Verbs

Linguistic Overview

Verbs are a large, open lexical class, meaning there are many verbs in the English dictionary, and new verbs — especially Action Verbs — are added all the time. Grammatically speaking, verbs are the things that the subjects of a clause do or are. (When it comes to meaning, however, while most verbs indicate an action or state that the subject takes, some may instead indicate what happens to the subject.)

Verbs have a higher variety of forms than any other word class in English, and they may be inflected to a) agree with the subject; b) provide more information, such as when the verb takes place; or c) form a different part of speech.

Verb strings may include auxiliary verbs, negators (like ‘not‘ or ‘never‘), or verbal complements along with the main verb. Verb strings can be modified with adverbs, prepositional phrases, participial or infinitive phrases, or Adverbial Clauses.

Subclasses of Verbs

Verbs can be categorized into Action Verbs, Stative Verbs, Linking Verbs, and Light Verbs. There is some overlap between Stative Verbs and Linking Verbs, but Action Verbs and Stative Verbs are considered to be mutually exclusive. Keep in mind that many verbs have more than one definition; some verbs may be classified one way for one definition, but classified another way for a different definition.

Action Verbs

Action Verbs (aka eventive verbs) express physical, mental, or procedural actions or events. Many Action Verbs can be performed or demonstrated, such as ‘carry’, ‘speak’, ‘drink’, ‘watch’, and ‘celebrate’, just to name a few. Others are less demonstrable, such as ‘schedule’, ‘consider’, or ‘continue’.

Many Action Verbs can be dynamic, meaning they progress or change over time. For example, the action ‘wash’ typical takes some length of time, and the object should be cleaner at the end of ‘wash’ than when it started. But Action Verbs can also be static, or unchanging. Some instantaneous verbs like ‘blink’ are static, as are some perpetual verbs like ‘reside’.

The vast majority of lexical verbs are Action Verbs; while there are a limited number of Stative, Linking, and Light Verbs, the number of Action Verbs is unlimited. There are tens of thousands — possibly over a hundred thousand — unique Action Verbs in English. When new verbs are added to our lexicon, they are almost always Action Verbs.

Stative Verbs

Stative Verbs express or introduce some state that the subject is in. Insights to English has grouped Stative Verbs into four types of states:

Cognition: conveys the speaker’s or the subject’s state of mind or perceived reality.
- eg: appear, bear, forget, know, like, need, prefer, sound, want
Condition: explains the current state or situation that the subject is in.
- eg: ache, extend, face, fit, impress, itch, matter, startle, surround
Relation: identifies another noun that is affected by or connected to the subject.
- eg: consist, convey, deserve, have, include, own, resemble
Trait: relates a lasting or defining characteristic of the subject.
- eg: amount to, cost, mean, measure, remain, tend to, weigh

Stative Verbs are unique in that they are primarily known for how they are not used. Although there are exceptions, Stative Verbs are rarely used in Continuous Tenses, Imperatives, Causatives, or Passive Voice.

Most Stative Verbs are static by default, meaning they persist throughout or even beyond the context and do not change. However, it is possible for Stative Verbs to be dynamic, in which case they are likely exceptions to the applications listed in the previous paragraph.

While there is no definitive list of Stative Verbs, Insights has identified about a hundred words that tend to be used as Stative Verbs.

Linking Verbs

Linking Verbs establish an alternative sentence structure; they are never followed by direct or indirect objects, but instead by predicative modifiers or predicative nominals. Linking Verbs express what the subject is. Predicative adjectives and prepositional phrases describe the subject while predicative nominals (which may be lexical nouns, pronouns, Content Clauses, or other types of noun phrases) either categorize the subject or equate to the subject.

All Linking Verbs can be followed by predicative adjectives; only some can instead be followed by predicate nominals.

can be followed by predicative adjectives, prepositional phrases, or predicative nominals:
- be, become, remain, and stay
- to a limited extent: die, end up, and play
can be followed by any predicative adjective:
- act, appear, emerge, feel, get, grow, keep, look, look, prove, seem, smell, sound, and taste
can only be followed by select predicative adjectives:
- come, extend, fall, go, lean, lie, run, sit, stand, stretch, test, and turn

Most Linking Verbs are also Stative Verbs. However, many can also be dynamic, in which cases they would be exceptions to the usual Stative Verb rules.

