English Language Teaching : Kinds of verbs

A verb is a word or a combination of words that indicates action or a state of being or condition. A verb is the part of a sentence that tells us what the subject performs. Verbs are the hearts of English sentences.

Examples:

Jacob walks in the morning. (A usual action)

Mike is going to school. (A condition of action)

Albert does not like to walk. (A negative action)

Anna is a good girl. (A state of being)

Basic Forms of Verbs

Base form: Children play in the field.

Infinitive: Tell them not to play

Past tense: They played football yesterday.

Past participle: I have eaten a burger.

Present participle: I saw them playing with him today.

Gerund: Swimming is the best exercise.

Different Types of Verbs

Finite Verbs

Non-finite Verbs

Action Verbs

Linking Verb

Auxiliary Verbs

Modal Verbs

Finite Verbs:

Alex went to school. (Subject – Alex – performed the action in the past. This information is evident only by the verb ‘went’.)

Robert plays hockey.

He is playing for Australia.

He is one of the best players. (Here, the verb ‘is’ directly refers to the subject itself.)

Non-finite Verbs:

Alex went abroad to play (Infinitives)

Playing cricket is his only job. (Present participle)

I have a broken bat. (Past participle)

Walking is a good habit. (Gerund)

Action Verbs:

I painted the car. (The verb ‘paint’ demands an object to be painted)

She is reading the newspaper. (The verb ‘read’ asks the question “what is she reading?” – the answer is the object)

She smiled. (The verb ‘smile’ cannot have any object since the action of ‘smiling’ does not fall upon anything/anyone)

I wake up at 6 AM. (No object is needed for this verb)

Linking Verb:

She appears ready for the game. (She is ready for the game.)

The food seemed delicious. (The food was delicious.)

You look happy. (You are happy.)

Auxiliary Verbs:

Alex is going to school.

They are walking in the park.

I have seen a movie.

Do you drink tea?

Don’t waste your time.

Please, do submit your assignments.

Modal Verbs:

I may want to talk to you again.

They must play their best game to win.

She should call him.

I will go there.

Examples of linking verbs in sentences:

The tomato smells rotten.

The professor is absolutely sure.

My brother gets mad when he’s hungry.

Lean was tired until the caffeine kicked in.

The company stays true to its founding principles.

The tomato is rotten.

My brother is mad when he’s hungry.

The company is true to its founding principles.

You should stop and smell the roses.

Get me a roast beef sandwich, please.

The judge stayed the execution.

List of linking verbs:

Is	Can be	May be
Are	Could be	Might be
Am	Will be	Must be
Was	Would be	Has been
Were	Shall be	Have been
	Should be	Had been

The “Five Sense” verbs:
The “States of Being” verbs:

My friends are dancing at Stella’s tonight.

The girls are happy because they’re eating all together.

Verbs are related to a lot of other factors like the subject, person, number, tense, mood, voice, etc.

There are six basic forms of verbs. These forms are as follows:

Finite verbs are the actual verbs which are called the roots of sentences. It is a form of a verb that is performed by or refers to a subject and uses one of the twelve forms of tense and changes according to the number/person of the subject.

Example:

Non-finite Verbs are not actual verbs. They do not work as verbs in the sentence rather they work as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. Non-finite verbs do not change according to the number/person of the subject because these verbs, also called verbals, do not have any direct relation to the subject. Sometimes they become the subject themselves.

The forms of non-finite verbs are – infinitive, gerund, and participle (participles become finite verbs when they take auxiliary verbs.)

Example:

Action verbs indicate what the subject of a sentence performs. Action verbs can make the listener/reader feel emotions, see scenes more vividly and accurately.

Action verbs can be transitive or intransitive.

Transitive verbs must have a direct object. A transitive verb demands something/someone to be acted upon.

Transitive verb : of Four kinds.

i) Causative
a) Intransative as Causative
Birds fly - The boy flies a kite.
Water boils - She boils water.
I walk - I walk the child.
Rice grows - We grow rice.
b) Non-causative ~Causative
Eat - feed
Learn teach
Know Inform
Dive dip
Fall fell
See Show
Rise raise
Suck suckle
Remember remind
Lie lay
c) Causative by adding make, have, get
I do - I make him do.
I water the garden - I have my sister water the garden
He got me to buy the book

ii) Reflexive
He killed himself
We feed (ourselves) on rice.

iii) Reciprocal
Good students teach one another.
They help each other.

iv) Factative( transitive verb of incomplete predication) with objective complement.
She calls me (a fool)
We elected him (chairman)
They choose me (captain)
We made him (caretaker)
The mother named the child (Faria)

Example:

Intransitive verbs do not act upon anything. They may be followed by an adjective, adverb, preposition, or another part of speech.

Example:

Note: {Subject + Intransitive verb} is sufficient to make a complete sentence but {Subject + Transitive verb} is not sufficient because transitive verbs demand a direct object.

A linking verb adds details about the subject of a sentence. In its simplest form, it connects the subject and the complement — that is, the words that follow the linking verb. It creates a link between them instead of showing action.

Often, what is on each side of a linking verb is equivalent; the complement redefines or restates the subject.

Generally, linking verbs are called ‘be’ verbs which are - am, is, are, was, were. However, there are some other verbs which can work as linking verbs. Those verbs are:

Act, feel, remain, appear, become, seem, smell, sound, grow, look, prove, stay, taste, turn.

Some verbs in this list can also be action verbs. To figure out if they are linking verbs, you should try replacing them with forms of the be verbs. If the changed sentence makes sense, that verb is a linking verb.

