Hi and welcome back to our series of lessons on the parts of speech
My name is Ganesh and this lesson is all about verbs. In this lesson I will teach
you the different types of verbs that we have in English and I'll also show you how to
avoid some common mistakes that students make with verbs. We will start with state
and action verbs, and then we'll look at main and helping verbs, and then we'll
turn to regular and irregular verbs, and finally we'll discuss transitive and
intransitive verbs. Now before we begin as always if you have any questions at
all you just have to let me know in the comments section and I'll talk to you
there.
OK so first of all what is a verb?
Well a verb is just a word that shows an action or a state - state means a
situation. And actually those are the two types of verbs - we call them state verbs
and action verbs. Sometimes they're called stative and dynamic verbs but the
meaning is the same.
OK what's the difference between these two? The difference is that action verbs
express physical activities or processes. For example verbs like kick, shout, run,
climb, stand, sit, grow - all of these show us physical activities or processes. But
a state verb is a verb that expresses a situation - for example, verbs like be, have,
think, like and own are all state verbs. Now when I say "I have a large family" - here
I'm using the state verb 'have'. That means I'm not talking about doing any physical
action.
I'm just telling you about a situation - in this case about my family. Or if I
said "Julia likes chocolate ice cream." Is Julia doing any action in that
sentence?No, that sentence just gives you some information about Julia. We're
still using a verb - like - but it's a state verb
Why is this difference important? And is it important at all? It is.
Because there's an important rule in English that you should know and that
rule is state verbs cannot be used in -ing forms. When you want to use a
continuous form, you can only do that with action verbs. Let's look at a couple
of examples. Now we can say "The children are playing in the park" or "Who's shouting?"
Both of these sentences are correct because the verbs play and shout are
physical actions, so we can use -ing forms. But we cannot say "I'm having a large
family." or "Julia is liking chocolate ice cream." Both of those sentences are wrong
They're common mistakes that some students make - some students use -ing forms with
state verbs. Please don't make that mistake, and remember: no continuous forms
with state verbs.
OK let's now move on and talk about main and helping verbs. These are
sometimes called auxiliary verbs as well. When a verb is used in a sentence,
it can be used in two ways - it can either be used as the main verb of the sentence
or it can be a helping verb - that is it can help the main verb. The most
important helping verbs are be, do and have. Let's look at some examples with
these: "Luciano is working now." In this sentence there are two verbs - can you tell me
which are the two verbs? 'Is' and 'working' are the two verbs. Which is the main verb?
The main verb is 'working' because that shows the action that is happening. Wo
what about 'is'? What is it doing? 'Is' is a helping verb - that shows the tense of
sentence. We know that Luciano is working now because we said 'is'. If I said
"Luciano was working", you know I'm talking about the past. So that helping verb is
showing the tense, and that's one of the things that helping verbs can do. They
can also help us to form negative sentences. For example "Luciano isn't
working now" or questions - "I Is Luciano working now?" In all three of these
sentences, the helping verb is 'be' or 'to be'. We're saying 'is' but that's just a form
of the verb 'to be' - we say 'I am', 'you are', 'he is', 'she is, etc. The verbs 'do' and 'have' can
also be helping verbs. For example, "I don't play golf every weekend" - maybe I'm
talking to my friends and my friends say "Hey you play golf every weekend right?"
and I say "No I don't play golf every weekend - I play tennis" for example, so
'don't' is 'do not'
That's the negative form of the verb 'do' and it helps me to make a negative, or my
friends could ask 'Do you play golf every weekend?"
That's a question. Let's look at an example with the verb 'have' - "We have
visited the UK four times" - here we know that the main verb is 'visited' but can
you tell me what is the purpose of using 'have' in this sentence? Now if I told you
"We visited the UK last year" - in that sentence, I'm talking about one single
experience - that is my visit last year. But when I say "We have visited the UK
four times" then I'm not talking about any single experience but I'm talking
about life experience - that is in our lives we have visited the UK four times.
That's what the verb 'have' helps us to do in this sentence.
OK so that's how 'be', 'do' and 'have' are used as helping verbs but take a look at
this next sentence - "We have a car."
Now both of these sentences use the verb 'have' but do you notice a difference
between them?
The difference is that the first sentence uses 'have' as a helping verb but
the second sentence uses 'have' as the main verb. You might be thinking how is
that possible? Because 'have' is a helping verb right?
True but in some cases 'be', 'do' and 'have' can be used as main verbs. Now in this
sentence 'have' is used to mean 'own' - "We own a car" is what I'm saying.
So in that way in some cases these can be used as main verbs but most of the
time they're used as helping verbs. Another type of helping verb is modals.
Modals are these words - can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should and must.
I'm sure you know these words and I'm sure you use these a lot too. Modals help
us to express mood in a sentence.
What is mood? In grammar, mood means the attitude of the speaker - that is the
feeling I want to convey to you.
For example, if I said "The Patriots might win the super bowl this year." If you don't
know what that means the Super Bowl is an American football tournament in the
US and the New England Patriots are a team - so I'm making a prediction about
the future and I'm using modal verb 'might' to do that. Try to read that
sentence without 'might' - "The Patriots win the super bowl this year."
It sounds like I'm 100% sure. But that's not what I want to say - I want to
say that I maybe 70% sure.
