What verbs do
Verbs are, along with nouns, the most important word class in any
language. Without verbs and nouns, almost nothing can be
expressed at all.
If we take a sentence such as:
The old man was happily watching his home team beat Arsenal on TV.
and remove the verbs and nouns, we'll get nonsense:
The old happily his home on.
Remove the rest of the words and leave the verbs and nouns, however, and some sense can be made:
man was watching team beat Arsenal TV.
The verb is "Our most powerful impression of experience"
(Halliday 1994:106)
There are guides elsewhere on this site to the forms of verbs: tenses, voice, aspect, transitivity (subjects and objects) etc. and you should check them out for more. This link will take you to the verbs index for this part of the site (new tab).
Here, we are only concerned with what verbs do.
In primary schools the world over, verbs are called 'doing words'.
Among much else taught in schools, however, that's only partly right.
Verbs are a lot more versatile than that.
 |
The three main things that verbs do |
doing verbs |
|
 |
 |
| the material world | behaving and feeling |
Verbs certainly describe doing but the there are two sorts of doing:
- Verbs describing actions in the external, material world.
- Verbs describing behaving and feeling.
Here's what is meant:
| Verbs in the external, material world. | Verbs of behaving and feeling. |
|
the machine works noisily the string broke the bomb exploded the house fell down the train took them home |
they watched TV she sang in church I sneezed constantly I worried half to death John repaired her laptop |
thinking and talking verbs |
|
 |
 |
| perceiving and emoting | putting thought into words |
There are two sorts of these, too.
- Verbs referring to thinking, wanting, perceiving and emoting.
- Verbs referring to putting thought into words.
Here is what is meant:
| thinking, wanting, perceiving and emoting | putting thought into words |
|
I enjoyed the film she noticed his nervousness I remembered his face I thought he was a fool they hated the place |
he told me what to do I said I was angry they explained the problem they asked to be allowed to go she described his house |
being verbs |
|
 |
 |
| existing | relating |
Again, there are two sorts:
- Verbs which refer to something's existence.
- Verbs which refer to relationships between things or people or their attributes.
Here is what is meant:
| existence | relationships |
|
there are no cigarettes left there was some milk in the fridge there's nothing to be said is there anything more to say? no shops exist here now |
the office is down the hall this tastes of garlic it feels rough we were in Paris he looks like his brother |
The summary
 |
Prime verbs |
All languages have a set of what are known as that language's prime
verbs. In English, these are
be | bring | come | do | get |
give | go | keep | make | put | take
These are the verbs which are basic to most idiomatic language and
which often take the place of more formal verbs.
So, for example:
| We can render ... | ... as this with a prime verb |
| He appeared suddenly | He was suddenly there |
| They have raised four children | They have brought up four children |
| He attended the meeting | He came to the meeting |
| I executed her instructions | I did as she told me |
| I arrived at the hotel late | I got to the hotel late |
| I handed in my essay | I gave my essay in |
| He travelled to New York | He went to New York |
| Please retain the receipt | Please keep the receipt |
| I prepared dinner | I made dinner |
| She garaged the car | She put the car in the garage |
| I caught the train | I took the train |
There are, in fact very few verbal concepts in English which
cannot be rendered less formally and more simply by using one of the
prime verbs in combinations with adverbials.
Teaching prime verbs is important.
 |
Transitivity |
| They photographed each other |
Up to now we have discussed the subject plus the verb and seen
how verbs represent doing, talking and thinking and being.
There is, of course, another aspect and that concerns not the
subject of the verb but its object.
For example,
Mary smokes
is a verb which describes a behaviour (doing verb) which concerns
only the subject (Mary).
However,
Mary smokes cigars
describes two things: Mary's behaviour and what the behaviour acts
on (cigars). In this case, the word cigars
is the Direct Object of the verb and the verb is described as
transitive.
Here are some more examples with the direct object in bold:
He told a story
The President signed the decree
The car hit the garage door
She feels the cold
People want clarity
and in all these cases, we have a verb followed by an object (and
that is the normal ordering in English).
In all these examples, too, we have a single object on which the
verb acts directly. The use of the verb is called
mono-transitive because it takes a single object.
We cannot, however, have these:
*She arrived the hotel
*I talked the subject
*The people came the shop
etc.
because these verbs do not take an object (they are
intransitive). In some languages, the verbs are
transitive and that can lead to error.
It is also the case that some verbs
must take an object so we cannot say, e.g.:
*They photographed
*She told
*They accepted
*I poured
unless the hearer knows what the object is and can fill the gap.
Some verbs are always
transitive.
Some verbs can take two objects and they are called ditransitive
uses of the verbs. For example, in the following the direct
object is in bold and the indirect object is
underlined in bold:
She read
the children a story
They gave me
a hand
They offered her
the job
She sent her
brother an email
etc.
