Grammar: Verbs And The Way We Use Them

[Music] today we are going to be thinking about verbs what about verbs let's begin with a simple sentence describing the do robber seems happy the verb seems tells about Rover's condition or state verbs that describe condition are usually called state of being verbs you can usually substitute some form of the verb seem for them let's try another sentence robber wags his tail Wags is the verb it is not a state of being verb you couldn't substitute seems for Wags Rover seams his tail no Wags tells what Rob does it describes his action so we have verbs which show action and we have verbs which show state of being the the tower is in the clouds is used as a being verb the birds sound gay today sound used as a being verb the boat steams into the river steams used as an action verb it com comes to the bridge action verb bars drop action verb cars stop action verb the bridge Rises action verb the boat chugs on action [Music] verb action or state of being two basic things that verbs show now verbs can be divided into transitive verbs and intransitive verbs in describing what Rover is doing we could say Rover choose a bone in this sentence choose is used transitively it shows that something bone receives an action we could say merely what Rover does R choose in this sentence nothing receives the action of the verb choose so we say it is used intransitively we say an action verb is used transitively if the sentence includes a receiver of the action we say an action verb is used intransitively if the sentence does not include a receiver of the action every verb has a certain voice well not exactly that kind of voice we speak of verbs as being in either the active voice or the passive voice let's see what these mean all Rover Rover carries a bucket the subject Rover acts he carries so this is the active voice of the verb once more over this time we will say it with the verb in the passive voice the subject won't act no Rob you're going to do the same thing again the bucket is carried by Rover the bucket is the subject but it does not act so we say the voice of the verb is passive so that is all that is meant by the voice of a verb if it is passive the subject of the verb is acted upon if the verb is in the active voice the subject of the verb does the acting there is one more common way of arranging verbs by mood for our purposes there are three important moods of a verb the first is the indicative mood Rover is running the indicative mood simply indicates it says what is happening or was happening or will be happening all all right Rover you may stop the second mood is imperative Rover Run This is the form you use to command Rover come the third mood of verbs is called the subjunctive mood this is used when you tell about something that might be and it usually follows an if if Rover were running now he would get a bone so we use verbs to show different moods the indicative mood which we use most of the time the imperative mood which we use in commands and the subjunctive mood which we use to say that something might be time can be indicated by the tense of a verb in the simplest form we think of things happening now Rover sleeps this is present tense things that happened in the past Rover slept this is past tense the past the present and the future looking into a crystal ball we might see that Rover will sleep this is future tense by adding what are called auxiliary or helping verbs we can change each tense to a perfect tense so in the past we took a picture of Rover while he slept but Rover had slept before we added the auxiliary had to form the past perfect tense for the present perfect tense we use the present tense of the auxiliary Rover sleeps now but we know Rover has slept before the present perfect tense really tells about something in the past we use two auxiliaries for the future perfect tense Rover will sleep until 6:00 but if he sleeps until 7:00 Rover will have slept through supper this is the future perfect tense so we have our most important tenses the past the present the future the past perfect the present perfect and the future perfect these tenses of a verb are formed from what are called the principal parts of a verb the first principal part of a verb in this case sleep forms the present tense of the verb and the future tense with an auxiliary the second principal part of a verb slept forms the past tense the third principal part again slept is used in forming all the perfect tenses it almost always appears with an auxiliary verb this form of the verb is called the past participle and so we have the principal parts of the verb sleep for every verb there are three principal parts and for most of the more common verbs you'll want to memorize these parts remember that verbs can differ in voice active and passive you can use verbs in their various moods according to your wishes we say that an action verb is used transitively if the sentence includes a receiver of the action we say it is used intransitively if the sentence does not include a receiver of the action finally remember that verbs show action or state of being these are the main ideas that will help us to understand verbs and how we use them [Music]