1. What a Verb Is, and What Verbs Aren't. English Grammar Lesson
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2007
- 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.
You can't say, "Sandor thinking". However, you can say, "Sandor thinks", "Sandor feels", "Sandor keeps"... I'm just making conversation while also letting you know that I really appreciate you as a teacher, and I'm glad that I found your channel.
So, was that a contradiction from the teachers part?
"A verb is something with a subject" is a far better definition of a verb. Thank you! Referring to verbs as action words is wholly inadequate as a definition. This should serve to clear up a lot of confusion.
I have used this video in class for over five years now - I love it!
Thanks for your comment. In English, the subject of commands (like "Go to your room!" or "Stop!") is "you", but the "you" is merely understood, without being stated. Thus the subject of "go" or "stop" in the examples I just gave is "you". Thanks again!
If more English teachers taught grammar in a way that he did than there would be less illiterates in this world. I want to be a grammarian too. What an inspiration.
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.
Excellent lesson on this basic yet commonly confused area!
You've expressed the point in precisely the right way, it seems to me. Thanks for tuning in, and Merry Christmas to you!
@insert6528 "Thinking", like all present participles, can be a verb only when it appears along with a form of the auxiliary verb "to be". In the sentence you propose, the first verb is two words long, "was thinking". So you are absolutely correct.
@metalmanky306 That is correct. In "I am thinking of you," the part of speech of "thinking" is verb. In "The thinking man scratches his head," the part of speech of "thinking" is adjective. Notice that in both sentences, you can answer the question "Who is thinking?" But being able to answer a question like "Is someone doing the thinking?" does not tell you that "thinking" is a verb; it depends on how it appears in the sentence.
Dude, you rock! My students are sick of the sound of my voice. Tomorrow they will listen to yours. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
P.S. I had to sift through dozens of RUclips "grammar" videos to find one with correct information, like yours. :-) --A fellow college instructor
@mrthoth Thank you for the videos. As I study for the gmat, they have become a great aid.
I am currently reading "The Last of the mohicans" since I was told that reading the classics helps strengthen one's grammer. While reading, one sentence caught my eye because it seems, to me, to be grammatically incorrect. Cooper wrote, "The young Mohican darted away at the suggestion, and the scout had hardly done speaking, before the former raised a cry of success from the margin of the forest."
@isaacmb1 Thanks for your comment. "Thinking" in the example sentence is a participle adjective, just like "contested" and "growing." In the sentence "The man thinking about the election got lost," "thinking" is an adjective. Moving the participial phrase around (as in "Thinking about the election, the man got lost") does not turn the participle ("thinking") into a verb.
@Elfavzla In commands in English, the subject is "understood", which is to say that it's assumed to be there. In one word commands (like "Go!" or "Stop!"), the understood subject is always "you". So even commands are said to have a subject.
Superb presentation, exactly what I was looking for.
@PurdyBear1 Words can come between subjects and verbs ("I quickly left the building") and verbs can come before subjects ("Time flies, as do arrows").
And a verb, can never follow after a Preposition.
Great video!
Finally I have found you again!
thanks for helping me understand what a verb is
Thanks for your comment! If you check out my vids on gerunds, infinitives, and participles, you'll see how traditional grammar handles what have more recently been dubbed "non-finite verbs." Thanks again!
This Guy Is Friggin' great!
@TomSFox You are right that there is something funny about referring to the verb to be, although "to be" is never a verb. Strictly speaking, one should say "forms of the verb whose infinitive is 'to be,'" but that would be fussy. "To be" can have the part of speech noun ("To be is a joy"), adjective ("He's the man to be"), or adverb ("One dresses up to be attractive"), but "to be" never has the part of speech verb.
Mr mrtroth ... this is an excellent stuff. It helps me improve my english
=D this is a really good idea! =] i never thought that you could get taught over the internet! =P keep the awesome lessons coming!
contested is a verbal, as participle functions as adj. describing election; growing is also a verbal, as participle functions as adj. describing dread; and thinking is a verbal, as a gerund functions as a noun
@TheSiIentOne "Thinking" and "growing" are present participles functioning as adjectives. "Sense" is a noun. In different sentences, each of these words can function as verbs. "I am thinking of you." "The plants are growing rapidly." "I sense danger." Thanks for watching!
Sir, I like your lessons!
"Thinking", "contested", and "growing" are all participles functioning as adjectives. (See videos 9 and 10, "Participial Phrases and Participles as Adjectives" and "Participial Phrases Set off by Commas".) "Sense" is a noun. Thanks for your comment!
great video, very informative. I love 2:58, hilarious.
Dread can grow, and so can a sense of dread. Both sentences are fine.
In "I contested this", the verb is "contested".
The function of many words - like "contested" - depends on its usage. In this video, "contested" is being used as an adjective - it describes "election" (technically, it's a past participle here).
In your sentence, "I contested this", the word "contested" has a subject ("I"), and in this sentence is functioning as a verb.
