Verb

8 Key excerpts on "Verb"

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  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar

  • Martin J. Endley(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar, pages 39–75 Copyright © 2010 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 39 2 Verbs and Verb Phrases in Linguistic Perspective In this chapter, I turn to the other major syntactic category in English, the Verb. The plan for this chapter is as follows. I begin by trying to establish more precisely what a Verb is and what purposes Verbs serve when viewed in linguistic perspective. Here, I discuss the important idea that Verbs play a central role in describing particular “situations.” After that, I discuss the very important closed class of so-called primary Verbs, which have a very high frequency in modern English and can appear either as main Verbs or as auxiliaries. As we will see, it makes sense to treat these as a distinct group on the basis of their morphosyntactic properties. Much of the remainder of the chapter is devoted to a detailed discussion of the especially interesting group of “multi-word” Verbs. These are a striking feature of modern Eng- lish and are widely recognized as presenting a particular challenge to non- native English speakers. In consequence, the nature of these challenges, in- volving both problems of form and problems of meaning, will be discussed at some length. 40  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar What Are Verbs? A traditional answer to this question would say that Verbs are words that de- scribe or identify actions and events. There is much to be said for this view. Verbs often do this, providing descriptions of perceptually accessible events that often involve physical motion or action and, frequently, rapid change. Yet, as with nouns, it does not take long to see that many Verbs do not fit this definition and that it really only works with what are called dynamic Verbs such as walk, run, jump, and so on. This way of thinking about Verbs is much less effective for state or psych Verbs such as know, want, hope, and numerous others.

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  Lessons on the English Verb

  No Expression Without Representation

  • Walter Hirtle(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • McGill-Queen's University Press

    (Publisher)

  LESSON ONEOn Studying the Verb

  THE TRADITION

  At the beginning of these lessons, it is only prudent, as in any intellectual inquiry, to glance at the views of our forebears concerning the Verb, not just to avoid the embarrassment of rediscovering the wheel but if possible to learn from their insights.1 The first such insights come from classical Greece. For Plato, a Verb is a word denoting action. Aristotle characterizes it as a word that expresses time and predication (i.e. it says something about a subject). Other characteristics are also brought out by ancient grammarians – including person, mood, and voice – but the most consistent defining characteristic is the expression of time: a Verb is a word cum tempore , with time or with tense, the grammatical unit expressing time. And this is quite understandable because the expression of past, present, or future is clearly indicated by the observable form of the Verb in both Greek and Latin and distinguishes the Verb from the noun and other parts of speech.

  During the renaissance, scholars became interested in vernacular languages, and this led to the publishing of some 248 grammars of English between 1600 and 1800. A renewed interest in antiquity also led scholars to view their own language in light of the classical tradition – especially Latin, the international language of the time. It was not clear, however, how Latin grammar was to be applied to English, as grammarians attempted to do from the end of the sixteenth century on. In fact, if grammarians “looked at English with an empirical eye, strictly distinguishing tense (a feature of words) from time (a feature of consciousness) they were led to conclude that English had not even three tenses, only two: present (I love ) and past (I loved ). But this seemed an absurd conclusion. If there were three times how could there be fewer than three tenses? It was at this point, where the formal differences between Latin and English are most obvious, that English grammarians most easily broke away from the tradition, commanding as its authority was” (Michael, 116). One understands the quandary of grammarians: if our experience tells us that there are three time-spheres – past, present, and future – and our observation of the English Verb in the indicative distinguishes only two tenses, two morphemes for expressing time (-ø and -ed

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  Cognitive Modeling and Verbal Semantics

  A Representational Framework Based on UML

  • Andrea C. Schalley(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Lexical semantics of Verbs 11 2.1. Lexical semantics of Verbs Lexical semantics of Verbs -understood as the investigation of meaning as expressed by elements of a particular class in the lexicon, namely Verbs (in-cluding serial Verb constructions and other phrasal Verbs, but not Verb phrases as such) - is the study of meaning of those elements. Syntax, morphology, and pragmatics are, in general, disregarded. The task of deciding which lexical items are Verbs, that is, which elements belong to the corresponding lexical class, is not trivial. The categorization of a lexical element as a Verb from a semantic point of view (while passing over grammatical characteristics) is primarily an intuitive decision. It is one that can at best be made on the basis of functional considerations, in describing Verbs as elements which typically function as linguistic signs for eventides. They are therefore the surface ele-ments realizing particular ontological entities that represent phenomena that run within time: By the operation of very general cognitive processes that can be termed con-ceptual partitioning and the ascription of entity hood, the human mind in per-ception or conception can extend a boundary around a portion of what would otherwise be a continuum, whether of space, time, or other qualitative do-main, and ascribe to the excerpted contents within the boundary the property of being a single unit entity. Among various alternatives, one category of such an entity is perceived or conceptualized as an event [in our terms, eventity]. This is a type of entity that includes within its boundary a continuous cor-relation between at least some portion of its identifying qualitative domain and some portion of the so-conceived temporal continuum -that is, of the progression of time. Such a correlation may rest on a primitive phenomeno-logical experience that can be characterized as dynamism -a fundamental property or principle of activeness in the world.

