A verb is a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, 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 consensus among linguist ...

that 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 corpuscle 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 s ...

''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 that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all ...

. In many

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s, verbs are

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

(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 produ ...

. A verb may also agree with the

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who 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 suc ...

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic 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 can ...

of some of its

argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...

s, such as its subject, or

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

. In English, three tenses exist:

present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...

, to indicate that an action is being carried out;

past The past is the set of all Spacetime#Definitions, 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 ...

, to indicate that an action has been done; and

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 currently ex ...

, to indicate that an action will be done, expressed with the

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 ...

''will'' or ''shall''. For example: * Lucy ''will go'' to school. ''(action, future)'' *

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

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

Mike Trout Michael Nelson Trout (born August 7, 1991) is an American professional baseball outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB). Trout is an 11-time Major League Baseball All-Star Game, All-Star, three-time American League (A ...

''is'' a center fielder. ''(state of being, present)'' Every language discovered so far makes some form of

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

-verb distinction, possibly because of the graph-like nature of communicated meaning by humans, i.e. nouns being the "entities" and verbs being the "links" between them. The word ''verb'' comes ) and shares the same

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

root as ''word.''

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 spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

inflect verbs for

tense–aspect–mood Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of ...

(abbreviated 'TAM'), and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish) with the subject. Japanese, 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 po ...

'': 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 Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all l ...

participles In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) 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 a verb and used as an adject ...

or gerunds.

Intransitive verbs

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...

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, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

(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 entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

is followed by a noun or

noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

. 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 (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...

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 ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

, weather verbs like ''snow(s)'' take no subject or object. *

Intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...

(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 In grammar, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be ...

(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 s ...

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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, where the verb ''llueve'' means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require a

dummy pronoun A dummy pronoun, also known as an expletive 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. A dummy pronoun is us ...

and therefore formally have a valency of 1. 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 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. On some islands, ...

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 earth pigment consisting of iron oxide and manganese oxide; it has a brownish color that can vary among shades of yellow, red, and green. Umber is considered one of the oldest pigments known to humans, first used in the Ajant ...

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 subsequ ...

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

s or

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

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 A verb is a word that 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 fo ...

, 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 Relative tense and absolute tense are distinct possible uses of the grammatical category of tense. Absolute tense means the grammatical expression of time reference (usually past, present or future) relative to "now" – the moment of speaking. In ...

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 ...

, 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 ...

, 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 (list of glossing abbreviations, 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 asp ...

, 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 l ...

, 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 Discontinuous past is a category of past tense of verbs argued to exist in some languages which have a meaning roughly characterizable as "past and not present" or "past with no present relevance". The phrase "discontinuous past" was first used in t ...

, 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 * Lexical ...

, 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'', ''necessity'', ''possibility'' or ''advice''. Modal v ...

. 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 sentence Dec ...

(as in "I am there"), the

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

(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 prevalent in many of the world's languages. It is the default voice for clauses that feature a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most Indo-European languages ...

(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 ...

(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 Historically, grammarians have described a verbal noun or gerundial noun as 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" (wherein ...

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

participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) 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 a verb and used as an adject ...

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 ...

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 phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn ...

References

Bibliography

* *

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