OK so I'm using 'might'. So 'might' adds that mood to the sentence - that I'm talking about
possibility in the future. 'Modals' can also express ability, like "My sister can
play the guitar." In that sentence 'play' is
the main verb and 'can' shows ability. Or if I said "You mustn't smoke here" - what's
the mood I'm trying to convey? I'm using the modal verb 'must' in the negative - must
not - to show that you don't have permission
"You mustn't smoke here." So in that way modals help us to express mood in a
sentence.
Alright so that's our discussion of main and helping verbs. Let's now move on and
talk about regular and irregular verbs. To understand these you need to know a
little bit of background information, and that is that in English only verbs can
have tenses. Of course you know about past tense, present tense and future tense but
to make tenses, we change the forms of verbs.
Do you know how many forms of verbs are in English? There are five forms - we call
these the infinitive or the base form, the present tense form, the past tense
form, the past participle form - this form is used in some tenses and it's also
used in conditionals, and in the passive voice, so it's an important form. And then
we have the -ing or the continuous form. Let's take the example of a regular verb
'to cook' - its present tense forms are 'cook' and 'cooks' - that's because we say I, you, we,
they cook but he, she or it cooks. The past tense form is 'cooked', the past
participle form is also 'cooked' and the -ing form is 'cooking'. We say that this is
a regular verb because both the past tense form and the past participle forms
are just -ed endings - cooked. But you cannot do that with an irregular verb like the
verb 'to go' - the present tense forms are 'go' and 'goes' but the past tense form is
not goed - it's 'went'. The past participle form is 'gone'. Or take the verb 'to be'
It has three present tense forms - 'am', 'is' and 'are'. 'I am', 'you are' 'he is', 'she is'. And two past
tense forms - 'was' and 'were' and the past participle form is 'been'. Here's one last
example - the verb 'to read'. Its past tense and past participle forms are spelled read
but pronounced red like the color red.
So you might be thinking - how can I guess the past and past participle forms
of irregular verbs?
Well the answer is you cannot and that's what it means when we say that a verb is
irregular - there's no rule for making the two past and past participle forms. You
just have to learn them through experience. So it's a good idea for you
to go to your dictionary or to your coursebook and try to learn as many
irregular verbs as you can. Because that will help you to use English without
making mistakes.
Alright let's now move on to our final type of verb - that is transitive and
intransitive verbs. Have you heard of these before?
Well they're actually really easy but they're also important because a lot of
students make mistakes in this area. A transitive verb is just a verb that
takes an object.
What do I mean by object? Do you know? In grammar the object of a verb is a noun
that is, a person, place, animal or thing that receives the action of the verb. And a
transitive verb always takes an object.
OK I know you might be feeling really confused now - what does all this mean?
So I'll show you a couple of examples to help you understand this concept. Now if
I said "Duncan kicked" - does that sound a little wrong? Because you might ask me
Duncan kicked what? and I would have to say something like oh sorry "Duncan
kicked the ball" for example. 'The ball' is the object of
verb 'kick' because 'the ball' receives the 'kick' and the verb 'kick' is a transitive
verb - it always needs an object. Some other common are transitive verbs are
hit, give, carry, climb, make, kiss and take. With all of these, if you ask the
questions 'who' or 'what' you will get an answer.
Duncan kicked what? The ball. "I made a cake." I made what? A cake. "She kissed Pablo."
She kissed who?
Pablo. So that's how you know that these are all
transitive verbs. What about intransitive verbs then? Can you tell me what it means
to be an intransitive verb?
Well that's a verb that does not take an object. For example, verbs like live, die,
laugh, cry, run, sleep, sit, stand - these are all
intransitive verbs. They don't take objects. For example "The old man laughed
loudly." Notice that in this sentence there is no object.
We're saying the old man laughed but then 'loudly' is not a person or thing
receiving the action - that's just an adverb that gives us information about
'laughed'. So if you ask the questions 'The old man laughed who" or "The old man laughed
what?" - you will get no answer.
That's how you know that that verb is intransitive. OK I told you that students make
mistakes with these. What kinds of mistakes do they make? Well the most common
mistake is that students often leave out the object with a transitive verb. For
example students say "The thief climbed and then escaped." Can you identify the error
in that sentence? Well, the mistake is that the verb 'climb' is a transitive verb and
you need to say climbed what? You need to say an object. Now in your mind you might
have a picture
of a thief climbing over a wall and then running away but you need to say
that. You need to say "The thief climbed over the wall and then escaped." So don't
make that mistake of leaving out the object after a transitive verb
OK let's now quickly recap what we've learned today. We started with state and
action verbs - remember that state verbs show situations and you don't use -ing
forms with state verbs. Then we spoke about main and helping verbs.. 'Be', 'do'
and 'have' are the most important helping or auxiliary verbs but sometimes they can
be used as main verbs in a sentence. Modals are another type of helping verb
and they help us to show mood - that's things like possibility, ability or
permission. Then we turned to regular and irregular verbs. The past and past
participle forms of irregular verbs cannot be guessed, so you have to learn
them through experience. And finally we spoke about
transitive verbs which take an object and intransitive verbs which do not take
an object. Do you remember the common mistake that I shared with you? The
common mistake is leaving out objects with transitive verbs - don't make that
mistake.
Alright I hope you enjoyed this lesson. I'll see you in the next lesson.