So great lessons, thank you so much
hi dude!!
keep helping us with nice videos like this one!!
thx!!
Oh my gosh! You and I were separated at birth. Your style and body language-it must be what I look and sound when I teach! lol
@moksshhh The complete subject is "fifty percent of the pie". That is what has done the disappearing. One could quibble about whether the simple subject is "percent" or "fifty percent", but "percent" is the key word. The simple subject is what the verb agrees with. In "One of the pies is missing", "is" agrees only with "one", not with "pies." It's not "one of the pies are missing." That's because "one" is the simple subject, while the complete subject is "one of the pies."
Sandor is a subject noun. “Felt” is a predicate verb. “Sense” is a noun with the article “a,” The preposition “of” precedes the object “dread.” “Growing” is an adjective for “dread.” “About” is a preposition, & “election” is an object identified by the article “the.” “Contested” is an adjective for “election.” Example of “a thinking man” uses “thinking” as an adjective for man. “I’ll do the thinking” makes it a gerund, but that is not how it is used here. It is a present participle verb.
It depends entirely on the context.
"I am thinking" - 'thinking' is a verb here being used progressively
"I like thinking" - 'thinking' is a noun here used as the object of the verb 'like'
"Thinking people agree..." - you maythink it's an adjective here because it describes a noun but it's not. It fails two tests of an adjective: 1) you can't intensify it ("Very thinking" doesn't work) and you can't make a comparative or superlative ("more thinking" and "the most thinking" don't work).
nice you posting this
this is useful
In "I had better go," "go" in actually not a verb, but an infinitive with the "to" dropped off, just as it is in "He made me go." (The "to" reappears in "He forced me to go"). "I had better go" is like the more formal sounding "I had rather hear your voice than any other," in which "hear," too, is an infinitive with the "to" left out. As to WHY the "to" is left out of "you'd better go" or "he made me go," but not left out of "he forced me to go," there's really no answer.
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.
A bit more on this. "I had better go" is not a simple statement of fact. ("I get headaches" is a simple statement of fact.) "I'd better go" is a conditional statement meaning, "It would be better for me to go than to stay." That's why it's not weird to say, "I'd better go," and then to stay put. However, it would be weird to say, "I am now in the act of leaving," and not to move. That's because "I'd better go" isn't actually a statement of fact, whereas "I am now leaving" is.
he is a smarty pants. Good job man. I like this...mr smarty pants
Exactly. We are supposed to share knowledge and ideas on RUclips, and discus it.
i really hope you keep continuing this English lesson to us, especially for foreign people like me =).
If someone asks you, "What would you like to eat?" you might respond, "Okra." Is that a sentence? Only if you count the "invisible" words that make it meaningful. You mean, "[I would like to eat] okra." The same is true for "yes." "Would you like to go?" "Yes, [I would like to go]." We usually don't use the bracketed words, but they are assumed by both speaker and listener, and that is what gives a word like "yes" or "okra" the character of a sentence.
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.
its very fine example.thanks
oh man, I LOVE it.
Thank you for the videos
@pawndominance1 This may not be what you're thinking of, but if the assignment is "Fill in the blank so that the result is a complete sentence," a test sentence that would fit every verb and only every verb would be this: It _____. It kicks, it grows, it is, it has, etc. Even modals would work (sort of), in that in speech we often leave out the main verb without feeling we've produced a sentence fragment: It should.
On the other hand some participles , such as "interesting/ed" and "boring/ed" DO qualify as adjectives because you can do everything with them that you can with an adjective.
Thank you!
Thank you for the video.
what is sandor doing? SANDOR THINKING! LOL. Learning and Laughing
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.
So what is it? In this case we can only call it a participle, which is what it always is no matter how you're using it.
Also note that another thing that makes its use in that sentence different to an adjective is that it carries part of the sense of a verb - "thinking people" implies "people who are thinking or who think". Just like "I can smell burning/burnt toast" implies an action happening/has happened, but the participles are used to describe the nouns rather than to narrate action.
@mrthoth Understood. Thank you :)
Thanks a lot
Thank you very helpful
Thanks. I am getting to understand "Verbs" finally! :-) I did understand Nouns and Adjectives in school but the rest was too much. But I performed well in my English Language tests (English is not my native language) by a vague "sense" of grammar and could fill in the right words in the tests.
Thank you so much.
@fumala420 Infinitives never have verb as their part of speech. They are either adjectives (He's the man to beat), adverbs (I work to make money), or nouns (I like to ski).
@jonnybik12
mostly writers are using their own style in writing and that is their stream of consciousness... when it comes to the study, even William Shakespeare committed mistakes when it comes to grammatical rules... I just learned when I took up my 6-Unit -M.A. in Literature and studied Stylistics course, that we cannot correct grammar in poetry and same course--- an aspect in Linguistics.
@moksshhh It's not [but its just "Fifty Percent"] - it's [but it's just "Fifty Percent"], i.e. it's has an apostrophe. When you want to shorten 'It is' or 'It has', then use [It's].
