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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 as ...
) that in syntax 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 English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, 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, from ...
''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 deri ...
. 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 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 defi ...
(modified in form) to encode tense,
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, 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 producti ...
. 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 prope ...
,
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 ...
or
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 arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out;
past The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done. For some examples: * I ''washed'' the car yesterday. * The dog ''ate'' my homework. * John ''studies''
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
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 ...
''became'' the President of the United States in 2009. ''(occurrence)'' * Mike Trout ''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 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 the power of the ...
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 Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
) 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 diaspor ...
, 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 explored ...
. On the other hand,
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, Georgian, and some other languages, have ''
polypersonal agreement In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments (usually up to four). Polypersonalism is a morphological feature of a language, and languages that display it are called p ...
'': 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 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 ...
or
gerunds In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable ...
.


Intransitive verbs

An
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

A
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''. Transiti ...
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 oc ...
. 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
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 deri ...
phrase. The second element (noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive) is called a complement, which completes a clause 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 ...
, weather verbs like ''snow(s)'' take no subject or object. *
Intransitive 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 ar ...
(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 In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
. 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 verb In linguistics, an impersonal verb is one that has no determinate subject. For example, in the sentence "''It rains''", ''rain'' is an impersonal verb and the pronoun ''it'' does not refer to anything. In many languages the verb takes a third per ...
s 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 subj ...
s like
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, where the verb ''llueve'' means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require a
dummy pronoun A dummy pronoun is a deictic pronoun that fulfills a syntactical requirement without providing a contextually explicit meaning of its referent. As such, it is an example of exophora. Dummy pronouns are used in many Germanic languages, includ ...
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 ''Kalau Lagau Ya'', ''Kalaw Lagaw Ya'', ''Kala Lagaw Ya'' (), or the ''Western Torres Strait language'' (also several other names, see below), is the language indigenous to the central and western Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia. O ...
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'omb ...
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-
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'omb ...
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 subsequ ...
, ''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, 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 * Lex ...
, 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
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 ...
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 b ...
. 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. Mos ...
(as in "I am there"), the subjunctive (as in "I wish I ''were'' there"), and the imperative ("Be there!").


Voice

The
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 producti ...
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 Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
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 ...
s.


See also

*
Linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...


Verbs in various languages

* Adyghe verbs *
Arabic verbs Arabic verbs ( '; '), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of two to five (but usually three) consonants called a root (''triliteral'' or ''quadriliteral'' according to th ...
*
Ancient Greek verbs Ancient Greek verbs have four moods ( indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), three voices ( active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). * In the ...
*
Basque verbs The verb is one of the most complex parts of Basque grammar. It is sometimes represented as a difficult challenge for learners of the language, and many Basque grammars devote most of their pages to lists or tables of verb paradigms. This article ...
*
Bulgarian verbs Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared with other Slavic languages. Bulgarian verbs are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfec ...
* Chinese verbs *
English verbs Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed peri ...
* Finnish verb conjugation *
French verbs French verbs are a part of speech in French grammar. Each verb lexeme has a collection of finite and non-finite forms in its conjugation scheme. Finite forms depend on grammatical tense and person/number. There are eight simple tense–aspect ...
*
German verbs German verbs may be classified as either ''weak'', with a dental consonant inflection, or ''strong'', showing a vowel gradation (ablaut). Both of these are regular systems. Most verbs of both types are regular, though various subgroups and anoma ...
*
Germanic verb The Germanic language family is one of the language groups that resulted from the breakup of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It in turn divided into North, West and East Germanic groups, and ultimately produced a large group of mediaeval and modern l ...
s * Hebrew verb conjugation *
Hungarian verbs This page is about verbs in Hungarian grammar. Lemma or citation form There is basically only one pattern for verb endings, with predictable variations dependent on the phonological context. The lemma or citation form is always the third perso ...
*
Ilokano verb While other word categories in Ilocano language, Ilocano are not as diverse in forms, verbs are morphologically complex inflecting chiefly for Grammatical aspect, aspect. Ilocano verbs can also be cast in any one of five Austronesian alignment, foc ...
s * Irish verbs *
Italian verbs Italian verbs have a high degree of inflection, the majority of which follows one of three common patterns of conjugation. Italian conjugation is affected by mood, person, tense, number, aspect and occasionally gender. The three classes of v ...
*
Japanese godan and ichidan verbs The Japanese language has two main types of verbs which are referred to as and . Verb groups Categories are important when conjugating Japanese verbs, since conjugation patterns vary according to the verb's category. For example, and belong to ...
* Japanese verb conjugations *
Korean verbs Verbs in the Korean language come in last place in a clause. Verbs are the most complex part of speech, and a properly conjugated verb may stand on its own as a complete sentence. This article uses the Yale romanization in bold to show morphology ...
* Latin verbs *
Persian verbs Persian verbs ( fa, فعل‌های فارسی, Fe’lhā-ye fārsi, ) are very regular compared with those of most European languages. From the two stems given in dictionaries (e.g. '', '' 'take, took', '', '' 'write, wrote', '', '' 'give, gave' et ...
* Portuguese verb conjugation *
Proto-Indo-European verb Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, nu ...
*
Romance verbs Romance verbs refers to the verbs of the Romance languages. The verbs in Romance languages are the most inflected part of the language family. In the transition from Latin to the Romance languages, verbs went through many phonological, syntactic, ...
*
Romanian verbs Romanian verbs are highly inflected in comparison to English, but markedly simple in comparison to Latin, from which Romanian has inherited its verbal conjugation system (through Vulgar Latin). Unlike its nouns, Romanian verbs behave in a similar ...
* Sanskrit verbs * Sesotho verbs * Slovene verbs *
Spanish verbs Spanish verbs form one of the more complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a relatively synthetic language with a moderate to high degree of inflection, which shows up mostly in Spanish conjugation. As is typical of verbs in virtually all ...
* Tigrinya verbs


Grammar

*
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 ...
*
Grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
* Grammatical aspect * Grammatical mood * Grammatical tense *
Grammatical voice In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
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Performative utterance In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing. In a 1955 lecture series, later published as ''How to D ...
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Phrasal verb In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit composed of a verb followed by a particle (examples: ''turn down'', ''run into'' or ''sit up''), sometimes combined with a preposition (e ...
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Phrase structure rules Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural langu ...
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Sentence (linguistics) In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, ...
* Syntax *
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 ...
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Transitivity (grammatical category) In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take objects and how many such objects a verb can take. It is closely related to valency, which considers other verb arguments in addition to direct objects. ...
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Verb argument In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the '' complement'' is a closely related concept. Most predicates ...
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Verb framing In linguistics, verb-framing and satellite-framing are typological descriptions of a way that verb phrases in a language can describe the ''path'' of motion or the ''manner'' of motion, respectively. Some languages make this distinction and others ...
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Verbification In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation or null derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a different word class) without any change in form, which is ...
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Verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''q ...


Other

* '' Le Train de Nulle Part'': A 233-page book without a single verb.


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