Verbs

# Types of Verbs

A Verb is a word that denotes Action or State / Condition or Possession of the subject in the sentence. A verb describes what is done by the subject, or what is done to the subject, or simply what the subject is. It is the most important part of speech and the tense of the verb changes the tense of the entire sentence.

Examples of verbs

• Sam sat on the sofa (Tells what the subject did)
• The door is broken (tells what is done to the subject)
• He is a doctor (Tells what the subject is)

Types of Verbs

The following are the important types of verbs

Main Verbs and Auxiliary Verbs

A main verb is the verb that shows the action or state or possession of the subject, while the auxiliary or helping verb is used to express the tense, and ask questions, etc.

For example,

In the sentence “I am driving a car”, the main verb is “drive” as it denotes an action the subject performs and the auxiliary verb is “am” because it denotes the tense of the main verb. Similarly,

• She has boarded her flight.
• I shall answer that question

Stative and Action Verbs

Stative verbs are the verbs that express the state of the subject, while the action verbs describe the action performed by the subject. For example,

• She likes Tea (Here, ‘like’ is a state and not an action performed. Hence it is a stative verb.)
• He owns a house.
• Gabriel is walking on the pavement (“Walking” is an action performed. Hence it is an action verb).
• Rocky helped that blind man.

*We cannot express Stative verbs in Continuous form i.e; we should never say ‘she is liking tea very much’, it  should be ‘She likes tea very much’

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

A transitive verb denotes an action done by the subject in relation to the object. For example,

• England won the World Cup.
• He kicked the football.

An intransitive verb denotes an action where the subject’s action does not pass on to the object. For example,

• The sun shines brightly.
• The child is crying profusely.

Some important examples of transitive verbs are as follows:

• The iceberg sank the ship.
• The pilot stopped the plane.
• He spoke a lie.
• The donkey kicked him.
• I feel numbness in my hand.

Some important examples of Intransitive Verbs are as follows:

• The train started suddenly.
• The ship sank in the ocean.
• Some cats fight very fiercely.
• He spoke loudly.
• This dog never barks.

Reflexive Verbs

In some sentences, the subject and object refer to the same person. In such sentences, the verb is said to be used reflexively. For example,

• Please keep quiet.
• Make yourself comfortable.
• He killed himself with a knife.
• The person identified himself in the crowd.

Regular and Irregular Verbs

In English, the general rule for writing the past and past participle forms of the verb is to add ‘ed’ or ‘d’ to the verb. The verbs whose past and past participle tenses of the verb conform to this rule are known as regular verbs. For example,

The past and past participle forms of Raise are “raised” and “raised”. It is a regular verb. Similarly, Cook, Walk, laugh etc.

Irregular verbs are those that do not follow this rule and have different words for past and past participle tenses. For example,

• Go (Past and Past participle are ‘went’ and ‘gone’)
• Do (Did- Done)
• Become (became- become)
• Bring (Brought- brought)

Primary and Modal Auxiliaries :

Auxiliary verbs discussed above can be further classified into Primary auxiliaries and Modal Auxiliaries

Primary Auxiliaries:

These are ‘Be-forms’, ‘Have-forms’ and ‘Do-forms’

Be-forms:

• Am, is, are, was, were, will be, shall be, can be, may be etc are called Be-form auxiliaries

Have-forms:

• Have, has, had. will have shall have can have may have etc. are called Have-form auxiliaries.

Do-forms:

• Do, Does, Did are called Do-form auxiliaries.

Modal Auxiliaries

These are used to express different moods like ability, possibility, obligation, advice, wish etc. They are:

• Will, shall, can,may, would, should, could, might, must, have to, had to , ought to etc.

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