Verbs

A verb is defined as a word which shows action or a state of being. The verb is the soul of a sentence. A sentence is incomplete without a verb. It is easy to recognize the action verbs. eg. The snake bit the mongoose. The verb in this sentence is bit as it shows the action in the sentence. The girl is eating cake. Here again eating is the action performed and is therefore a verb. He is a brave boy. In this sentence, there is no action but as you can see the word ‘is’ depicts a state of being.

Verbs are versatile. Unlike most other parts of speech, they can change their form. eg learn becomes learned, sing becomes sang, teach becomes taught. The different forms of verbs show different meanings in relation to tense (past, present and future), person (first person, second person, third person), number(singular, plural)and voice (active passive). Verbs are also often accompanied by verb: like words called modals eg. may, could, should, etc. and auxillaires(do, have, will, etc.) to give there different meanings. Verbs share a very personal relationship with time. Verbs tell if something has already happened, if it is happening right now, or if it will happen later. To denote action in the present we use the present tense of a verb; for something that has already occurred we use the past tense for the verb and for something that is yet to happen we use the future tense of the verb.