Light Verbs

Light Verbs have no distinct meaning by themselves, but instead serve a purely syntactical function. It’s the combination of Light Verbs with particular direct objects that establishes their meaning.

For example, “take a seat”, “going shopping”, and “made a suggestion”, all start with Light Verbs. The meaning of the action is not found in the verbs take, go, or make, but rather in the objects ‘seat’, ‘shopping’ (a Gerund), and ‘suggestion’.

Only a handful of verbs in English are Light Verbs, and they are:

do • get • give • go • have • make • take

Notice that these particular verbs can also be Action Verbs — except for have, which is a Stative Verb. These only serve as Light Verbs when they lack their usual definition. (For instance, take in “take a bath” has nothing to do with grasping or receiving.)

While the Light Verbs themselves do not carry much meaning, their combination with their objects forms a meaning that is in line with Action Verbs; they express actions or occurrences and are usually demonstrable. Consider how the expressions “give a presentation”, “does the washing up”, and “had a nap” are synonymous with the Action Verbs “present”, “washes up”, and “napped”, respectively.

Valency

Verb phrases may introduce verb complements (like direct or indirect objects) or subject complements (predicative modifiers or nominals). The number of necessary complements, if any at all, that follow any given verb depends on that verb’s valency. Here, we’re only considering arguments (which are essential components of a sentence) and ignoring adjuncts (which are optional components of a sentence).

Valency varies from one verb to the next, or sometimes even between different definition of the same verb. Here are the different types of valency common in English:

INTRANSITIVE VERBS are not followed by any objects. For example, “They applauded,” or “It is raining.”
TRANSITIVE VERBS are followed by objects.
- MONOTRANSITIVE VERBS have direct objects only. For example, “She carries a purse,” or “I fixed the lawnmower.”
- DITRANSITIVE VERBS have direct and indirect objects. For example, “We‘ll bring you some cake,” or “You gave me no option.”
AMBITRANSITIVE VERBS can be followed by objects, but they don’t have to be. Consider: “She‘s texting,” versus “She‘s texting her friend the details.”
LINKING VERBS are not followed by objects, but instead by subject complements. For example, “He is the boss,” or “I‘m getting hungry.”

English speakers and learners do not need to know the terms valency and transitive, but they should be familiar with whether a verb needs to be followed by anything in order to complete the sentence’s meaning.

Light Verbs	Action Verbs	Stative Verbs	Linking Verbs
–	can work without a complement		–
can have direct objects			–
–	can have indirect objects	–	–
–	–	–	can have predicative nominals
–	–	–	can have predicative modifiers
can have verbal complements			–

Some verbs can take on verbal complements, meaning the term that follows the verb is another verb form. See Verb Patterns for more.

Verb Forms

Finite Verb Forms

Finite verbs are ones that can stand alone in a clause without the help of another verb (typically an auxiliary verb) for preceding it. They’re also the forms that indicate whether the verb has already taken place or not, and they align with subject-verb agreement. The first verb in a verb string — whether it’s the main verb or an auxiliary — should always be in a finite verb form.

Present Basic Form

The basic present form of a verb is identical to the base form we find in dictionaries, with the exception of the word BE. The present form is used when the verb hasn’t already been completed, unless it accompanies a third-person singular subject.

For example: am/are*, have, do, fix, go, carry, watch, give.

3rd-Person Singular Present Form

This form is used when the verb is not completed and it accompanies third-person singular subjects. It is formed by adding an ‘s’ to the end of the root verb, with the following caveats:

If the root verb already ends with ‘s’, ‘z’, ‘x’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, or ‘o’: an ‘es’ is added to the end.
If the root verb ends with a ‘y’ following a consonant: the ‘y’ turns into an ‘i’ before adding ‘es’ to the end.
BE and HAVE have their own unique forms.

