Verbs In General

A verb is an action word showing either a physical action such as to walk, a mental action such as to think, or a state of being such as to exist. No sentence without a verb is complete. It is a sentence fragment and will not convey a logical thought. Thus, a thorough examination of this important part of speech will be worthwhile. If you wish to learn about the importance of understandings verbs, read my article on The Importance Of Verbs.

The infinitive of a verb consists of the base of the verb without a conjugation. For example, the infinitive, to learn, or to speak, cannot stand alone. The phrases do not explain who is learning or speaking. If the verb is conjugated and given a subject, then the sentence would demonstrate who is learning or speaking.

What Is A Verb Conjugation

According to grammarly.com, “verb conjugation refers to how a verb changes to show a different person, tense, number or mood”. These changes are conjugations. Thus, the conjugated verb has person, tense, number or mood. For example, in the sentence, “I want to learn how to teach“, the conjugated verb is want. It has person, the first person pronoun, I, which is the subject of the present tense verb, want. To conjugate the verb in the first person, simply remove the preposition, to. Thus, the subject and predicate of the sentence is, I want. The infinitive, to learn, is the direct object of the verb. The object signifies what I want. The phrase, how to teach, is and adverbial phrase the modifies the infinitive, to learn.

Person

In grammar, person refers to who is preforming the action, or to whom the action is being preformed. To gain a better understanding of person, a review of personal pronouns would be helpful. Learn more about personal pronouns here.

Tense

The tense of a verb refers to time. Three basic tenses exist in grammar, the present tense, the past tense, and the future tense. In addition, two past tenses are used to describe past action. The simple past tense describes an action that happened at a particular point in time. For example, the sentence, I drove to the store, is in the simple past tense because it expresses a single period of time.

The imperfect past tense describes action that occurred over a period of time. The phrase, I was driving to the store expresses a continuous action. The action of driving in this sentence expresses an ongoing action.

Many times, the imperfect describes an action that was occurring when another action took place. For example, I was driving to work when I realized that today is my day off. The imperfect past is the phrase, I was driving. The past tense verb is, realized.

The imperfect is often expressed in English with the helping word, used to. The application of this helping verb is a little tricky. Sometimes, use to without the d on the end is applied to questions with did. Read more here.

Test your knowledge of the difference between the simple past tense and the imperfect past tense.

(Quiz Forthcoming)

Number

Verb endings often change according to whether the subject is singular or plural. However, in English, the verb only changes in the third person singular (See above table). In Spanish and many other languages, especially among the romance languages (i.e. )

Mood

Verb mood describes the tone of the subject of the verb. Both English and Spanish apply moods although the verbs are formed differently. The five verb moods include the following:

Indicative

The indictive verb mood is used to indicate or simply tell a fact or statement. For example, the sun shines all summer long. This is a simple statement of fact. It indicates something, thus, it is called the indictive mood.

Imperative

The imperative mood presents a command request or that someone else preform an act. For example, take this quiz, makes a request or command. Think of the action as imperative as if it must or should be done. Oftentimes, the imperative is a simple desire. For instance, the statement, have a nice day, is an imperative mood because the phrase literally commands that some have a nice day.

Interrogative

The interrogative mood asks a question, thus, the name. In English, the to do verb acts an an auxiliary verb. Hence, one would ask a question by placing do before an indictive statement. For example, the phrase, you work today, could be turned into the question, do you work today?

In most other languages, including Spanish, the interrogative mood switches word order. For example, to turn the indicative statement, you work today, into a question, one would simply switch the word order. For instance, work you today?

Subjunctive

The subjunctive mood consists of a present subjunctive and a past imperfect subjunctive. In English, the present subjunctive verb takes the normal form expect in the third person singular where it drops the s on the end of the verb. Thus, someone might say, God help us. Normally, since God is in the third person, one would say God helps us, but when someone adds expresses desire, the s disappears. Thus, the subjunctive becomes God help us. The subordinate clause can be implied.

The present subjunctive is rare in English but often appears in Spanish.

The past imperfect subjunctive is used to express an action that occurs only on a condition. For example, I would wear a coat if it were cold. The condition is that it is cold. Thus, the action of wearing a coat did not occur because it is not cold. Notice how the past tense of the to be verb is used as the imperfect subjunctive. In Spanish, however, a complete verb tense with different endings is applied to the imperfect subjunctive.

Conditional

The conditional mood expresses the condition required to make the subjunctive verb active.

The conditional mood in expressed in English with helping verbs such as would or could. In Spanish, however, a complete verb ending is added to the infinitive to form the conditional mood.