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  Years 6-10 Literacy For Students

  • (Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • For Dummies

    (Publisher)

  Powering your language is exactly what the Verb is ‘doing’. Verbs refer to actions (eat, write, take), conditions (seem, appear, become) or states of being (am, is, are). They’re also the key to understanding when a sentence is grammatically correct, so these guys deserve close attention. To locate a Verb in a sentence, you need to ask yourself these questions: What’s happening? What is? The word that provides the answer is the Verb. Because they change their form and attach to other Verbs or other parts of speech to change their meaning, Verbs can be tricky. But Verbs have power, and understanding how they work is probably the most essential of all grammar essentials. Chapters 2 and 3 take you further into the world of Verbs. Adjectives When we add more information to a noun or pronoun, the word we use is called an adjective. Adjectives add to, describe or modify nouns and pronouns. They can be found lurking either in front of a noun or pronoun, or after a special kind of Verb called a linking Verb (you can read all about Verbs in Chapter 2). Because adjectives add colour and detail to our language, they’re worth careful consideration, so Chapter 6 provides ample advice but, basically, adjectives work like this: Before a noun: The sneaky adjective attaches itself to the unsuspecting noun. Before a pronoun: The noun is the unsuspecting one. After a linking Verb: The adjective is sneaky and the noun is unsuspecting. AdVerbs Another of those grammar chants you may have learned at one stage goes like this: ‘An adVerb adds meaning to a Verb by telling us how, when, where or why a thing is done’. While that’s true, it’s only part of the adVerb story. AdVerbs can also be used to modify adjectives or even other adVerbs. Another thing you may vaguely remember is that adVerbs often end with -ly. True. But not all adVerbs end with those letters, and lovely is an adjective.

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  Introduction to English Syntax

  • Rolf Kreyer, Joybrato Mukherjee(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

    (Publisher)

  3 The Verb Phrase The Verb phrase is central to the study of syntax for several reasons: firstly, be- cause the lexical Verb in the Verb phrase determines what other clause constitu- ents are obligatory. The Verb give, for example, demands somebody who gives, something that is given and somebody who is given that something, otherwise the sentence would be incorrect. This aspect will be discussed in more detail in chapter six. The second reason for the central status of the Verb in syntax is that it actually occupies a central position in the declarative sentence, and the other clause constituents are grouped around the Verb phrase. Thirdly, the finite Verb phrase provides information regarding the event described in the sentence, such as the time of occurrence, completion or continuation of the event, likelihood or unlikelihood of the event, and so on. The first two sections of this chapter dis- cuss the structure and the function of the finite Verb phrase. The third section will then explore non-finite Verb phrases. 3.1 The structure of the finite Verb phrase In section 1.3 we introduced the concept 'phrase' as a level of description be- tween words on the one hand and clauses or sentences on the other. We also saw that phrases fulfil different functions in a sentence. The Verb phrase denotes the action or the event described in the sentence. The Verb phrase has seen in the sentence the man has seen the car, for instance, denotes the action itself, i.e. 'seeing', and also tells us that this action has happened at some point in the past and is of some relevance to the present. In this chapter we will take a closer look at the formal side of finite Verb phrases. Very simplified, we can define a Verb phrase as a phrase which consists of Verbal elements only, such as goes, has lived, will be going, must have been sleeping, etc. If the first element in the Verb phrase is a finite Verb, we speak of a finite Verb phrase.