For example: is, has, does, fixes, goes, carries, watches, gives.

Past Form

The past form of a verb indicates that the verb has already been completed. It is usually formed by adding an ‘ed’ to the end of the root verb (although again, roots ending in consonant-‘y’ have their ‘y’ turned into an ‘i’, and BE, HAVE, and DO have their own unique forms). However, a couple hundred root verbs are irregular in that they have alternative past forms. See the Irregular Verbs page for details.

For example: was/were*, had, did, fixed, went, carried, watched, gave.

The final ‘ed’ of regular past verbs can have one of three pronunciations:

It sounds like /t/ when the root verb ends with ‘ch’, ‘s’, ‘sh’, ‘x’, or ‘z’.
It sounds like /ɪd/ when the root verb ends with ‘d’ or ‘t’.
It sounds like /d/ otherwise.

Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-Verb Agreement means that finite verb forms are dependent upon the person and count of the subject.

For uncompleted verbs (i.e. non-past verbs), whether the verb takes the basic present form or the 3rd-Person Singular Present form depends upon the subject. If the subject is in the first-person (‘I’) or the second-person (‘you’), then the verb takes the basic present form. If the subject is plural, then the verb also takes the basic present form. But if the subject is both singular and in the third-person, then the verb takes on the 3rd-Person Singular Present form, ending in an ‘s’.

1st-Person Singular	2nd-Person Singular	3rd-Person Singular	1st-Person Plural	3rd-Person Plural
I do I say I like	you do you say you like	it does Jan says the dog likes	we do we say we like	they do Jan & Pam say the dogs like

When the main verb is non-finite, then its leading auxiliary (which should be in a finite verb form) takes on the burden of agreement instead.

The special verb BE (whether used as the main verb or as an auxiliary) has more complex subject-verb agreement than other verbs. In addition to the above rules, it has a distinct form for second-person and plural subjects: ‘are’ instead of ‘am’ for non-past, and ‘were’ instead of ‘was’ for past.

Non-Finite Verb Forms

Non-finite verbs are ones that cannot be the main verb of a clause unless they are accompanied by a preceding auxiliary verb. This means neither standalone verbs nor the very first auxiliary of a verb string can be in a non-finite form.

Non-finite verb forms can indicate the aspect or voice of the verb, or they can be verbals in which the word might serve as another part of speech like a noun or adjective.

These forms ignore subject-verb agreement.

Bare Infinitive

The Bare Infinitive, also known as the base form, is the form we find in dictionaries, making it appear to be the same as the basic Present form (with the exception of BE). In practice, the Bare Infinitive follows core modal verbs or the auxiliary DO (and thus is featured in negative and interrogative verb phrases in simple tenses). It also has limited application in Causatives — as in after ‘help’, ‘let’, or ‘make’ — and in subjunctive clauses.

For example: be, have, do, fix, go, carry, watch, give.

Full Infinitive

The Full Infinitive, aka ‘the to Infinitive’, has several applications as a verbal, especially in establishing a future tense, a sense of purpose, or both. As the main verb of a clause, it only works after the marginal modal ought and any pseudo-modals. The Full Infinitive is formed by adding the particle ‘to’ in front of the Bare Infinitive.

For example: to be, to have, to do, to fix, to go, to carry, to watch, to give.

Active Participle

The Active Participle is formed by adding -ing to the end of the root verb (if a silent ‘e’ was at the end of the base verb, it is removed). As main verbs, they can be coupled with the auxiliary verb BE to express the Continuous Aspect. They also have multiple applications as verbals. In all applications, they communicate a sense of action or progress.

For example: being, having, doing, fixing, going, carrying, watching, giving.

Perfect/Passive Participle

For most verbs, the Perfect or Passive Participle is formed by adding -ed to the end of the root verb. But as with the Past form, many of the most commonly-used verbs are irregular and have alternative forms; the -en ending is common among these. As main verbs, Perfect/Passive Participles can be coupled with the auxiliary verb HAVE to express the Perfect Aspect, or they can be coupled with the auxiliary verb BE to express the Passive Voice. They also have multiple applications as verbals.

