Due

Read: Understanding English Grammar, Chapter 3
Post: Sentence analysis

Meeting Place

We will meet in our usual classroom, Dial 153.  Please bring Understanding English Grammar.

February 19-23, 2001

We continue our examination of syntax with a closer look at verbs, this time studying tense, auxiliaries, phrasal verbs, and voice.

As I explained in class, your assignment this week is to used what you have learned so far about phonology, morphology, and syntax to analyze a sentence.  Please post your analysis on your Web site under the file name "quiz1.htm" and link it to your index page. 
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Terms 

Resources

Understanding English Grammar contains detailed descriptions of various concepts related to verbs.

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language presents detailed descriptions of numerous aspects of English grammar.

Updated February 16, 2001
© Mark Canada, 2001
mark.canada@uncp.edu
 

Verbs

By Mark Canada
English Professor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

At the heart of every sentence is a verb, an action word that generally indicates what someone or something is doing--or perhaps merely indicates being.  For example, each of the following sentences contains a verb, marked in red:

  1. Larry is here, and Maria is glad.
  2. Ronald grew tired.
  3. The baby walked.
  4. The party lost momentum.
These sentences illustrate four basic types of verbs.  The first is the particular verb be, which actually appears in eight forms: be, am, are, is, was, were, been, and being.  The verb be is unique in that it generally can do one of two things.  First, it can tell when or where something is, as in the first part of sentence 1 above.  Second, it can link someone or something with a word that renames or describes him, her, or it, as in the second part of sentence 1.  A second type of verb is called a linking verb.  Like be, linking verbs connect people or with words renaming or describing them, as in sentence 2.  A third type of verb is an intransitive verb, which generally describes what someone or something is doing, as sentence 3.  Finally, the fourth type of verb is a transitive verb, which always is followed by a direct object and perhaps an indirect object, words that refer to people or things receiving the verb's action, as in sentence 4.  The type of verb helps dictate the sentence pattern.

A simple test can help you to identify the verb or verbs in a sentence.  Insert the words "Today" and "Yesterday" at the beginning of the sentence and ask yourself which words change form.  A word that does is probably a verb.  Try the test on the sentences above:

  1. Today, Larry is here, and Maria is glad.  Yesterday, Larry was here, and Maria was glad.
  2. Today, Ronald grows tired.  Yesterday, Ronald grew tired.
  3. Today, the baby walks.  Yesterday, the baby walked.
  4. Today, the party loses momentum.  Yesterday, the party lost momentum.
This test works because verbs have something called tense.  That is, they can be changed to indicate the time when an action takes place or took place.  If they describe an action taking place at the same time the speaker is speaking, the speaker can use the present tense.  If they describe an action that took place earlier, the speaker can use the past tense. 

Although we make these changes without even thinking about them, an analysis of them requires some understanding of phonology.  In most cases, we form the past tense of a verb by simply adding one or two sounds to the end--either a voiceless alveolar stop [t], a voiced alveolar stop [d], or a mid-central vowel [uh*] and a voiced alveolar stop [d].  Thus, [stap] becomes [stapt], [kul] becomes [kuld], and [stet] becomes [stetuhd].  When spelling these words, we generally add the letters -ed.  These added sounds constitute one of the eight inflectional affixes in English.  Verbs that take one of these inflectional affixes and otherwise do not change in form are called regular verbs.  Our language also has a number of verbs that require different types of sound change to indicate past tense.  This relatively small group of irregular verbs includes go (went), see (saw), take (took), and give (gave).

Actually, we regularly change and supplement verbs in more complex ways to express other shades of meaning.  To indicate that something will happen in the future, for example, we add the word will, as in "I will take calculus in the fall."  The word will is one of many English auxiliaries, words added to verbs to express various shades of meaning.  Other auxiliaries include should, may, can, be, and have.  Linguists have recognized that English speakers combine auxiliaries in regular ways according to something called the verb-expansion rule.

We also can add words to the end of verbs to create what are called phrasal verbs, as in the sentences below:

  1. She put up with him.
  2. She chewed him out.
  3. She gave up and  walked out on him.
The words added to the verbs look like prepositions, and indeed those words are prepositions in different contexts, as in "up the ladder," "with a friend," "out the door," and "on the waterfront."  When added to verbs to create a distinct meaning, howeer, we called these words particles.

Exercises

  1. In each of the sentences below, identify the verb.  Note its type and tense, as well as any auxiliaries or particles.
    1. He tried the soup.
    2. I am proud of her.
    3. Jamal does the housework.
    4. We should write him a letter.
    5. She has given him many gifts.
    6. Pat will be traveling to Virginia.
    7. Henry was in the basement.
    8. Martina looks happy.
    9. She smiled.
  2. Write sentences containing each type of verb: be, linking verb, intransitive verb, and transitive verb.


* Linguists commonly transcribe this sound with a symbol called a schwa, which looks like an upside-down e.  Because this symbol is not readily reproducible on the Web, I have used [uh] to transcribe the sound.