Lesson 1: The Basics of a Sentence
Verbs Types
verb one or more words that describe an action or experience, or introduce a description
Often times you will hear someone say, “A verb is an action word.”
This is a short and helpful, if incomplete, definition. The majority of verbs are action words: “jump,” “run,” “take,” “write,” and so forth. But there are also other types of verbs like “is,” which don’t describe an action but rather a state of being. First, we will examine the “action” verb catagories.
Intransitive/Transitive Verbs (Vi/Vt)
An intransitive verb is any verb that does not need an object. (An object is something or someone receiving the action of the verb. We will learn more about these in another lesson.) A transitive verb transfers its action to its object. Intransitive/transitive is not a rigid category dividing up specific verbs, but rather a description of how a verb is being used in a particular sentence. Many verbs can be either intransitive or transitive, depending on whether an object is present to receive the action. Confused? Examples will help.
“Carl” is our subject noun and “eats” is our verb. Notice, there is no object following the verb. What is being eaten? We are not told. The action of eating is not being transferred to anything, so the verb is intransitive. Accordingly, “eats” is labeled Vi to show that it’s an intransitive verb. Take a look at another example.
Now the action of eating is being transferred to an object: breakfast. What is being eaten? Breakfast. So in this sentence, “eats” is a transitive verb and so is labeled Vt.
NOTE! Intransitive does not mean that there are no words after the verb! It means the verb has no object. In the sentence “Carl eats at home,” the verb “eats” is still intransitive. There are words after it, however they are not the object of “eats.” What is being eaten? Nothing. There is no object telling us what is being eaten. Rather there are other words telling us where the eating is happening, “at home.” This is called a prepositional phrase, something we will learn about in another lesson. For now, remember, the difference between intransitive and transitive is the absence or presence of an object.
While the verb “eats” in our example can be either intransitive or transitive, there are some verbs that are inherently intransitive—that is, they never have an object. For example, “smile” or “sleep.” On the other hand, there are verbs that never stand alone, but always have an object, and are therefore inherently transitive, like “establish.” In the end, however, all you need to be concerned with is being able to identify how a specific verb is acting in a given sentence.
Let’s look at a few more examples:
“I learn.”
The verb in this sentence is “learn,” and it is intransitive because there is no object after it. The action of learning is not being received by something or someone. We would label “learn” as Vi.
“I learn Greek.”
The verb here is also “learn.” But, in this case, the action of learning is being transferred to an object: Greek. What is being learned? Greek. Therefore, “learn” in this sentence is transitive and we would label it Vt.
“The cat woke.”
The verb in this sentence is “woke.” It is intransitive because there is no object after it. The action of waking is not being transferred to something or someone and so we would label it Vi.
“The cat woke early.”
What do you think about the verb “woke” in this sentence? Intransitive or transitive? If you said intransitive...you are correct! Like “Carl eats at home,” there are words after the verb “woke”, but they are not the object of the verb. Here we have a word describing how the cat woke. A word that describes a verb is called an adverb—something we will learn more about later.
Linking Verbs (Vl)
While designations of transitive and intransitive are mostly about usage, linking is an distinctive verb type. A linking verb is a verb that links the subject to a description or renaming. The predominant linking verb is “to be” (“I am,” “he was,” “they will be,” “she is,” and so on). There are other linking verbs as well, like “seem” and “feel.”
We will look more closely at linking verbs in lesson 3.
Helping Verbs
Helping verbs (also called Auxiliary Verbs) are verbs that are added to a main verb (Vi, Vt, or Vl) to change its attributes. You will learn about verb attributes in the next step.
Helping verbs can change the tense from present to future:
“Carl will eat breakfast.”
Helping verbs can change the modality (possibility, contingency, or necessity):¹
“Carl might eat breakfast.”
“Carl can eat breakfast.”
Helping verbs can change the voice from active to passive:
“Carl was eaten for breakfast!”
In this course, you will not need to identify, parse, or diagram helping verbs. When you see two verbs working together to make one verbal idea, you will group them together under the label of the main verb, and diagram them together on the same line.
A word about “parsing”
The word “parse” means to take something apart into its component pieces. You may have used the term before in relation to stating the different attributes of a word. In this course, “parse” has one and only one meaning. We parse a sentence by labeling each word according to its role and relationship to other words.
E.g. Parse the sentence, “Carl eats.”
“Carl” is a third person, proper, singular noun, and “eats” is a third person, singular, present tense verb. However, none of that information is relevant when I am parsing the sentence. I label “Carl” as the ‘Sn’ (subject noun), because the role that “Carl” is playing in the sentence is as the subject. I label “eats” as the ‘Vi’ (intransitive verb) because that is its role in the sentence.