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VERB: verb

Definition

A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that typically signal events and actions, can constitute a minimal predicate in a clause, and govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause. Verbs are often associated with grammatical categories like tense, mood, aspect and voice, which can either be expressed inflectionally or using auxilliary verbs or particles.

Note that the VERB tag covers main verbs (content verbs) and copulas but it does not cover auxiliary verbs, for which there is the AUX tag. Auxiliares are verbs that are used in verb phrases expressing only grammatical function (as tense or mood) and do not have semantic content. For example, estava comendo (“was eating”), where “estar/be” is the auxiliary verb.

Portuguese traditional grammar also considers as auxiliary some verbs that in English would not be considered so, such as começar, acabar, permanecer (“begin, finish, stay”) as in começou a fazer (“began to do”), where “começar/begin” is auxiliar.

Note that we can have more than one auxiliary in a verbal phrase. A simple example would be tendo sido nomeado (“had been appointed”) where both “tendo” and “sido” are auxiliaries. Again a Portuguese only example would be parece estar a influenciar, (“seems to be influencing”), where “parece” and “estar” would be tagged as auxiliaries.

Note that participles are word forms that may share properties and usage of adjectives and verbs. Depending on language and context, they may be classified as either VERB or ADJ, e.g. “nomeado/appointed”.

Gerunds (“comendo/eating”) and infinitives (“nomear/appoint”) are classified as VERB.

Examples

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References

VERB in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [yue] [zh]