A full-dress review of the verb types in English – 1
For a thorough understanding of how English verbs work, let’s make a full-dress review of this part of speech by going back to its very basics. Recall that a verb is a word that expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, and can be any of four types — transitive, intransitive, linking, and helping or auxiliary.
Transitive verb. This type of verb has the ability to pass on its action to something that can receive that action, and it can be any of three kinds:
1. One-place transitive verb. This type of verb requires only a direct object to work properly. Examples are the verbs “receive” and “damage.” See how they work: “The accused received the summons.” “Typhoons damage infrastructure.”
There’s a simple test to check if a verb is one-place transitive. A sentence using it becomes nonsensical if the direct object of that verb is removed: “The accused received.” “Typhoons damage.” These sentences hang in mid-air with an unformed thought — a clear sign that they are not complete sentences.
2. Vg two-place transitive verb. (This term is an acronym for “two-place transitive like ‘give;’” the “g” in “Vg” stands for “give”). This type of verb requires a direct object and may also take an indirect object.
Examples: “buy” and “bring.” See how they work: “He buys her diamonds.” “She brings him clients.” An indirect object is optional in this type of transitive verb, so a sentence will work perfectly even with only a direct object: “He buys diamonds.” “She brings clients.”
3. Vc two-place transitive verb. (This term is an acronym for “two-place transitive like ‘consider;’” the “c” in “Vc” stands for “consider”). In this type of transitive verb, the action actually takes place within the subject or doer of the action, or is done to the subject itself, then is transmitted to the direct object.
Examples: “consider” and “make.” See how they work: “They considered the rebellion a lost cause.” “Factual errors like this make the judge extremely suspicious.”
Intransitive verb. This type of verb can’t pass on its action to anything in the sentence. Not having the power to transmit its action to a direct object, it generally dissipates that action in itself.
Examples: “go” and “disappear.” They can only function in objectless sentence constructions like these: “The case file goes missing.” “The witness disappeared.”
A peculiarity of a sentence that uses an intransitive verb is that it can’t be constructed into a passive-voice sentence. We can’t say or write these sentences: “Goes missing the case file.” “Disappeared the witness.” These sentences don’t work because there’s no subject or doer of the action to begin with.
Linking verb. This type of verb doesn’t act on an object but simply connects the subject to a complement, as the verb “is” does in “Justice is supposedly blind.” Without linking verbs, see how English becomes like a paraplegic dragging itself around a room: “Justice supposedly blind.”
Helping or auxiliary verb. This type of verb is used in conjunction with a main verb to express shades of time, ability, degree, or conditionality. A helping verb always comes before the main verb in a sentence.
In English, the helping or auxiliary verbs are “will,” “shall,” “may,” “might,” “can,” “could,” “must,” “ought to,” “should,” “would,” “used to,” and “need.” Combining one or more of them with a main verb produces a verb phrase, as “will come” in “He will come tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.”
To evoke a precise meaning or nuance, a main verb can use more than one helping verb, as in “She has been selling the new product for a month now.” Here, “selling” uses the helping verb “has” and the helping verb “been” to form the present perfect progressive tense.
(Next: A full-dress review of the verb types in English – 2)
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