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As is typical of verbs in virtually all languages, Spanish verbs express an action or a state of being of a given subject, and like verbs in most Indo-European languages, Spanish verbs undergo inflection according to the following categories: Tense: past, present, or future; Number: singular or plural; Person: first, second or third
As verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective, the verb ...
Before o (in the first person singular of the indicative present tense) and a (that is, in all persons of the present subjunctive), the so-called G-verbs (sometimes "Go-Yo verbs", "Yo-Go" verbs, or simply "Go" verbs) add a medial -g-after l and n (also after s in asir), add -ig-when the root ends in a vowel, or substitute -c-for -g-.
For other irregular verbs and their common patterns, see the article on Spanish irregular verbs. The tables include only the "simple" tenses (that is, those formed with a single word), and not the "compound" tenses (those formed with an auxiliary verb plus a non-finite form of the main verb), such as the progressive, perfect, and passive voice.
Imperatives in Spanish do not require the use of clitics, but when they are used, a specific word order must be followed. With an affirmative verb, the clitic succeeds the verb. However, in a negative command, word order alters in that the clitic precedes the verb.
Modal verbs in Italian are the only group of verbs allowed to follow this particular behavior. When they do not accompany other verbs, they all use avere ("to have") as a helping verb for forming the perfect. For example, the helping verb for the perfect of potere ("can") is avere ("have"), as in ho potuto (lit.
Most impersonal constructions in Spanish involve using a special verb in [clarification needed] third-person defective verb with a direct object as its only argument or use of impersonal se (not to be confused with other uses of se). There are two main impersonal verbs in Spanish: haber (to have, to be (there is/are, there were)) and hacer (to do).
Modal auxiliary verbs, such as the English words may, can, must, ought, will, shall, need, dare, might, could, would, and should, are often used to express modality, especially in the Germanic languages. Ability, desirability, permission, obligation, and probability can all be exemplified by the usage of auxiliary modal verbs in English: