A verb () is a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

(

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ...

) that in

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, fr ...

''to'', is the

infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is d ...

. In many

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound product ...

. A verb may also agree with the

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pro ...

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

of some of its

argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialecti ...

s, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses:

present The present (or here'' and ''now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, not as a recollection (perceived more than once) or a speculation (predicted, hypothesis, uncertain). It is a period o ...

, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done;

future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that curren ...

, to indicate that an action will be done. For some examples: * I ''washed'' the car yesterday. * The dog ''ate'' my homework. * John ''studies'' English and French. * Lucy ''enjoys'' listening to music. *

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

''became'' the President of the United States in 2009. ''(occurrence)'' *

Mike Trout Michael Nelson Trout (born August 7, 1991) is an American professional baseball center fielder for the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB). Trout is a ten-time MLB All-Star, three-time American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MV ...

''is'' a center fielder. ''(state of being)''

Agreement

In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number or gender. With the exception of the verb ''to be'', English shows distinctive agreements only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which are marked by adding "-s" ( ''walks'') or "-es" (''fishes''). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb (''I walk'', ''you walk'', ''they walk'', etc.).

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...

inflect verbs for

tense–aspect–mood Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...

(abbreviated 'TAM'), and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin scree ...

) with the subject.

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese dia ...

, like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense-aspect-mood, as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject—it is a strictly

dependent-marking language A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explore ...

. On the other hand, Basque, Georgian, and some other languages, have '' polypersonal agreement'': the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object, and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages.

Types

Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that accompany it and the relationship those words have with the verb itself. Classified by the number of their valency arguments, usually four basic types are distinguished: intransitives, transitives, ditransitives and double transitive verbs. Some verbs have special grammatical uses and hence complements, such as copular verbs (i.e., ''be''); the verb ''do'' used for ''do''-support in questioning and negation; and tense or aspect auxiliaries, e.g., ''be'', ''have'' or ''can''. In addition, verbs can be non-finite (not inflected for person, number, tense, etc.), such special forms as infinitives, participles or gerunds.

Intransitive verbs

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

(a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The woman ''spoke'' softly." "The athlete ''ran'' faster than the official." "The boy ''wept''."

Transitive verbs

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transit ...

is followed by a noun or

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently o ...

. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns, but are instead called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friend ''read'' the newspaper." "The teenager ''earned'' a speeding ticket." A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaper ''was read'' by my friend." "A speeding ticket ''was earned'' by the teenager."

Ditransitive verbs

Ditransitive verbs (sometimes called Vg verbs after the verb ''give'') precede either two noun phrases or a noun phrase and then a prepositional phrase often led by ''to'' or ''for''. For example: "The players ''gave'' their teammates high fives." "The players ''gave'' high fives to their teammates." When two noun phrases follow a transitive verb, the first is an indirect object, that which is receiving something, and the second is a direct object, that being acted upon. Indirect objects can be noun phrases or prepositional phrases.

Double transitive verbs

Double transitive verbs (sometimes called Vc verbs after the verb ''consider'') are followed by a noun phrase that serves as a direct object and then a second noun phrase, adjective, or

phrase. The second element (noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive) is called a complement, which completes a

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb wi ...

that would not otherwise have the same meaning. For example: "The young couple ''considers'' the neighbors wealthy people." "Some students ''perceive'' adults quite inaccurately." "Sarah ''deemed'' her project to be the hardest she has ever completed."

Copular verbs

Copular verbs ( linking verbs) include ''be'', ''seem'', ''become'', ''appear'', ''look'', and ''remain''. For example: "Her daughter ''was'' a writing tutor." "The singers ''were'' very nervous." "His mother ''looked'' worried." "Josh ''remained'' a reliable friend." These verbs precede nouns or adjectives in a sentence, which become predicate nouns and predicate adjectives. Copulae are thought to 'link' the predicate adjective or noun to the subject. They can also be followed by an adverb of place, which is sometimes referred to as a predicate adverb. For example: "My house ''is'' down the street." The main copular verb ''be'' is manifested in eight forms ''be'', ''is'', ''am'', ''are'', ''was'', ''were'', ''been'', and ''being'' in English.

