CCSP English Minute 13

CCSP English Minute

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VERBS

Verbs are the most important part of the English language. You can’t make a sentence without one, but one verb alone can be a complete sentence. For example: Stop!

When Brazilians start learning English, understanding verbs seem easy. After all, a Portuguese verb like “cantar” can have more than 50 different forms, while the English equivalent has just six: to sing, sing, sang, sung, sings, and singing.

However, when we become more fluent in the language, we see that understanding verbs is harder than we thought. Even though an English verb may have just six forms, it can be conjugated in more than 120 different ways!

To make verbs easier to understand, today’s CCSP English Minute presents an illustration that shows how to conjugate verbs.

Here’s how this illustration works:

There four rows. These rows represent the different verb types: simple, continuous (also called progressive), perfect, and perfect continuous (or perfect progressive). There are three columns. These columns express time: past, present, and future. Where the rows and the columns meet, we find the verb tenses: past simple, present simple, future simple, past continuous, present continuous, and so on.

Next, at the bottom of the illustration, you will find the rules of conjugation. Remember that when you conjugate a verb in English you need to ask yourself a few questions:

1) Who or what is responsible for the action expressed by the verb?

2) Is the sentence a statement or a question?

3) Which is going to emphasized, the person/thing responsible for the action or the person/thing receiving the action?

These three questions determine the subject, mood, and voice of a sentence.

Let’s look at subject first. We say that the subject of a sentence is “first person” when it refers to the person who is speaking. We say that the subject is “second person” when it refers to the person who is being spoken to. And we say that the subject is “third person” when it refers to the person or thing being spoken of. Each of these classifications can be either singular or plural – resulting in six categories.



Next we look at mood. The English language has four moods: indicative (statements), interrogative (questions), imperative (commands), or subjunctive (things imagined or wished for). The illustration shows only with the first two, which apply to all tenses and all subjects. The three categories that result are affirmative statements, negative statements, and questions.



Voice is the final consideration. Transitive verbs (those that take direct objects) can be expressed either in the active or passive voice. The active voice is more common and it places the subject before the verb. The passive voice places the object in subject position – either to emphasize the object or because the subject is unknown. The passive structure is more formal and should be used only occasionally.

This all may sound complicated, but you don’t need to memorize every possibility for every situation. Instead, use the illustration to get a general idea of how different verbs forms are related in the English language.

VERB TRIVIA

Did you know that, in the Finnish language, a verb can have 4,000 different forms? The record is probably held by Archi, a language spoken in Russia, in which a single verb could have over a million forms! (“Inside Language” by Vivian Cook)

Confira aula anterior aqui.

Conheça o site de Jason Bermingham: www.vozemingles.com