For example: been, had, done, fixed, gone, carried, watched, given.

Tense, Mood, and Voice

The main verb of any clause has the properties of tense, mood, and voice, all of which affect the meaning of the verb phrase.

TENSE expresses the timing of the verb and is comprised of a time reference and an aspect. The time reference indicates when the context occurs relative to the moment of speaking; the aspect indicates when the verb occurs relative to the context and often conveys the verb’s duration or state of completion.
MOOD expresses the verb’s relevance to reality. For example, a verb may be a possible but not inevitable future event, a theoretical past situation that definitely didn’t happen, a hypothetical scenario, and so on. But default, verbs are in the indicative mood and are assumed to be real.
VOICE expresses whether the verb is enacted or held by its subject. By default, verbs are in the active voice, meaning the subject does or holds the verb. Other verbs are in the passive voice, meaning the verb instead happens to the subject.

Tense, mood, and voice are all conveyed through the form of the verb, as well as the inclusion of any auxiliary verbs.

For TENSE, time reference is expressed by the form of the first verb in the verb string (which may be an auxiliary verb, but instead is the main verb if there are no auxiliaries). Aspect is expressed through certain pairings of auxiliary verbs followed by a particular verb form. Most notably, the Continuous Aspect features BE followed by an Active Participle, while the Perfect Aspect features HAVE followed by a Perfect Participle.
MOOD is expressed typically through modal verbs; the flavor of the modal verb indicates its mood. But mood can also be expressed through modifiers such as the adverbs ‘doubtfully’ or ‘possibly’. In the absence of such mood-inferring terms, the verb phrase is usually understood to be in the indicative mood.
The way VOICE is expressed depends on each voice. Passive Voice features the auxiliary BE followed by a Passive Participle. Middle Voice is inherent in the definition of certain verbs and is sometimes supported with reflexive pronouns. But without either of these, the verb is in the Active Voice.

Verb Strings

For many linguists, the term ‘verb phrase’ encompasses not only the verbs, but any complements as well (including direct and indirect objects, predicative nominals, etc.). Therefore, we’ll use the term ‘verb string’ to refer only to the elements that are essential to the core meaning of the verb expression. The elements are usually in the following order (although inverting the order of some elements may be done to achieve particular effects).

Leading Auxiliary > Negator > Other Auxiliaries > Main Verb(s) > Verbal Complement

Keep in mind that most verb strings do not include every single one of these elements. In fact, the only element required to complete a clause is the main verb. However, the other elements are necessary on a case-by-case basis if they convey the meaning of the overall verb expression or any essential properties like tense, mood, or voice.

Multiple Main Verbs:

There may be more than one main verb in a verb string, in which case they are linked with a Coordinating Conjunction (and; or; but not) that comes before the last listed verb. If there are three or more, they are typically separated with commas. When there are multiple main verbs joined together like this, the auxiliary verbs and any modifiers apply to each and every one of the included verbs.

As an alternative, main verbs can be separated into different verb strings (each with their own auxiliaries and modifiers) and still be in the same clause.

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliaries are essential to conveying the verb’s tense and mood, along with indicating whether it’s in the Passive Voice. When a verb string has multiple auxiliaries, they come in this order:

Modal Verb > Perfect HAVE > Continuous BE > Passive BE

Whichever auxiliary comes first is what Insights calls the leading auxiliary (for instance, if there are no modal verbs, the leading auxiliary is HAVE; if HAVE is not present either, the leading auxiliary is BE). When none of these auxiliary verbs are present, DO may be used in their place as a leading auxiliary for certain structures. Leading auxiliaries play important roles, including hosting negators, coming before subjects in some question forms, and representing the full verb phrase as ellipses.

A verb string can exist without any auxiliary verbs, as with indicative Present Simple declarative clauses in the active voice.

