Understanding Language: A Guide for Beginning Students of Greek and Latin

6. What Do Verbs Do?

103 6 What Do Verbs Do? My twelfth-grade English teacher was fond of telling her students that the strength of the English language lies in its verbs, and so great writing is built on the use of strong verbs, whereas poorer writing neglects its verbs and relies on piles of adjectives and adverbs to convey meaning and force. This is certainly true in English, but it is also true in any other Indo-European language . Verbs carry the weight when it comes to communicating; they drive the message that the sentence is trying to convey. If nouns formed the starting point for the grammatical part of this book, verbs constitute the heart of that grammatical discussion, and I will dedicate three chapters to verbs. As we consider verbs, let us begin by asking about function. What exactly are verbs supposed to do? What should they accomplish in a sentence? We already know from chapter 3 that verbs express the central “event” of a sentence—the action or state the sentence is trying to convey. In this chapter I would like to introduce verbs by unpacking the many functions that are involved in conveying this central event, and then in the next two chapters, I will discuss the ways Greek and Latin verbs handle these tasks. What Kinds of Events Must Verbs Describe? Perhaps the most fundamental question related to verbs is what sorts of events are possible, and thus how verbs can describe the different kinds of events. Here there are two basic categories: an event can be either an action or a state. Some grammarians subdivide “action” into various other categories, because they see (for 104 Part 3: Verbs: The Heart of Communication example) thought and speech as something different from action. Nevertheless, for most purposes it is sufficient simply to use these two categories. Either something is happening, or something is remaining in the state in which it already found itself. Either there is an action, or there is a state of being. Verbs that describe a state are sometimes called stative verbs. Verbs that describe an action are not automatically called active verbs, for reasons that I will make clear below.1 In the case of a verb that describes an action, another fundamental question is whether the action involves an object or is complete in itself. If a verb takes an object, it is said to be a transitive verb, because the action “carries over” to that object. (The word “transitive” comes from the Latin for “carry over.”) If the action does not involve an object, the verb is said to be an intransitive verb. Some verbs, such as “to find,” must always be transitive, because one has to have something to find, or the sentence does not make any sense. Other verbs, such as “to fare,” must always be intransitive, since one cannot ask “to fare what?”; one can only ask whether a person is faring well or badly. Many verbs can be one or the other. For example, “to run” or “to swim” can be either transitive (“I am running a race” or “you are swimming laps”) or intransitive (“I am going swimming today” or “she runs every day”). Who Is Doing the Action? Another fundamental question is how the action or state is related to the subject of the sentence. If the verb is stative, then the subject of the sentence must be the one who is in that state. For example, if the “event” is being a teacher, then one can say, “I am a teacher,” thus indicating that the subject (“I”) is the one who is in that state. In contrast, if the verb describes an action, then in many cases the subject of the sentence can be either the one doing the action or the one receiving the action. For instance, instead of the stative event of being a teacher, consider the action of teaching. One can say, “I am teaching” or “the students are being taught.” In the first case, the subject (“I”) is performing 1. Instead, verbs that describe an action are called “fientive verbs,” but you probably do not need to learn that term. What Do Verbs Do? 105 the action, and in the second case, the action is being performed on the subject (“the students”). They are receiving the action. Grammatically, the question of whether the subject performs or receives the verb’s...