Example:

Auxiliary verbs are also called helping verbs. An auxiliary verb extends the main verb by helping to show time, tense, and possibility. The auxiliary verbs are – be verbs, have, and do.

They are used in the continuous (progressive) and perfect tenses.

Linking verbs work as main verbs in the sentence, but auxiliary verbs help main verbs.

Do is an auxiliary verb that is used to ask questions, to express negation, to provide emphasis, and more.

Example:

A modal verb is a kind of an auxiliary verb. It assists the main verb to indicate possibility, potentiality, ability, permission, expectation, and obligation.

The modal verbs are can, could, must, may, might, ought to, shall, should, will, would.

Example:

A verb shows the power of action, and it also can connect ideas. And these verbs are called "Linking Verbs", and if we want to call it vastly then we consider them as "a state of being verbs".

To know more about linking verbs, we need to talk about action verbs. These verbs express some physical or mental action that a person, animal, object or even nature can do. Action verbs are words like drink dance, eat and swim. Action verbs are different from linking verbs, which we can think of as "states of being" verbs.

All forms of be verbs are linking verbs. For example: are, am, is, were, was etc. Besides, verbs that have to do with the five senses are linking verbs: feel, look, smell, sound and taste.

So we come to the point that linking verb is not an action verb. It tells about what the subject is not what it’s doing. For example: Sneha’s cat is tired, here shows the condition of Sneha’s cat, not what it’s doing. So here “is” is working as a linking verb.

There are so many linking verbs. It depends on how we do the counting, but there are about a dozen and a half common linking verbs.

The underlined words are linking verbs. They're all examples of states of being. In fact, we could replace the verbs smell, gets and stays with the verb "is" and the meaning would remain the same.

Of course, there’s certainly a shade in meaning when we say that a tomato smells rotten instead of that it is rotten, but we get the idea.

But sometimes they’re not expressing themselves as linking verbs. When they’re transitive verbs, meaning that they take an object. Let’s consider the following examples:

In each case, the verb smell, get, and stay have a direct object (roses, sandwich and execution, respectively). There's no state of being involved.

We tried to bring up most of the linking verbs into this very list.

Forms of be:

Feel: This sweater feels itchy.

Look: The sculpture looks strange.

Smell: The dinner smells wonderful.

Sound: That doorbell sounds broken.

Taste: This soup tastes delicious.

Act Grow Stay

Appear Prove Turn

Become Remain

Get Some

Now we need to know about the differences between linking and helping verbs to have a constructive idea of linking verb.

A linking verb doesn’t always act like a linking verb. Well, that’s because a word like “is” can also play an auxiliary or helping role in a sentence.

For example, in the sentence, Malcom is drawing a picture, the word “is” isn’t a linking verb. It’s a helping verb. It’s there to “help” the main verb in the sentence (drawing).

So, how do we tell whether a word on our list of linking verbs above is playing the part in a given sentence?

If it’s followed by a predicate adjective or predicate noun, then it’s a linking verb. But if it’s next to an “-ing” verb, then it’s a helping verb.

For example:

Here, “-are” is a helping verb because the –ing verb follows it.

Here “-are” is a linking verb because a predicate adjective follows it.

Copulative/linking/stating Verbs :

Because many of these copulative verbs may be used non-copulatively, examples are provided. Also, there can be other copulative verbs depending on the context and the meaning of the specific verb used, therefore this list is not an exhaustive one.

act "Tom acted suspicious."
appear "Tom appears satisfied, but really is not."
be "Tom is a coward."
become (inchoative) "Tom became wealthy."
call in "Tom called in sick."
come "The prediction came true;" "the belt came loose;" "the characters in the story come alive"
come out "It came out burnt."
constitute "Verbs constitute one of the main word classes in the English language"
die "He died poor."
eat "Tom eats healthy."
emerge "Tom emerged unharmed after the incident."
end up "I ended up broke;" "the room ended up a mess."
equal "Two plus two equals four."
get (inchoative) "Tom got angry."
go "The man went crazy;" "Tom went bald;" "the food went bad;" "the mistake went unnoticed"
grow (inchoative) "Tom grew insistent." fall "Tom fell ill with the flu."
feel "Tom felt nauseated."
freeze "The lake froze solid."
keep "Tom kept quiet."
lean "This area leans conservative."
look "Tom looks upset."
play "The possum played dead."
prove "Tom's behavior proves difficult to understand."
remain "Tom remained unsatisfied."
run "Protectionist impulses run far too strong on Capitol Hill"[2] (New York Times)
seem "Tom seems happy."
shine "Her smile shines bright."
smell "Tom smelled sweet"
sound "Tom sounded obnoxious."
stay "Tom stayed happy."
take "Tom took ill."
taste "The food tastes fresh."
turn (inchoative) "Tom turned angry."
turn up "Tom turned up missing."
wax "Tom waxed lyrical."

Weak Verb	Strong Verb Variations
Run	Bolt, sprint, jog
Walk	Slink, trot, mope
Make	Create, forge, foster, brew
Say	Speak, voice, purr, mutter

Here are a few examples of how to replace to be verbs with something stronger:

"To Be" Verbs Sentence	Replacing "To Be" Verbs	Replacing Weak Verb with Strong Verb
She was walking through the corridor.	She walked through the corridor.	She slinked through the corridor.
Conrad is afraid of the dark.	Conrad fears the dark.	Conrad cowers from the darkness.
I was being chased by someone I didn't know.	I was chased by someone I didn't know.	Someone I didn't know chased after me.
I was wanting to visit this forest for as long as I can remember.	I wanted to visit this forest for as long as I can remember.