If you look at these two sentences, what
is the difference in terms of the verbs
that are being used?
Well, if you look at the second one, "milk,"
this one has a direct object. So milk whom
or what?
And the answer is cows. And "cows" is the
direct object, which means that "milk" is a
transitive verb. So a lot of verbs
are either transitive or intransitive;
they have a direct object or they don't.
But there's also a different kind of
verb, and that's our first example here,
which is a linking verb. So a linking
verb is a verb that seems to have a kind
of object but it's not really a direct
object. What comes afterwards, and you can
see that here, is something that
describes the subject. So if we look
earlier we have "I" is the subject, and
then we get our linking verb, and then
whatever comes afterwards describes the
subject. So you can think of a linking
verb as a kind of big equals sign.
It has a similar function as an equals
sign. "I" equals "a farmer." And you couldn't
say that with the second one; you couldn't say
"I" equals "cows." That wouldn't make much
sense. So linking verbs, then, allow you to
describe the subject and they do it in a
number of different ways. So first of all
let's actually just make a list of some
common linking verbs here, and linking
verbs tend to follow into a number of
different categories. So, first of all, one
category is the verb "to be." And we can
come up with a number of examples here.
So the verb "to be" would be things like "I
am," "she is," "we are," "I was," and so on. The
second category consists of verbs that
have to do with states of being.
And we'll just list a few
of these here. If I say "I become," you can
see that it's still a kind of equals sign
there, but in this case we're talking
about a process, a state,
a state of change in this case, but
there's still that kind of equation
going on. We can have ones like "I appear,"
"I grow," "I turn," if you say something like
"she turned rather sour," right, and
"sour" is describing "she." You can say
things like "seem," and this is a slightly
bigger category, perhaps, than "to be" in
terms of the range of verbs that fit
into it.
Our third category, and our last one here,
has to do with the senses. So these also
allow us to describe the subject in
different ways, and these include ones
like "feel" and "look" and "smell" and "sound"
and "taste." And again there's a kind of
equals sign there. If you say "it
tastes great,"
then "it" is being described again by
"great," whatever "it" may be.
Let's look at a few more examples and
see how this works in practice. So let's
write "it is time." There's our first
example and then we'll add one more here.
And we're going to write "these flowers
smell
great."
Okay, we've got two sentences here. You
can see what the linking verbs are, so we
have "is" and we have "smell."
Now the next thing we want to learn is
that there are some names that we use to
describe what comes after the linking verb.
So the last little bit here -- "time" and
"great" -- this part of the sentence that
describes the subject,
this is called the subject complement.
And we don't mean the
kind of complimint with an "i," where you
try to flatter somebody and you say well
you look nice today. This kind of
complement is the word complement that
means to add something to something else,
to contribute something extra, to go well
with let's say. So a subject complement,
then, is something that comes after
linking verb and describes the
subject in a little bit more detail.
There are two kinds of subject
complements, broadly speaking. So, on the
one hand, you can have a noun, sometimes a
pronoun, and the other kind of subject
complement is an adjective.
So every subject complement that comes
after a linking verb is going to be one of
these two options. Now we have some fancy
names to describe these two options. So
if it's a noun, then it can be called a
predicate nominative (very fancy term),
or a predicate noun.
It's essentially the same thing, but you're
going to come across either one of these
two descriptions, and we'll tell you in a
second why it's called the predicate
nominative. The other one here, if it's an
adjective, is sometimes called a
predicate adjective.
So those are some terms that you might
come across. Again, whatever comes
afterwards is called a subject complement.
If it's a noun or pronoun (especially if
it's a noun) it's called a predicate
nominative, and if it's an adjective, it's
called a predicate adjective. But why is
it called this?
Well, the predicate is, of course,
everything that describes the subject, so
that makes a kind of sense, and then the
word "nominative" comes from Latin, in
Latin this has to do with nomen (or name).
And the nominative is always the subject
of the sentence. So if a noun is in the
nominative case, then it's the subject.
And the idea here, then, is that this bit
that follows afterwards,
let's say it's a noun, should agree with
whatever comes before. And you can see
that in a strange rule of grammar. So
let's say that I were to say, "it is I."
I know, that sounds kind of weird;
most of us would say "it is me," "it's
me." But let's say I said "it is I." Well, the
reason why grammatically it should be "I" is
because "I" would be the subject. If
you say "it is I," "I" has to agree with the
subject in terms of its form, and, as a
result, it's in the subject form: it's
that nominative form. I know that's a
really weird rule of grammar. Most of us
would probably break that one, but it
sort of makes sense of why we call this
the predicate nominative. One
final point to make,
and that's the fact that a linking verb,
as in the first case, can also sometimes
be a different kind of verb. So if you
look at the last example here "she
smelled the flowers," "the flowers" is
a direct object. And that means that
"smelled" in the second instance is a
transitive verb. So be
careful, and don't assume right away that
when you see a particular verb it has to
be a linking verb or a transitive verb or an
intransitive verb. There's a lot of
flexibility there. And in fact, one
category, the category "to be," which we
looked at -- these verbs can also be
helping verbs. And we'll talk about that in a
different movie. So everything depends on
context, as usual, but as you do more of
this kind of analyzing, you'll get much
better at spotting what kind of verb
you're dealing with.