Negation

Negators like not and never can come after the leading auxiliary to negate the entire verb phrase. Not can even be contracted as n’t and attached to the end of the leading auxiliary. A leading auxiliary is always required for negation, so we may include some form of DO if no other auxiliaries would otherwise be used for the verb string.

Other pure negators include the adverbs no longer and neither, as well as the correlative conjunction neither … nor when applied to verbs. In addition, the terms barely, hardly, rarely, scarcely, and seldom — even though they mean ‘almost not’ — are usually also treated as negators.

Verbal Complements

In the case of Verb Patterns, the main verb is followed by a verbal complement, typically in the form of either a Full Infinitive or an Active Participle. The actions that are represented by verbal complements are indirectly acted upon by the agent, but they usually carry more significant meaning than the main verbs.

For example in “Cynthia tried to apologize”, the action that Cynthia technically carried out was ‘try’ (she may or may not have gone on to complete her apology). But the point of the sentence is likely centered around the idea of an apology. So while the main verb ‘try’ is grammatically central to the clause, the verbal complement ‘apologize’ is thematically central to the clause.

Phrasal Verbs

A base verb can be combined with one (or possibly more) following particle, or adposition, to form an emerged term with a meaning distinct from the original verb. These combinations are called Phrasal Verbs.

For instance, the expression “give up”, meaning quit, has little to do with the verb give. A few other common examples include “call off”, “point out”, “back up”, and “run through”, but there are many Phrasal Verbs.

The second components of Phrasal Verbs are often short and common terms like ‘around’, ‘away’, ‘back’, ‘down’, ‘in’, ‘off’, ‘on’, ‘out’, ‘over’, and ‘up’, but there’s no real limit to which adpositions can be used as Phrasal Verb particles.

Some Phrasal Verbs are intransitive, but most are transitive. Among the transitive Phrasal Verbs, some are separable while others are inseparable.

Separable Phrasal Verbs can have their object come either afterward or between the two components of the Phrasal Verb. For instance, we could say “I dropped off my friend at the airport,” or we could say “I dropped my friend off at the airport.”
For inseparable Phrasal Verbs, any objects can only come after, never between. For instance, we could say “I knew I could count on you!” but not ~~“I knew I could count you on!”~~

Advanced Concepts

Special Categories of Verbs

Certain verbs that have related meanings may be grouped into categories that also have unique functions. These special categories have selective applications, and the vast majority of verbs do not belong to any of these categories.

Bridge Verbs

Bridge verbs are verbs that can lead into Content Clauses with or without the use of ‘that’. Furthermore, bridge verbs allow us to move ‘WH’ words that would initiate Content Clauses to the front of the sentence in order to form the interrogative structure.

Bridge verbs are typically verbs of speech, perception, or thought (although many that fall into those categories are not also bridge verbs). Examples include believe, claim, hear, know, say, see, and think.

Control Verbs

Control verbs are transitive verbs that prompt another verb to be carried out, or at least attempted. Control verbs can lead into Verb Patterns or into Content Clauses.

Outward control verbs prompt someone else to take action. Examples include advise, allow, ask, beg, bid, command, compel, dare, demand, encourage, force, guide, help, insist, invite, let, make, persuade, tell, tempt, and urge. Insights sometimes refers to these as “Verbs of Influence”.

Inward control verbs prompt the speaker or the subject to take action. Examples include attempt, begin, dare, decide, intend, need, plan, prepare, promise, refuse, remember, resolve, start, start, try, vow, want, and yearn. Insights sometimes refers to these as “Verbs of Intent” or “Verbs of Endeavor”.

Patientive Verbs

Patientive verbs indicate what happens to the subject, rather than what the subject does. They do this without the Passive Voice sentence structure, although they carry a similar meaning — and so they may be considered to be in a Middle Voice.

Example verbs include bake, bend, break, close, cook, darken, expand, fall, grow, heal, melt, open, return, shake, shrink, spill, stretch, tear, turn, and twist, depending on how they are used in the sentence and which subjects they are paired with.

