Questions tagged [verbs]
Part of speech whose members indicate an action or a state of being.
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"Typically, the subject has the agent role" -- how frequent is this, really?
In introductory books or reference works, this kind of statement recurs over and over: "In the active voice, the subject is typically an agent". However, it is obvious that many verbs have ...
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Apparently agentive -r forms in Old Norse
I'm trying to understand forms like "Hræsvelgr" (Mythological creature; lit. corpse swallower) and "vínsvelgr" (Drunkard) in Old Norse.
The verb "svelga" is "to ...
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Can a strong verb change to weak?
Can a strong verb in the course of time change to weak verb?
MoDu "scheiden" (to seperate) is weak: scheidde, gescheiden.
Its ancestor ODu *skeidan < PWGm *skaiþan < PGm *skaiþana is ...
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Categorisation of verbs [closed]
I am confused about verbs. Have seen the following categorisation:
Past Simple
Past Perfect
Past Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Subjunctive
I understand that Past is a Tense. But what about ...
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About phrasal verbs, separable verb and verbs with adverbs
I was wondering about the concepts listed in the title. In one side we have the separable verbs in German, like mitkommen:
Ich komme mit.
On the other hand we have phrasal verbs such as think over ...
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What is the meaning of these verbal roots in The Concise Dictionary of Akkadian?
I am referring to this PDF or this HTML version of the "verbal roots" in The Concise Dictionary of Akkadian.
The HTML site says of them pretty much the same thing:
This index of Akkadian ...
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What are the cognitive or linguistic reasons for separable prefixes?
I am struggling to understand why some languages (German for example) have verbs with separable prefixes and others don't. German has both kinds of prefixes: separable and non-separable. So, it's not ...
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What is a psych verb?
As mentioned in this comment by John Lawler to this question I asked yesterday, know is not a psych verb.
What is a psych verb? I've heard this term before and vaguely guessed that it was a word ...
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By what mechanism do `want` and `know` fail to form commands?
Verbs like want and know seem to resist being used in imperative constructions. In particular, it does not seem possible to use them to command people to change their mind about what they want or to ...
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Are auxiliaries not lexical?
Anderson's Essentials of Linguistics says:
Auxiliaries are what you might have called “helping verbs” when you
first learned about grammar: they help a lexical verb by providing
grammatical ...
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Simplicity of the verb in Germanic languages
English and German have only two tenses (the present and the past) that are formed by inflection, all the others are formed using helping verbs, as is the conditional mood. In the Romance languages ...
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Are there languages without non-finite verb forms at all?
This is inspired by the comments to this answer: Are there languages without any non-finite verb forms, or almost without any non-finite verb forms?
Examples of such languages are welcome!
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Which aspect is actually communicated by Supine verb form in Estonian
there is one bit of Estonian grammar that bugs me in particular for years already. Why to have 2 separate infinitive forms (so called, -ma and -da infinitives, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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What do Georgian thematic suffixes even do, and where do they come from?
Georgian has two sets of verb affixes that don't really mark a specific tense or aspect themselves, but the combination of them narrows down which TAM-indicating conjugation you're looking at - the ...
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Stable words in the Indo-European language family
(I am not a linguist, so I don't know proper terminology)
When studying Spanish and French, I quickly learned that many very common verbs have irregular forms; the reason given was that common usage ...
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Using 'is' after non-denoting phrases
Usually 'is' can be an identity statement 'John is my boss' or a predication like 'John is angry', how about using 'is' for something that refers to no particular idea or object?
For example 'a ...
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Derivation of Morpheme for "Raising" in NACLO Problem
The Problem
The Solution
Partial Explanation
chak appears in both (11) and (12), both of which are about catching. It doesn't appear anywhere else, so we can assume it is some form of "catching&...
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Can clauses with transitive verbs that stand for experiences be passivized across the attested languages that have passive voice?
In English, verbs that stand for experiences (e.g. see, hear, sense, notice, realize) can occur in passive forms and clauses as we see in these examples:
"Tommy sees the baby sloth." --&...
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What is a "direction prefix" in this context?
In this book there's a translation of a Sumerian word, namely munintuma'a, which is said to mean "when he had made it suitable for her…".
Then this sketch follows:
┌─────────┐ ┌─────┐ ┌─────┐...
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What is the benefit of tenses when time period can be pinned down by adverbs? [closed]
In language like English and German, there is two ways to indicate time period. One is with conjugation and the other with time adverbs. To my understanding, the adverbs allow for exact pinning down ...
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Can non-finite verbs be not active nor passive voice?
Non-finite verbs can show voices as finite verbs do, but in some cases they seems to be without subject, so what are their voices? Are they just not showing voices?
For example,
“this was my first ...
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What type of verbs take a clause as the direct object?
We have detailed transitivity classification for the valence and the number of objects a verb can take.
Some transitive verbs can take a complete sentence (a clause) as the direct object. For example,
...
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How do "transform into" and "turn into" function syntactically?
He turned into a car
He transformed into a car
What are the syntactic categories of "transform", "turn", and "into" in each sentence?
I think that "turned into&...
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How do languages without adjectives, that treat them instead as verbs, handle more complex adjective-like phrases?
I am looking at papers like Where have all the adjectives gone? The case of Jinghpaw which show stuff like:
fi=go ggba=thinn re.
3sg=TOP be.big=SUPER COP
'He is the biggest.'
Also, Approaches to the ...
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How does Case work in an impersonal sentence?
The Case filter is what prohibits the phonetic realization of a DP that recieves no grammatical Case. In languages such as Portuguese, people use impersonal constructions like "há/tem um carro na ...