When [Its] is used without an apostrophe it can only be used in examples such as [The factory is closing, its workers are being made redundant.]
@jonnybik12 The sentence you're wondering about is like this one: "When you walked in, I had already done talking." Perhaps the construction "had done ____ing" is getting to be a bit old fashioned, but it is correct.
THANK you so much shottest and the best ONEEEEEEEEEEE!
@moksshhh "of the pie" is a genitive attribute that modifies "fifty percent." I would argue that it is also part of the subject, though.
@jonnybik12 The Cooper sentence looks good to me. If you'd like more of a reaction let me know what you think is wrong with it.
Ian,
Yes, occassionally you have to simplify. But I suggest watching a couple more of this guy's videos, especially the ones about verbs. Assuming you know grammar, I think you will see the problems. The inaccuracy that is arising is happening because Mr. Hoth wants to force syntax and grammar into the outdated and contradictory mold of the Read-Kellogg system of diagramming sentences. In this video he claims twice that a three-verb string is just one verb. Quite a contradiction.
"Thinking" is a present participle functioning as an adjective. See videos 9 and 10, "Participial Phrases and Participles as Adjectives" and "Participial Phrases Set off by Commas." Thanks for your question.
Thanks.
Mr. Thoth looks like Jerry Lewis. He is a great teacher.
a VERB is also a state of being like felt.
Stop yelling at me, dad! Ha ha! This guy's passionate!
Okay, so, "contested" and "growing" are adjectives and "sense" is a noun, right? So, what does that make "thinking"?
"Thinking" in that sentence is a participle functioning as an adjective, modifying "Sandor". In traditional grammar, every word can be assigned to one of the eight parts of speech, and participles are either verbs ("I am thinking of you") or adjectives ("The man thinking about music is my brother," or "Thinking about music, Gabor grew happy," or "Thinking people agree with me.") See my video on participles for more information.
Mr. Hoth, can you recommend an English grammar book that complements your excellent videos?
@metalmanky306 Sorry, I just saw your vid on adjectives and had my question answered for me. So, if the words had been arranged differently in the sentence and conjugated differently (I'm not entirely sure if I'm using that word correctly. Am I?), they would be verbs, but as they are in this context, they are adjectives. Is that correct?
Would thinking be considered a verb in this sentence?:
"As Sandor was thinking about the contested election, he felt a sense of growing dread."
In this scenario, I would imagine that Sandor becomes linked to the verb by the auxiliary verb? Would 'thinking' only be considered a verb whilst following this construction?
please also emphasize the verbals and their uses in your sentence... thinking is gerund, growing is a participle ( functions as an adj. describing dread... and of course, FELT is the only verb in your sentence.
2:57 OMG :))
And now, ladies and gentlemen, pleeease welcooooome Mr. Sandor Thinking!!!
Surely, Sandor is still the subject of "thinking" and the only reason it's conjugated differently is because of it's position in the sentence. Sandor is still doing the thinking, isn't he? If so, would he not still be the subject? On the same note, isn't the dread growing? If I'm wrong, what are those words in this context? Are they adjectives?
I find it ironic that the name of the playlist that contains this video is misspelled.
@mrthoth
I just don't understand why the present participle, speaking, is used.
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..
Do you know the difference between "by" and "until" in a straight forward way? Thanks
what about the imperative? like ... "shut up!" , there is no a subject but it is definetely a verb, an action
I thought the shortest sentence is "STOP!" because it implies "you," as in "you stop"
actually the shortest sentence is "Go!"
awwwww...the subject and the verb is like a marriage....
@analduct Exactly!
Run! Duck!
So what is "thinking" in the sentence?
How would you class it?
Thinking is a participle. And 'Thinking about the contested election' is a participial phrase that adjectivally qualifies Sandor.
Does this rule of: verbs have subjects, and all other english parts of speech apply to all language? I am hoping this information will aid me in becoming a polygot and your emphasis on the english language makes me wonder what i can use concerning this information and what will not be useful.
mrthoth!..can u pls explain what is the difference of perfect to participle..past perfect tese to past participle..and when i have to use the verb been?..its really hard to understand the verb!...:(
@mrthoth Okay, but then why does one speak of "the verb 'to be'," etc?
I contested this.
Does this sentence not have a verb? or could you point it out? And is my sentence english? and if so??? is it understood? if so is it understood correctly?
are you subjectively mean?
I am Arabian ,and I had Eng exam after ,,2weeks.and I don't know what to do ,,wish luck to me
Thanks so much for these videos. Im hoping to improve my grammar and this has helped a great deal.
Question: Does the verb always follow the subject (directly after it) or can there be words in between? Thanks
EnglishmaninPoland, that's called an absolute adjective. Another example of an absolute adjective is "dead". You can't intensify or compare
"dead," without being improper. You're either dead or you're not.
hilarious. Sandor thinking!