EV1 Lesson 4

The English Verb System – Contrastive Approach 1 October 26, 2018

Lesson 4 CLASSIFICATION OF AUXILIARY AND LEXICAL VERBS 

According to semantic and formal (morpho-syntactic) criteria, auxiliaries are divided into:  primary (be, have, do)  secondary (modals: can, may, will, could, might, should, need, dare, etc).



According to the syntactic criteria, i.e. structures in which they occur, lexical verbs could be divided into:  linking verbs (copulas)  nonlinking verbs.

Nonlinking verbs are subdivided into:  transitive  intransitive.



Linking verbs/copulas e.g: appear, be, become, feel, look, smell, prove, seem, taste, etc.

When a sentence contains a linking verb, the complement may be either a noun or an adjective: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Those people are all professors.

Those professors are brilliant.

This room smells bad.

I feel great.

A victory today seems unlikely.

The difference between linking and action verbs:

6. a) The monkey looked hungry. b) The monkey looked for food.

7. a) The soup tasted good. b) Tom tasted the soup. 

Resulting copulas A group of verbs that reflect a change in state of being is sometimes called resulting copulas. They, too, link a subject to a predicate adjective: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

His face turned purple.

She became older.

The dogs ran wild.

The milk has gone sour.

The crowd grew ugly.

1



Dynamic vs. Stative verbs

I

Each sentence has four underlined sections; identify the section with a mistake.

1. I play tennis every Tuesday. Last week, I was playing with John, a man I am knowing from work, when a bird flew into the tennis net.

2. Mohammed owns two different houses. He likes to live in his house by the sea when the weather is good, but in the winter he is preferring to live in the city.

3. While Keiko was fixing the car, I was making the supper. By six o'clock I had been working for eight hours, so I was needing a good meal.

4. When I called Sarah, she said she watched TV, so she didn't want to come out with me, so I went to the pub alone.

DYNAMIC VERBS denote the V situation which requires the input of energy, implies development and has phases and segments. There is the beginning, development and end (after which there may follow a new cycle).

STATIVE VERBS denote V situations which imply no motion, no development, just the existence of time. They do not have either phases or segments, and they can just be divided into temporal sequences which are all equal. 

Syntactically:

 only DYNAMIC verbs can be used in the progressive *He is knowing that theory.  only DYNAMIC verbs can form the imperative *Know that theory.  only DYNAMIC verbs can enter the structure ”force sb to V” *She forced him to know that theory.  only DYNAMIC verbs can be followed by adverbs of manner denoting speed or willingness, like slowly, quickly, reluctantly *He knew that theory reluctuntly.

II

Identify the verbs in the sentences below as either dynamic or stative: 1. I admire his skills a great deal.

2. Roger scratched his leg while jumping the fence.

3. Why does it matter what I think about it?

4. He keeps hearing noises in his head.

5. He surprised me tremendously.

6. I guess you don't love her if you always forget her birthday.

7. Stop imagining things!

8. You seem as if you've just heard some very bad news.

9. He's been studying a great deal, yet hasn't understood many problems.

10. She never believes anything I say.

2

III

What is the difference in meaning in the following pairs of sentences:  a) I don't mind if you stay. b) Tom's minding the baby.  a) They measured the house. b) This path measures 3 kilometers in length.  a) She was in the garden smelling the flowers. b) This milk smells sour.  a) I don't think she can be helped. b) What are you thinking?  a) We tasted each of the eight different salads. b) All of them tasted delicious.  a) How much do you weigh? b) Could you please weigh these vegetables for me?

References: Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum. (1993). A University Grammar of English. Essex: Longman Group.

3