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What languages use a conceptual parallel to the Hebrew verb ירש?
The Hebrew verb ירש is loosely translated to mean "inherit," but does not quite mean the same thing as the English word inherit because the Hebrew verb refers to an heir inheriting his ...
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Is there a specific verb category for verbs that act on other verbs
In the phrases below:
He started to eat food
John decided to kick the ball
Justin prepared to face the challenge
Are the verbs started, decided, and prepared in s special category since they don't ...
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Is telicity a property of verbs or predicates?
In English, the verb "walk" is atelic. One could in principle walk indefinitely. Fatigue and aging limit the activity, but that fact is not an inherent part of the meaning of the verb. ...
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Are there any languages where verbs in the past form are used with the future tense?
I have learned that in the Galician Ukrainian dialect the verbs in past tense are used in the future. Are there any other languages with the same structure?
For example:
"Будеш з нами їв?" = ...
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Is there a list of common English verbs with all of the inflectional "principal parts"?
I am looking for a list of common English verbs (1000 to 2000 most-frequent) which gives the distinct inflectional forms (spelled: pronunciation is irrelevant). For example, "sits, sit, sat, sat, ...
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Is there "adjunct indexation" in some languages?
The arguments of a verb may leave markers on the verb about the person and number features, which is commonly called as argument indexation. We know the distinction between arguments and adjuncts is ...
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List of Lexical and Auxiliary verbs [closed]
I am wanting to know if anyone knows where I get a list of the verbs that are Lexical and Auxiliary. Not what the differences are, but what the actual verbs are. And maybe which are which. I've tried ...
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Is there a word for a pair of verbs that mean the same thing but with subject and object swapped?
In logic, you can say:
(A and B) --> A / 'A and B' implies 'A' (as the 'B' is just discarded)
Computer programmers working from a specification to an implementation, sometimes talk about ...
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Why is a verb omitted in English coordination?
In English coordination, it is very common that a verb should be omitted so that the whole expression sounds natural as exemplifed below.
Ann came with, and Bob without, a date. (Langacker 2012).
...
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What is the subcategorizarion of the verb "thought"?
I'm writing a grammar and I see that VP->thought SBAR.
The sentence "the president thought that a sandwich sighed ."
In the stanford parser.
But what is this type of verbs?
Transitive/...
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Verb subcategoriztion - intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, Verb with a complement clause
I'm trying to avoid building grammatically incorrect sentences in some small toy grammar I'm building.
I find subcategorization of verbs bit confusing.
Can there be more then one classification per ...
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Object of certain constructions
I am sure you have all come across constructions such as these:
She slept a long sleep
He lived a productive life.
These verbs are traditionally intransitive verbs, and yet here are transitive. ...
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OVS in English dialogue
English is an SVO language. When writing dialogue, especially in literature, writing a sentence with the speech first is considered grammatically correct. Take for example this extract from Ursula K ...
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Is it possible to make a statement without involving time?
All verbs seem to assume time. Is, was, will be, etc. I don't mean specific times, but the concept of time in general. Is it possible to make any statement without involving time?
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How would you classify a verb that denotes a close temporal relation to another verb?
I am looking at a Papuan language that uses a serialized verb to denote temporal proximity to the main verb's occurrence. I am translating it as "just" in English, as in "he just left&...
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What is the proper definition of a verb?
I do apologise if the question is wordy, but I feel some context is required for me to stand any chance of finding a satifactory answer.
I have been struggling to understand why the word "is"...
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What percentage of verbs in English take both a direct and an indirect object?
I am assuming that the number of transitive verbs that take both a direct and indirect object in English is a subset of those that just take just a direct object. Does anyone know how much smaller? ...
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Does "Inchoative Construction" mean constructions with intransitive inchoative verbs?
The following is the sentence I extracted from a book, Binding Theory, written by Daniel Burning.
The fact that a language like English, which lacks a simple reflexive, has extremely few reflexive ...
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a term for the type of ambi-transitive verb that can do away with an object
I found some terms like (non)ergative, inchoative, but neither quite fits the type of transitive verb that can do without an object, for example, "eat"
I ate.
Have you eaten?
I ate an apple.
...
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What is "mupigane" in Swahili? [closed]
In this sentence: "Wazazi waliwaambia watoto wao: 'Badala ya kufa nyumbani nendeni mupigane.'", I assume "mupigane" is a conjugated form of the verb "kupiga" (fight). ...
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Why is tense obligatory in some languages and not in others?
In some languages like Chinese, it isn’t imperative that the tense of the verb is explicitly marked. So if you mean an action that will occur in the future, you can still refer to it in an all-...
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What determines the valency of predicates?
According to this example, arrive takes only one subject valent.
Can somebody specializes in syntax help me apprehend this notion of valence? Specifically, what factors are used to determine the ...
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Why does the pronoun and verb order vary in Polish language?
My go nie lubimy - we do not like him
On nie kocha mnie - he does not love me
Why in the first example go is followed by nie lubimy, but in the second sentence we have the opposite: nie kocha followed ...
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Is there a name for the type of word that the word, “scarecrow,” is? (a transitive verb conjoined with its object)
The English word, “scarecrow,” spontaneously came to mind the other day, and I realized just how similar this word is to other words and phrases in other languages.
For example, there are many ...
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Is 'love' transitive?
I was just watching a linguistics video in which it was stated that in the sentence "John loves Mary", the verb love requires the direct object Mary, implying that it would be incorrect to ...
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