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  Contributions to Comparative Mythology

  Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982

  • Stephen Rudy(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  VerbAL COMMUNICATION For all human beings, and only for human beings, language is the vehicle of mental life and communication. It is natural that the study of this explicit and effective instrument, together with the rudiments of mathematics, is among the oldest sciences. The earliest linguistic work we possess, a Sumerian grammar of nearly 4,000 years ago, was succeeded by continuous efforts in various countries to interpret the makeup of the locally privileged language and the Verbal network in general, as well as by speculations on the mysterious gift and confusion of tongues. If we concentrate our attention on the Indie and Greco-Latin tradition, beginning with the pre-Christian centuries, we can hardly find a single period without persistent inquiries into some facet of language. In many cases discoveries were made only to be temporarily swept away. Thus, for instance, the historic attainments of the School-men's linguistic (particularly semantic) theory were dismissed after, as Charles Sanders Peirce used to say, a barbarous rage against medieval thought broke out. The variety of languages in space and time was the focal point of investigatory interest throughout the 19th century. Linguistics was held to be exclusively comparative, and the genetic relationship of kindred languages going back to a supposedly uniform parent language was considered the chief or only goal of linguistic comparison. The regularity of changes undergone by each of these languages at any given time was the acknowledged theoretical prerequisite for a conversion of the observed diversity of languages into their conjectured original unity. This tenet was worked out meticulously by the Neogrammarian trend that dominated European (primarily German) linguistics during the last third of the 19th century.

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  The meaning of the Finite Verb Forms in the Old Church Slavonic Codex Suprasliensis

  A Synchronic Study

  • Tine H. Amse-De Jong(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  1 ELEMENTS OF MEANING IN THE FINITE Verb FORM 1.1 It is assumed that the formal elements in the OCS finite Verb form corre-spond to elements of meaning. These elements of meaning may, in two different languages, be partially or wholly different, so that speakers of the two languages will analyse objective reality, the semantic continuum, in partially or wholly different manners. Moreover, as C. L. Ebeling 1 remarks: The semantic continuum cannot be anything else but the real world, accessible to our senses. Parts of it, when referred to by means of a linguistic form, are usually called 'things meant'. The meaning of a linguistic form (morpheme or word) is its ability to point to (denote) a number of things in reality. It is not to be identified with the 'things meant', but it certainly can be defined in terms of them. It is clear that we cannot begin our description with the things meant without, on the one hand, overlooking the dividing lines present in the language to be studied and, on the other hand, projecting the dividing lines of our own language onto the language to be studied. Our examina-tion is therefore bound to begin with the formal elements as constants. On morphological grounds we may differentiate between Verb forms and non-Verbal forms as two distinct types of word form in OCS. A Verb form indicates an event, i.e. a complex of properties possessed by things in objective reality during a given period; a non-Verbal form may or may not do this. By indicate we mean: to evoke the thought of X, provided that there is a listener present who is familiar with the language. The English term event enables us to include the concepts of action and situation in one term. The difference between the two is not relevant in OCS because the language does not display any difference in form here. 1 C. L. Ebeling, Linguistic Units (The Hague 1960) ( =Janua linguarum, 12). Cf. p. 88.

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  Catching Language

  The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing

  • Felix K. Ameka, Alan Dench, Nicholas Evans, Felix K. Ameka, Alan Dench, Nicholas Evans(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Moreo-ver, linguists of various theoretical persuasions, including typologists, have become more and more aware of the central role of semantics for certain aspects of grammar. For example, the importance of semantic subclasses has been recognised in the literature on aspect and aktionsart (cf. Sasse 2002 for a review) and on valency and argument structure (e.g. in the “un-accusativity” discussion; cf. e.g. Levin 1993, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). Cross-linguistic generalisations in these areas can only be drawn by comparing the semantic classes of lexical items exhibiting a certain gram-matical or collocational behaviour. Function Verbs: Lexicon, grammar, or both? 381 3.3. Information on usage In this section, it will be argued that a reference grammar should also at-tempt to capture the status of the grammatical structures that it describes in terms of their usage and their functional load, since this information is es-sential for any user of a grammar who wants to get a “feel” for the language in question – whether they are consulting the grammar as learners or for the purposes of cross-linguistic comparison. The example of function Verbs will again be used to illustrate the point. In current grammatographical practice, information either on the fre-quency of function Verb expressions in general or on the productivity of individual function Verbs is rare, beyond statements like “very common”, “the most frequent Verbs”, or “more common in written language”. In a number of the grammars surveyed, though, reference is made to the fact that certain light Verbs are used productively to integrate loanwords; cf. e.g. Bhatia (1993: 324) for Punjabi, Pandharipande (1997: 529) for Mara-thi, Schmidt (1999: 95) for Urdu, Sridhar (1990: 289) for Kannada, and McGregor (1996: 47) for Nyulnyul.

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