Performative Verbs

Performative verbs are carried out when they are expressed; merely by saying or writing sentences with performatives, the speaker (especially if the subject is “I”) accomplishes what they’ve said.

There are very few performative verbs. Examples include apologize, dare, demand, forbid, invite, order, promise, propose, quit, recommend, refuse, and resign.

Reporting Verbs

Reporting verbs express the thoughts or speech of a person, whether it’s the speaker of the reporting verb or someone else. That speech may be past, present, or future, and it may be spoken aloud or not. Some reporting verbs are used in Indirect Speech, some are used in Reporting Verb Patterns, and some work for both.

There are many reporting verbs, including advise, agree, answer, ask, claim, convince, demand, deny, discuss, encourage, explain, insist, offer, order, persuade, promise, propose, recommend, remind, report, say, suggest, swear, tell, threaten, urge, warn, and more.

The Pro-Verb DO

Just as pronouns can substitute in for nouns and other nominals that are understood from the context, pro-verbs can substitute in for verbs. In English, the only pro-verb is DO.

DO as a pro-verb is most commonly used as a placeholder for verbs in question forms, especially for Predicate Questions that seek a verb or verb phrase as the answer. For example, in “What do you do for work?” and “What have you done to your hair?”, the main verbs ‘do’ and ‘done’ (not the auxiliaries that precedes them) stands in place for whatever actions the answer may contain. This DO is also used in Echo Questions like “She does?” (meaning “Really? I didn’t know that!”).

Verb Derivation

We can change the part of speech of a word (a process known as derivation) into a verb either by adding a prefix or suffix (affixation) or sometimes even without changing the form (verbification).

Affixes for Verbs

Words rooted in other parts of speech can be turned into verbs through the use of the suffixes -en, -ify, and -ize.

Turn an adjective into a verb with -en, as in ‘darken’, ‘sharpen’, or ‘threaten’.
Turn an adjective or a noun into a verb with -ify, as in ‘beautify’, ‘horrify’, or ‘purify’.
Turn a noun into a verb with -ize, as in ‘digitize’, ’emphasize’, or ‘polarize’.

Verbs with the -en suffix (which are not in their Passive Participle forms) are likely to be patientive verbs.

Another way to turn adjectives and nouns into verbs is with the prefix en-. For example: ‘enable’, ‘enclose’, ‘enforce’, and ‘ensure’.

Verbification

It’s very common for modern English speakers to verbify other words, especially nouns (even including proper nouns). We do this without changing the form of the original word, but simply by fitting it into the role of a verb within the clause. Verbification is especially common with social media and new technology.

Most commonly, verbified nouns are shortcuts that mean “to use the noun in its traditional/expected usage”. For example, the verb Google means “to conduct a web search using the Google search engine,” and the verb friend in a social media context means “to add [someone] as a friend on Facebook or similar platform”.

Verbified words take on the same properties as traditional verbs and can undergo shifts in verb forms. Continuing with the above examples, ‘has Googled’, ‘is Googling’, ‘friended’, and ‘unfriend’ are all acceptable expressions.

Verbals & Deverbals

Verbals and deverbals are words that are rooted in verbs but that can be used as other parts of speech like nouns or modifiers.

Verbals

Verbals maintain verb forms and hold other verb properties (like can have direct objects or be modified by adverbs) even as they are not used as main verbs of a sentence. Non-finite verb forms may be used as verbal complements (in Verb Patterns), as adjectives, as heads of modifier phrases, or even as heads of nominal phrases.

Participle Adjectives and Gerunds are two common examples of verbal types.

Deverbals

Unlike verbals, deverbals do not maintain the properties of a verb and may not maintain their verb forms.

For instance, the nouns ‘betrayal’ and ‘containment’ come from the verbs betray and contain, while the adjectives ‘appraisal’ and ‘painting’ come from the verbs appraise and paint. The adjective ‘open’ appears to be the same as the verb open, but that adjective cannot be accompanied by the adverb ‘swiftly’ or the direct object ‘the lid’ like the corresponding verb can.

English Grammar Encyclopedia for Educators