Valency

The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its ''valency'' or ''valence''. Verbs can be classified according to their valency: * Avalent (valency = 0): the verb has neither a subject nor an object. Zero valency does not occur in English; in some languages such as

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language o ...

, weather verbs like ''snow(s)'' take no subject or object. * Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has a subject. For example: "he runs", "it falls". * Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and a direct object. For example: "she eats fish", "we hunt nothing". * Ditransitive (valency = 3, trivalent): the verb has a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object. For example: "He gives her a flower" or "She gave John the watch." *A few English verbs, particularly those concerned with financial transactions, take four arguments, as in "Pat₁ sold Chris₂ a lawnmower₃ for $20₄" or "Chris₁ paid Pat₂ $20₃ for a lawnmower₄".

Impersonal and objective verbs

Weather verbs often appear to be impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in

null-subject language In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject. In the principles and parameters framework, the null sub ...

s like Spanish, where the verb ''llueve'' means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require a dummy pronoun and therefore formally have a valency of 1. However, as verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective, the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases.

Valency marking

Verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. In non-valency marking languages such as English, a transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, in English the verb ''move'' has no grammatical object in ''he moves'' (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as in ''he moves himself''); but in ''he moves the car'', the subject and object are distinct and the verb has a different valency. Some verbs in English, however, have historically derived forms that show change of valency in some causative verbs, such as ''fall-fell-fallen'':''fell-felled-felled''; ''rise-rose-risen'':''raise-raised-raised''; ''cost-cost-cost'':''cost-costed-costed''. In valency marking languages, valency change is shown by inflecting the verb in order to change the valency. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia, for example, verbs distinguish valency by argument agreement suffixes and TAM endings: * Nui mangema "He arrived earlier today" (mangema today past singular subject active intransitive perfective) * Palai mangemanu "They ualarrived earlier today" * Thana mangemainu "They luralarrived earlier today" ''Verb structure:'' manga-i-

umber Umber is a natural brown earth pigment that contains iron oxide and manganese oxide. In its natural form, it is called raw umber. When calcined, the color becomes warmer and it becomes known as burnt umber. Its name derives from ''terra d'ombr ...

TAM "arrive+active+singular/dual/plural+TAM" * Nuidh wapi manganu "He took the fish o that placeearlier today" (manganu today past singular object attainative transitive perfective) * Nuidh wapi mangamanu "He took the two fish o that placeearlier today" * Nuidh wapi mangamainu "He took the hree or morefish o that placeearlier today" ''Verb structure:'' manga-Ø-

TAM "arrive+attainative+singular/dual/plural+TAM" The verb stem manga- 'to take/come/arrive' at the destination takes the active suffix -i (> mangai-) in the intransitive form, and as a transitive verb the stem is not suffixed. The TAM ending -nu is the general today past attainative perfective, found with all numbers in the perfective except the singular active, where -ma is found.

Tense, aspect, and modality

Depending on the language, verbs may express ''grammatical tense'', ''aspect'', or ''modality''.

Tense

Grammatical tense

Östen Dahl Östen Dahl (; born 4 November 1945 in Stockholm) is a Swedish linguist and professor best known for pioneering a marker-based approach to tense and aspect in linguistic typology. Dahl finished his PhD at the University of Gothenburg and subseq ...

, ''Tense and Aspect Systems'', Blackwell, 1985. is the use of

auxiliary verb An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...

s or

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

s to convey whether the action or state is before, simultaneous with, or after some reference point. The reference point could be the time of utterance, in which case the verb expresses absolute tense, or it could be a past, present, or future time of reference previously established in the sentence, in which case the verb expresses relative tense.

