Verbs
Verbs are the doing, being, having words. Their basic forms are the forms you find in the dictionary, and you can put to in front.
to eat to write to sing
The “to” form is called the infinitive. It's the one they used to tell us not to split.
Verbs can be
| one word | He finished the work yesterday. I have the tools you want. This tea is awful! |
| two words | Sam is coming. (or Sam's coming) Sam is not coming. He was running round in circles. Have you started yet? |
| three words | I'll be seeing them later. (will be seeing) That chapter has been printed already. She will have finished by then. |
| more than three |
By September they will have been living here for two years. |
Verbs and their subjects
Every finite verb has what is called a subject. That's the person or thing that does the action. It will be a noun or a pronoun, and in an English statement it comes before the verb. To find the subject of a verb, therefore, you simply need to ask yourself Who? or What? before the verb. Whodunnit! In the examples that follow, the subjects are circled and the verbs are underlined.
In questions we either reverse the order:
or divide the verb into two parts, separated by the noun or pronoun that is the subject.
Finite verbs
We have already said that a finite verb has a subject, and that the subject is the doer of the action.
Look at the following sentence.
Thinking he heard a knock, he went out to check.
In this sentence there are four words that suggest action: thinking, heard, went, check. Are they all finite? We can eliminate check because it has to in front of it, so we already know it is an infinitive. Do the other three have clear subjects? We ask Who? or What?before each one. There is nothing at all before thinking, so we can eliminate it too.* That leaves heard and went. Who heard? Who went? Each of these is preceded by the pronoun he. So each has a subject, and each is complete. Both, therefore, are finite.
Verbs and their objects
As well as subjects, verbs often have objects (but not always). The object is the person or thing having the action done to it, so again it will be a noun or a pronoun. Look at two of our earlier sentences again.
* thinking is a participle. See page 21.
More examples:
If a verb has an object it is called a transitive verb. If not, it's called an intransitive verb. (Predictable.)
The objects we have just looked at are direct objects.There are also indirect objects. They too will be either nouns or pronouns.
- I gave him the letter.
In this sentence the letter is the direct object, and him is the indirect object. You can work out the next three for yourself.
- Then the officer asked me three questions.
- Did Sue give her mother the flowers?
- I'll tell you the answer later.
Verbs active and verbs passive
Some verbs are said to be active. With active verbs the subject actually performs the action.
Some verbs are said to be passive. With passive verbs the subject has the action done to it. Isn't this a direct contradiction of what we said before? The sentences that follow should help.
- The old blue truck was still driven regularly.
- Has the parcel been sent yet?
- These shoes were made in Brazil.
- All the documents will be shredded.
We use both forms in everyday speech. Why the two forms? When do we use the passive form?
- When we don't want to accuse anyone.
My book's been torn.
- In wide-ranging general statements.
Football is played all over the world.
- In public notices and formal documents.
Trespassers will be prosecuted.
- In scientific writing.
The test was administered three times.
Verbs and their tenses
Whichever language we speak we need some way of indicating when an action is done. Some languages, including English, do this by altering the forms of their verbs. We call these forms tenses, and the different verb-endings, like the different endings for nouns and pronouns, are called inflections.
Consider the following sets of sentences. For convenience we will use the pronoun I for the subject of the verb each time. You can work out the forms for the other subjects such as he, we, they and so on, if they differ.
- I lived there ten years ago.
- I was living there at the time.
- I used to live there.
- I had lived there before I met him.
- I did live there.
These are all ways of indicating something happening in the past.
What about the present?
- I live there.
- I'm living there at present.
- I do live there.
- I have lived there.
(This “past” has a present significance.)
What about the future?
- One day I will live there.
- I'll be living there then.
- I'm going to live there next year.
- By December I will have lived there two years.
Bigger grammar books will have names for all these verb forms, so you can look them up if you need to. Your target language may have a simpler verb system than English has, but if it does it will have other ways of showing time. On the other hand, it may have far more complex verbs than English has.
Regular verbs? Irregular verbs?
The verb to live, which we have just looked at, is a regular verb in English. Maybe you have never thought about bits of language being regular or irregular. But consider:
| I live | I lived | I have lived |
| I help | I helped | I have helped |
| I consider | I considered | I have considered |
These verbs are regular. They “obey the rules”.
But
| I write | I wrote | I have written |
| I eat | I ate | I have eaten |
| I sleep | I slept | I have slept |
| I drive | I drove | I have driven |
These verbs are not at all regular. They go their own individual ways.
Participles
There are two other verb forms in English that you may find it useful to know about. They are called participles. There are present participles and past participles. Present participles are easy. They're the -ing forms.
Add -ing to any English verb and you have a present participle. Use a present participle along with am, is, are, was, were, have been etc and you get the continuous tenses: was going, are sailing, am trying and the rest.
Past participles are less simple. The regular ones (see regular verbs, previous page) just take -ed as an ending, or -d if they already end in e. The irregular ones do their own thing, so we get eaten, written, gone, driven, had, drawn and scores of others.
Participles by themselves are not finite. We don't use them by themselves. We don't say, for instance, he drawn, I eaten. The fact that we do say, he worked and they helped simply shows that with regular verbs the past participle and the simple past tense are identical. You will learn to recognise them by their functions in context.
Auxiliaries
More jargon. Look at this sentence:
He will be staying there for three weeks.
The complete verb in the sentence is will be staying. You already know that staying is a present participle.
The words will and be are called auxiliary verbs. In primary school they used to be called helping verbs. If you look back at other verbs we have discussed you will recognise other auxiliaries, have and am to name just two.
Most auxiliaries are also finite verbs in their own right when they are used alone, but auxiliaries when they are used in conjunction with participles.
Imperatives
These are the verbs for instructions and commands. They don't take different forms in English, but they may in other languages. There are two examples at the bottom of page 4. Go back and look them up. (There's another example for you – two in fact.)
Here are some more:
- Watch your step!
- Beat the butter and sugar together.
- Put your toys away, please.
- Take the next turn to the right.
Direct and indirect (reported) speech
Have you ever noticed how we alter our verbs when we report what someone has said?
He said, “I'm going fishing.”
If we report this to someone else some time later, we'll say,
He said he was going fishing.
Try playing around with some more examples. You'll think of plenty.