Meaning. The verb as a part of speech expresses a process.
Form. The verb is characterized by an elaborate system of morphological
categories, some of which are, however, controversial. These are: tense, aspect,
mood, voice, person, and number.
Function. (a) Verbs are connected with a preceding noun (children play) and
with a following noun (play games). They are also connected with adverbs (write quickly). Occasionally a verb may combine with an adjective (married young). (b)
In a sentence a verb (in its finite forms) is always the predicate or part of it (link
verb). The functions of the verbals (infinitive, participle, and gerund) must be dealt
with separately.
Morphological classifications
1. According to their stem-types all verbs fall into: simple (to play), sound-
replacive (food - to feed, blood - to bleed), stress-replacive (‘insult - to in’sult,
‘record - to re’cord), expanded - built with the help of suffixes and prefixes
(oversleep, undergo), composite - correspond to composite nouns (to blackmail),
phrasal (to have a smoke, to take a look).
2. According to the way of forming past tenses and Participle II verbs can be
regular and irregular.
Lexical-morphological classification is based on the implicit grammatical
meanings of the verb.
According to the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity
verbs fall into transitive and intransitive.
These verbs that require an object are called transitive verbs. Verbs that do not require an object are called intransitive verbs.
Dynamic verbs include:
1) activity verbs: beg, call, drink;
2) process verbs: grow, widen, narrow;
3) verbs of bodily sensations: hurt, itch;
4) transitional event verbs: die, fall;
5) momentary: hit, kick, nod.
Stative verbs include:
1) verbs of inert perception and cognition: adore, hate, love;
2) relational verbs: consist, cost, have, owe.
Syntactic classifications
According to the nature of predication (primary and secondary) all verbs fall
into finite and non-finite.
Functional classification
According to their functional significance verbs can be notional (with the
full lexical meaning), semi-notional (modal verbs, link-verbs), auxiliaries.
Auxiliaries are used in the strict order: modal, perfective, progressive, passive.
The Category of Person
In English, only the third person present tense singular form expresses
person grammatically; therefore, the verb forms are obligatorily associated with
personal pronouns. Special mention should be made of the modal verbs and the
verb be. Modal verbs, with the exception of shall/should and will/would, do not
show person grammatically.
In the past tense, the verb be does not distinguish person – without a personal pronoun we cannot say which person the form expresses.
The Category of Number
The category of number shows whether the process is associated with one
doer or with more than one doer, e.g. He eats three times a day. The sentence
indicates a single eater; the verb is in the singular despite the fact than more than
one process is meant.
The category of number is a two-member opposition: singular and plural. An
interesting feature of this category is the fact that it is blended with person: number
and person make use of the same morpheme. As person is a feature of the present
tense, number is also restricted to the present tense.
Some verbs – modals – do not distinguish number at all. Still others are only
used in the plural because the meaning of ‘oneness’ is hardly compatible with their
lexical. (The boys crowded round him. vs. *The boy crowded round him.)
2. It is well known fact that the notional parts of the sentence form together the nominative meaning of the sentence. The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the nominative division a long side of nominative division. The idea of the actual division has been put forward in theoretical linguistics. Its purpose is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance.
The main components of the actual division are the “theme” and the “rheme”.
Theme expresses the starting point of the communication.
Rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication.
Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary parts of the actual division. The theme may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme with a predicate. The actual division finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech. If it is stylistically neutral construction the theme is the subject and the rheme is the predicate and this kind of actual division is direct. The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is inverted.
The means of expressing the rheme :
Lexical meanings – particles (only,even)
Logical stress-
Change of syntactic structure (It was he who did it)
Passive voice.
Means of expressing theme
Definite article.
Word order.
The actual division is an active means of expressing functional meaning.