Aspect

Aspect expresses how the action or state occurs through time. Important examples include: *

perfective aspect The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...

, in which the action is viewed in its entirety through completion (as in "I saw the car") *

imperfective aspect The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...

, in which the action is viewed as ongoing; in some languages a verb could express imperfective aspect more narrowly as: **habitual aspect, in which the action occurs repeatedly (as in "I used to go there every day"), or **

continuous aspect The continuous and progressive aspects ( abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many ...

, in which the action occurs without pause; continuous aspect can be further subdivided into *** stative aspect, in which the situation is a fixed, unevolving state (as in "I know French"), and ***

progressive aspect The continuous and progressive aspects (abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many ...

, in which the situation continuously evolves (as in "I am running") * perfect, which combines elements of both aspect and tense and in which both a prior event and the state resulting from it are expressed (as in "he has gone there", i.e. "he went there and he is still there") * discontinuous past, which combines elements of a past event and the implication that the state resulting from it was later reversed (as in "he did go there" or "he has been there", i.e. "he went there but has now come back") Aspect can either be

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexic ...

, in which case the aspect is embedded in the verb's meaning (as in "the sun shines," where "shines" is lexically stative), or it can be grammatically expressed, as in "I am running."

Mood and modality

Modality expresses the speaker's attitude toward the action or state given by the verb, especially with regard to degree of necessity, obligation, or permission ("You must go", "You should go", "You may go"), determination or willingness ("I will do this no matter what"), degree of probability ("It must be raining by now", "It may be raining", "It might be raining"), or ability ("I can speak French"). All languages can express modality with

s, but some also use verbal forms as in the given examples. If the verbal expression of modality involves the use of an auxiliary verb, that auxiliary is called a

modal verb A modal verb is a type of verb that contextually indicates a modality such as a ''likelihood'', ''ability'', ''permission'', ''request'', ''capacity'', ''suggestion'', ''order'', ''obligation'', or ''advice''. Modal verbs generally accompany the ...

. If the verbal expression of modality involves inflection, we have the special case of mood; moods include the

indicative A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...

(as in "I am there"), the

subjunctive The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality s ...

(as in "I wish I ''were'' there"), and the imperative ("Be there!").

Voice

The

Klaiman, M. H., ''Grammatical Voice (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)'', Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991. of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the

active voice Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. A ...

(as in "I saw the car") and the

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...

(as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").

Non-finite forms

Most languages have a number of

verbal noun A verbal noun or gerundial noun is a verb form that functions as a noun. An example of a verbal noun in English is 'sacking' as in the sentence "The sacking of the city was an epochal event" (''sacking'' is a noun formed from the verb ''sack''). ...

s that describe the action of the verb. In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally called

participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

s. English has an active participle, also called a present participle; and a

passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...

participle, also called a past participle. The active participle of ''break'' is ''breaking'', and the passive participle is ''broken''. Other languages have

attributive verb An attributive verb is a verb that modifies (expresses an attribute of) a noun in the manner of an attributive adjective, rather than express an independent idea as a predicate. In English (and in most European languages), verb forms that can be ...

forms with tense and aspect. This is especially common among verb-final languages, where attributive verb phrases act as

relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the argument ...

References

* * Gideon Goldenberg, "On Verbal Structure and the Hebrew Verb", in: idem, ''Studies in Semitic Linguistics'', Jerusalem: Magnes Press 1998, pp. 148–196 nglish translation; originally published in Hebrew in 1985 *

External links

www.verbix.com
Verbs and verb conjugation in many languages.
conjugation.com
English Verb Conjugation.
Italian Verbs Coniugator and Analyzer
Conjugation and Analysis of Regular and Irregular Verbs, and also of Neologisms, like ''googlare'' for ''to google''.
El verbo en español
Downloadable handbook to learn the Spanish verb paradigm in an easy ruled-based method. It also supplies the guidelines to know whenever a Spanish verb is regular or irregular {{Authority control Parts of speech