Hello!
We're looking at linking verbs like 'be' and 'become' and we're asking 'why is Robert pleased?'
and 'what will Helen become?'
and 'what's the music all about?'.
Hope you enjoy it!
We're looking at 'I am pleased' and 'I became a teacher', two different kinds of linking
verbs and here's a picture.
This is a picture of Robert and Robert is looking happy as you can see and so I'll just
write underneath there, with my pen, I'll write 'Robert is pleased', 'Robert is pleased'.
Ok, why?
I'll just write 'why' here, that's the question, 'why is Robert pleased?'.
And another picture, this is his daughter Helen and I'll just write at the bottom there
'his daughter Helen' and then something about Helen.
There's an arrow and there's another picture of Helen, 'Helen became a teacher', here's
a picture of the graduation ceremony.
Let's go back to the first one again, 'Robert is pleased' - I'll just underline 'Robert'
and 'pleased' and link them together because it's the same person, isn't it?
So 'is' is a link between two things about the same person.
I could say something else, I could write 'a father' here and again I could link that
'Robert is a father'.
I could put many other things too; 'Robert is European', 'Robert is middle-aged' all
sorts of things.
Right, let's go other to the other one now.
His daughter Helen, I'll underline that.
Now she wasn't a teacher (I'll put a dotted line there) but she became a teacher, so there
was a moment when she wasn't a teacher and then she was.
Those of two different kinds of linking verbs - the one on the left are called 'current'
(I'll just write 'current' there) and the one on the right is called 'resulting', that's
a resulting copula.
Now I'm going to look at them in more detail, so first of all let's have a look at some
other verbs which are current.
I've got a picture here of a young man eating some food and I want to talk about the food.
First of all the look of it, so there's an eye and I'll write 'the food looks good',
so 'the food' and 'good' both refer to the same thing.
Here's another one, here's a mouth, and again I'll say 'the food' (but I'll just write 'it'
this time) 'it tastes nice' - 'it' and 'nice' refer to the same thing.
Here's a nose, you can guess what this is going to be 'it smells OK', so there are three
ways.
Now let's go over onto the other side and try saying the same thing but this time with
a noun.
'It looks like a good meal', notice we're using 'like' so the food looks good, it looks
like a good meal.
Now say the same thing with 'it tastes' - so 'it tastes like Chinese food', yes, you probably
guessed that.
And the last one 'it smells like my Mum's cooking'.
Three verbs: 'look', 'taste' and 'smell' and here's another picture, this time a little
band and this time it's going to be about the ear and it's going to be what the music
sounds like.
So 'the music' (I'll write there) 'sounds great'!
And exactly like the other three I could equally say 'it sounds like Dave Brubeck', a jazz
musician I used to like.
So there we have four verbs 'look', 'taste', 'smell' and 'sound' that are all current copulas,
I've just written 'current' at the top there.
Now let me turn my little, my little stand and I'm going to look at four verbs which
are resulting.
Here's the first one, 'get'.
Let's put something with 'get', we'll put 'ready', I'm going to do a little drawing
myself here (not very good) - that's me not ready and there's me looking tidy, now I'm
ready.
Before I wasn't ready, now I'm ready so there's a change.
Get, 'get rich' - I was poor then I got lots of pounds, dollars and euros and yen and now
I'm rich (I wish!!)
Let's try another one 'tired'.
I was fresh, I worked all day and I got tired, there you see me fresh then tired.
And finally, the last one 'upset'.
I started off the day happy but sadly I became upset because I had some porblems.
So there you see the change from not ready to ready, from poor to rich, from happy to
tired and from happy to upset.
Now let's move on to the next verb of my four, these verbs are all quite specialist by the
way, so 'go' is commonly used with 'mad' which has got two meanings.
You can say 'he went mad' meaning he became very angry and upset or more serious than
that, he was in need of psychiatric care and treatment.
You also use 'go' with colours - you can say 'go red', 'go grey/gray' (notice the two spellings
of grey), my hair went grey over the years for example.
And here's another verb 'turn' and that's often used with colours to turn yellow, I'll
just draw a little green leaf there and I'll draw a yellow leaf (if I can find my yellow
pen) and draw a little red arrow between them just to show that it changes from one to the
other.
So to turn is to change.
You can equally turn red, like a traffic light or a face and when the traffic light goes
from red to amber to green and back to red again.
One last verb, the slow one, which is to grow.
And a common way of using it is to talk about somebody 'growing old'.
And one hopes growing up.
So I'll just draw a young face on the left then a slow process and an older face on the
right which is growing old and hopefully wise.
So these are all resulting copulas, I'll just write 'resulting' up the top there.
And just to finish I want to tell you about links to the website where you can find a
PDF where you can test yourself with answers and you can also find lists of current and
resulting copulas, which you may find helpful.
That's it!
Bye for now!