You can see that it is possible to remove the indirect object and
still have an acceptable sentence so we allow:
She told a lie
They gave a hand
They offered the job
She sent an email
but we cannot remove the direct object because that gives the
unacceptable:
*She read the children
*They gave me
or it changes the meaning as in:
They offered her
She sent her brother
In English, there are two basic rules (of thumb):
- The indirect object comes before the direct object
- The indirect object is usually a person and a recipient of the action
It is also possible in English to shift the indirect object to the end of the clause and link it with a preposition, usually to but also sometimes for. Here are some examples of the shifting in action:
| She told her father a lie | vs. | She told a lie to her father |
| She showed me her garden | She showed her garden to me | |
| He read me the paragraph | He read the paragraph to me | |
| The old lady cooked me breakfast | The old lady cooked breakfast for me |
Not all ditransitive verbs can do this. If you would like a list of ditransitive verbs which also marks whether they are used with to, for or neither structure, you can get it from the link in the list of related guides at the end.
 |
So what? |
So quite a lot.
Firstly, verbs which look the same may be doing different things. For example:
- He feels cold (a perceiving
verb)
vs.
The weather feels cold (a being, relational verb) - The car crashed (a verb
relating to doing in the external world)
vs.
He crashed the car (a behaving verb)
Secondly, in order to be able to speak a language, even at a very basic level, learners have to be able to do all 6 things with verbs. This means they need to learn:
- How to describe things that happen in the external world of
material objects from the basic
The plane landed
to more complex ideas such as
The experiment failed because the equipment had become contaminated
in which two different verb processes are involved (material [failed] and relational [had become]). - How to describe behaviour and feeling in, e.g.
He sat quietly because he wasn't worried - How to describe thought and emotion in, e.g.
She assumed I was laughing at her and hated me for it - How to describe what people say in, e.g.
She told me why John wasn't there
or
She explained why John disliked the film
in both of which we have two types of verb operating. - How to say something exists or not as in, e.g.
There's a hotel on the corner
There aren't any customers today - How to say how one thing is related to another or what
attributes it has as in e.g.
She's the boss now and she is very difficult to talk to
You don't need to teach all that in one lesson (and you'd be well
advised not to try) but it helps
enormously if you can recognise the sorts of things verbs do so that
you can follow threads in the classroom consistently by introducing
verbs of a similar type to extend your learners' abilities.
Here are some examples of how a knowledge of types of verbal
processes also allows us to explain the grammar of the language
clearly when learners encounter verbs:
- The reason we can say:
Be quiet! I'm thinking
but not
*I'm thinking it's a pity
is to do with the fact that the verb think can be both a behavioural verb, in the first sense, and a verb which serves to make the internal world of the speaker external, in the second sense where the normal tense form would be:
I think it's a pity. - We can also say, for example:
The house lies on the corner of the street
but it is unusual if not wrong to say:
The house is lying on the corner of the street
because the verb is used to show the relation between the street corner and the house and verbs which express relationships are not used in tense forms which mean an event is on-going. - The difference between:
He is saying his prayers
and
He says his brother is coming
is also explained by thinking about what the verb is doing, not what it looks like. In the first case, the verb is behavioural, in the second, it is verbal. - The difference between
He is becoming angry
and
He became a doctor
can be explained by knowing that the first verb is used to refer to his behaviour and the second verb is used to refer to the relationship between he and doctor. - In the same way, the difference between:
I assume nothing
and
I am assuming you will be coming
can only be explained by looking at the different processes the verb refers to.
You should be aware that other languages encode the various things that verbs do differently from English.
Finally, languages vary in terms of transitivity (or its lack) so
a verb such as arrive is, in English, intransitive so we
allow:
She arrived
and
She arrived at my house
but not
*She arrived my house
We can also have:
An accident happened
but not
*It happened an accident
because happen is intransitive.
In other languages, these verbs (and many others) are transitive and
that leads to the error.
In other languages, too, the positions of the direct and indirect
objects are reversed and that can lead to errors such as:
*She told a lie the boss
and so on.
There is a short test to see what you can remember.
| Related guides | |
| verbs index | for the links to related areas |
| stative and dynamic verb uses | for a guide to two very basic distinctions |
| tense and aspect | for the essential guide to two related concepts |
| verbal processes | for a more technical description |
| ditransitive verbs | for a list in PDF format |
References:
Butt, D, Fahey, R, Feez, S, Spinks, S and Yallop, C,
2001, Using Functional
Grammar: an explorer's guide, Sydney: NCELTR
Halliday, M, 1994, An introduction to functional grammar, 2nd
edition, London: Edward Arnold