Linguistics Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [verbs]

Part of speech whose members indicate an action or a state of being.

Depending on the language, verbs are commonly the part of speech inflected to convey tense, aspect, mood, voice.

It may also agree with person and gender and number of one or more of its core arguments.

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Why is a verb omitted in English coordination?

In English coordination, it is very common that a verb should be omitted so that the whole expression sounds natural as exemplifed below. Ann came with, and Bob without, a date. (Langacker 2012). This omission is very strange for a non-native…
Max
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Why a verb "to be" has a lot forms

I really can't understand why this verb changes to "am", "is", etc. The common answer is "just became as historical legacy", but how actually it happend?
darkhac
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What kind of verbs take three arguments?

"The man paints the wall red". The verb to paint can take three arguments, the object, the subject and the colour of the paint. What kind of verb is this? "The man colours the paper blue". I think it's because this stands in for the (infinite) set…
zooby
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Tenses, voices, moods, and what else?

John sings the hymn. John sang the hymn. John sang the hymn. The hymn was sung by John. It is important that John is at the meeting. (This presupposes that he is and says that is important.) It is important that John be at the meeting. (This…
Michael Hardy
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Participle + indicative of the same verb (gustans gustavi, videns vidi etc.)

A couple of excerpts from the Bible (Septuagint, Nova Vulgata, Elizabeth, KJV): Acts 7:34 ἰδὼν εἰ̃δον τὴν κάκωσιν του̃ λαου̃ μου του̃ ἐν Αἰγύπτω̨ καὶ του̃ στεναγμου̃ αὐτω̃ν ἤκουσα καὶ κατέβην ἐξελέσθαι αὐτούς καὶ νυ̃ν δευ̃ρο…
Quassnoi
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Is there a specific verb category for verbs that act on other verbs

In the phrases below: He started to eat food John decided to kick the ball Justin prepared to face the challenge Are the verbs started, decided, and prepared in s special category since they don't act directly on nouns but rather on other…
George Sechu
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Can non-finite verbs be not active nor passive voice?

Non-finite verbs can show voices as finite verbs do, but in some cases they seems to be without subject, so what are their voices? Are they just not showing voices? For example, “this was my first time seeing Disney Land” “I am excited to see…
Mela Liu
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Are there verbs in Swahili which can be both active and passive?

In English some verbs can be both active and passive, depending on the context - for example: The mother is cooking. The chicken is cooking. In the case of my mother, I am using the active sense - e.g. my mother is actually doing the cooking.…
James
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Categorisation of verbs

I am confused about verbs. Have seen the following categorisation: Past Simple Past Perfect Past Continuous Past Perfect Continuous Past Subjunctive I understand that Past is a Tense. But what about the second categorisation ? Is it Mood, or…
Raksh
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What's the precisest term for verbs that belong to the same stem without any affixes?

RA Duff. Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability (1990). p 33.       Notice too the various cognates of 'intention' which are used in ordinary language. We talk of intending to do something, of doing something intentionally, of doing…
user5306
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Is there a name for verbs that describe regular activities?

Basically I mean, for activities one consistently performs, is there a special name or category for those verbs? Examples: He runs I play table tennis She surfs They study linguistics See how each of these words describe something one often does,…
Lachy Vass
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Did all regular/irregular verbs arise from the same two sources?

I'd like to confirm something that I read long ago in a since-forgotten source. I'm not sure if it was an accepted theory, fact or just a marginalized idea. But, essentially, the story goes: There was a single European language. The language…
Matt
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