Verbs

Verbs

Verbs are one of the major parts of speech. In general, verbs refer to an action (climb, break, clean) or a state (be, love, contain). In most case, a sentence must contain at least one verb in order to be considered grammatically correct.

Ex. The dog walked around the park.

The Linguistics of Verbs

Linguistically there are three ways to determine if a word is a verb. (Please note: A word does not need to meet all three of these requirements to function as a verb in a sentence.)

1) Semantically/Notionally – If the word refers to an obvious action. (The dog chased the cat.)

2) Morphologically – If the word can take a tense marker such as –ing, -s, or –ed. (walk, walked, walks, walking)

3) Distributionally – If the word falls between two noun phrases. (Bees love flowers.)

The verb tense shows the time of the action or state.

Aspect shows whether the action or state is completed or not.

Voice is used to show relationships between the action and the people affected by it.

Mood shows the attitude of the speaker about the verb, whether it is a declaration or an order.

Verbs can be affected by person and number to show agreement with the subject.

Thematic Structure

As part of their lexical entry, full verbs have what is called a Thematic Structure.

Theta roles - The thematic structure of a full verb is a list of the theta-roles (or thematic-roles/semantics roles) associated with that verb.

Types of Theta roles are:

     a.  Agent = intentional/volitional instigator of the action = verb-er

                   John punched the ball.

     b.  Causer = inanimate cause of action (quite similar to Agent)

                   The movie scared the children.

                   The wind closed the door

     c.  Patient = thing or one acted upon (“receiver” of the action)

                    Alex tapped the table.

     d.  Instrument = what is used to carry an action out

                    Bill cut the bread with a knife.

     e.  Experience-er = one in an emotional/psychological state

                    Adam fears clowns.

                    Bill loves Mary.

     f.  Theme = element undergoing movement (maybe figurative)

                    I rolled the ball over to Mary.

     g.  Goal = I drove to New York.

     h.  Source = I drove from New York