Verbs

In fact, 'verbs' are the main part of the sentence, they are that important and necessary which can make a meaningful sentence on their own. You cannot make a one-word sentence in any case, other than in verbs. A verb is the main part of a predicate. Actually, verbs express a state of being, an action, or an occurrence. The simplest way to define verbs is to say they indicate what the subject is doing.

Verbs are categorized into different groups based on their specific characteristics.
Here are different groups of them:

'Action verbs' are those kinds of verbs that indicate an action, sometimes they can refer to movements or physical activities. Check out the examples for more clarifications.

'Stative' verbs often are used to indicate a state, not an action. It is important to know that, these verbs refer to abstract things.

'Transitive' verbs are ones that require an object to have a complete meaning. They can have direct or indirect objects.

'Intransitive verbs' are the ones that do not need an object to make a meaningful sentence. We mean they have a complete meaning on their own.

'Infinitives' are the basic forms of verbs that usually follow the term 'to.' But it is not always like that. Sometimes we use them without 'to,' that is why we have infinitive with 'to' and infinitive without 'to' in English. Sometimes we can use an infinitive with 'to' as an alternative for a noun in the place of the subject or object of a sentence.

'Auxiliary verbs' give information that main verbs cannot. Sometimes, grammarians call them helping verbs cause somehow they offer help to main verbs. They can complete the meaning or help make different tenses or moods. 'Main verbs' are also called the lexical verbs or the principal verbs. Main verbs show the action or state of the subject and they are really important. They can stand alone, or be used with a helping verb to have meaningful stements.

English 'modal verbs' are one of the subsections for auxiliary verbs. They can indicate necessity, probability, requests, etc. So it is good to know them. Can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must, etc, are considered modal verbs. The point is that they are not used alone and they have to be followed by an infinitive without -to.

Sometimes with a little help of 'main verbs,' we can make other words that are used to show different tenses, or be used as the subject or object of a sentence. 'Participles' are words made of verbs by adding -ed or -ing to them (although there are some irregular participles that do not get -ed). The participle which is used in -ing form can be used as the subject or object of a sentence and it acts like nouns that we call 'gerunds'. Here are the examples.

When we say subjects must agree with verbs, we mean if there is a singular subject in a sentence and a singular form of the particular verb exists for it, so you have to use the singular form of the verb. We are not allowed to use a singular verb with a plural subject or vice versa.

Verbs that agree with the subject and show a tense, are called 'finite verbs.' And verbs that do not agree with the subject and do not indicate a tense, such as infinitives, are called 'infinite verbs.'

'Phrasal verbs' consist of a verb added to one preposition or adverb or both and it makes new meaning. Sometimes we can put an object between the verbs and prepositions, or adverbs. And sometimes we cannot separate them.

'Dummy verbs' are verbs that have no special meanings, but they are used in sentences to have a grammatical function. They help to have a question, a special tense, etc. But they do not have a meaning on their own.

As their names require, 'regular verbs' have their own rules, while 'irregular verbs' do not have any special rules and it is better to memorize them. Yet, as you know 'regular verbs' follow a special pattern.

Verbs are one of the most important participants of sentences. The statements have no meaning when they are used without verbs. There are different types of verbs in English as follows.