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A verb (from Latin verbum 'word') is a word that generally conveys an action (bring, read, walk, run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive.
Verbs ending in a consonant plus o also typically add -es: veto → vetoes. Verbs ending in a consonant plus y add -es after changing the y to an i: cry → cries. In terms of pronunciation, the ending is pronounced as / ɪ z / after sibilants (as in lurches), as / s / after voiceless consonants other than sibilants (as in makes), and as / z ...
When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. [2] [3] [4] When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice.
Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence, the action by a verb in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase. For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", Jack is the agent and the ball is the patient. In certain languages, the agent is declined or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role.
For example, the English verbs arrive and run differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which has a natural endpoint while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from grammatical aspect in that it is an inherent semantic property of a predicate , while grammatical aspect is a syntactic or morphological property.
Certain non-syntactic aspects are common to all action verbs. Actions may be either planned or unplanned. The planning aspect is partially reflected in syntax by the agent or actor roles. An animate agent is a planner who instigates an action. The actors of intransitive verbs such as ’walk’, or ’sit’ are also planners.
The simple past or past simple, sometimes also called the preterite, consists of the bare past tense of the verb (ending in -ed for regular verbs, and formed in various ways for irregular ones, with the following spelling rules for regular verbs: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y ...
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