
- I arrived to the venue at right time.
Irregular verb is also known as a strong verb as it does not follow rules for common verb forms. Such type of verb do not have ‘ed’ ending. Such as go, get, take, see, say, sleep, come, etc.
For example:
- I got my destination.
- We went to Delhi with family.
- He came in the office at right time.
Modal Auxiliary Verbs facilitate the main verbs and express expectation, possibility, permission etc. We have described here about what does each of Modal Verbs expresses with the help of Example Sentences….