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1. What a Verb Is, and What Verbs Aren’t. English Grammar Lesson

Yossarian the Grammarian explains why you should think of a verb as something with a subject, rather than as an “action word”. English grammar, English Language.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under Grammar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

25 Responses to “1. What a Verb Is, and What Verbs Aren’t. English Grammar Lesson”

  1. would it be sense to?

  2. i have learned alot about the grammar from your videos. i wish to see more of new videos on english grammar. Thanks for the great lessions.

  3. Every sentence has at least one verb, and the part of speech of that verb is always verb. So in the case of verbs, there is no difference between part of speech and part of sentence. “Subject” is part of a sentence, but “subject” is not a part of speech. A verb is part of a sentence, and “verb” is always its part of speech. So when you have identified something as a verb, you have identified both what part of the sentence it is and its part of speech.

  4. Are we talking about parts of speech or parts of sentences?

  5. This lesson is about verbs, not about predicates. “He wants me to go” contains one verb: “wants.” A verb is something with a subject (as in “he wants”). “To go” is an infinitive; it cannot have a subject and so is not a verb. (One cannot say, “He to want.”) Infinitives (like “to go”), participles (like “going” and “gone”), and gerunds (like “going”) are called verbals. Gerunds and infinitives can never have verb as their part of speech, and participles can be verbs or adjectives.

  6. Are we talking here about verbs in general or about predicates? I’m not sure if these are the same concepts.Like in the sentence ‘He wants me to go’. Here there are two verbs but one predicate, am I right? The lesson is a lit bit confusing to me.

  7. if you’ve just started learning english how the hell do you understand what this guy is saying

  8. wat is a verb?

  9. thank you so much you real are a great teacher you tough me something that confused me for a long time

  10. It’s interesting. I’ve watched all of your lessons and this is the only one which I struggle with. It may come from the fact that I’ve studied Japanese for many years an in cases such as this ‘thinking’ would have been identified as a verb.

    I still face huge challenges when trying to identify grammatical elements in English sentences. If only they’d taught us this stuff in school! Then again, I never would have listened.

  11. In the sentence in question, “contested” and “thinking” are both participles functioning as adjectives (as is “functioning” in this sentence). My video on participles might clear this up.

  12. So, if thinking isn’t a word in this context then what is it? Is ‘contested’ an adjective?

  13. watch lesson 10 ,… its a participal phrase .. damn it ! :D

  14. ´sandor was thinking´ makes the word ´thinking´ to a verb, thats correct. But ´Thinking that…´ is, as I would suppose, a gerund. But I am not quite sure. A gerund is what makes a ´verb´ into a subject like `I stopped smoking´ (´the´ smoking). In german it becomes very obvious because we capitalize the letter. But it could also be that ´thinking´ in this kind of sentence is a reduction like – while he was thinking. It still confuses me a little, might be that second is true.

  15. hey Clev. St. writing class students!!

  16. Thank you very much for giving the globe an opportunity to strengthen ones grammar skills. Very kind of you to shear your knowledge with the globe.I envy you

  17. Very nice videos. Thank you.

    I’ve been looking to improve my grammar; if only my teachers at School were like you I’m sure I would have learnt a lot more.

  18. Commands?

  19. Thank you for this videos. I have little doubt
    What about this:

    “Sandor was thinking about the contested election and he felt a sense of growing dread”

    There is an auxiliar verb here: “was” . It is because of “was” that “thinking” does not a subject?

    Correct me please..

  20. really awesome

  21. Awesome explanations!

  22. hahahah

  23. Thank you. You are a Super Teacher! Would be great if you could have a site with exercises, questions and answers, and examples for writing analysis.

  24. Who got the PH.D in english?…

  25. Sandor also did the thinking too. Thinking is a verb.
    Just because you twisted the sentence and didn’t keep “is” doesn’t mean it’s not English.

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