VERBS

What is verbs?
The part of speech (or word class)
that describes an action or
occurrence or indicates a state of
being.
It tells what the subject does

These are Action Verbs:

clap

coughed
swallowed
awake
ride

sang
ran

Lets
Practice:

The lighthouse shines brightly.

What?

lighthouse
What does the lighthouse do?
shines

The verb is shines, its what the lighthouse does.

Lets
Practice:

Time flies when youre having fun.

What?

time

What does time do?

flies

The verb is flies, its what time is doing.

There are two main classes of verbs:

(1)the large open class of lexical verbs
(also known as main verbs or full
verbs--that is, verbs that aren't
dependent on other verbs);
(2) the small closed class of
auxiliary verbs (also called helping
verbs).
The two subtypes of auxiliaries are
the primary auxiliaries (be, have, and
do), which can also act as lexical

Can you find the action verb in each

sentence?

1. The girls danced in the recital.

2. Our mailman drove
a funny car last week.
3. His teacher wrote
the answers on the board.
4. Alice worked
on her homework last night.

COMMON IRREGULAR
VERBS

blow
Present

Past

Past
Participle

blow

blew

blown

 break
Present

Past

Past
Participle

Can you list these verb forms?

 break
Present

Past

Past
Participle

break broke broken

Lets use the inner-eye.

Thinking about the
past.

The Past

Thinking about the

future.

The Present

The Future

17

We talk a lot in these lessons about V1,

V2, and V3. What in the
world are V1, V2, and V3?

Does this look familiar?

eat ate
eaten
fall fell
fallen
flyflew flown

This is the table of irregular verbs that we know and

love!
V1 is the first column (eat, ,(
V2 is the second column (ate, past simple form),
V3 is the third column (eaten, calledoh well, V 3)

Lots of people forget that a verb that

ends in d or ed doesnt have to be a
verb in the simple past.
Maybe its a regular verb in V3
DISGUISED as a simple past verb.
For example:
love
loved
loved
hate
hated
hated
worry
worriedworried

5 Verb Formulas
be + ing (progressive)--He was crying.
be + V3 (passive)--He was beaten.
Four men were killed.
have + V3 (perfect)--I have already eaten.
do + V1 (simple)-- Do you love me?
I dont hate you.
modal + V1 (modal)--I can wait.

Rachel Bar Yosef, 1997

BE

HAVE

DO

MODALS

is, am, are,

was, were

has, have
had

do, does,
did

shall, will, should,

would, may, might,
must, can, could

1) be + ing
(progressive)

have + V3
(perfect)

do + V1
(simple)

modal + V1

The bus is coming.

We were waiting.

She has finished. Do you love me? You should try.

We have eaten.
I didnt hear you. I may visit my aunt.

2) be + V3
(passive)
A lot of money is
spent.
People were hurt.
Rachel Bar Yosef,

ADJECTIVES
Modifies Nouns
Modifies Pronouns

DEFINITION OF AN
ADJECTIVE:
It tells what kind of person, place, or
thing. A noun or a pronoun is.
It may also point out which one or
how many.

AN ADVERB:
Modifies an active verb or a verb
phrase by expressing manner, place,
time, degree, or number.

TYPES OF ADVERBS:
Simple
Interrogative
Negative

EXAMPLES:
SIMPLE:
She moved quietly. (Manner and tell
how)
I waited there for an hour. (Place and tell
where)
You may leave soon. (Time, tells when)
I called you once. (Number, tells how
many)
He sat very still. (Degree, tells how
much)

Interrogative Adverb
Introduces a sentence that asks a
question
where, when, why and how

EXAMPLES:
Interrogative:
When will you return?
How is the trunk being sent?

Negative Adverb
Denies or contradicts a statement
no, not , never, only, scarcely and
hardly
Note: two negative adverbs should not
be used together.

EXAMPLES:
Negative
- I can scarcely believe my eyes.
( correct)
- I havent no more sea shells.
(incorrect)

Familiar Adverbs
to Know
almost
finally seldom unusually
certainly hardly
quite
so usually just rather
very
rather
fairly nearly
too
scarcely
well

WHAT ARE NOUNS?

Nouns are naming words.
They name people, places and objects.
They can also name ideas, emotions,
qualities and activities.
Here are some examples of nouns:
Peter, Elizabeth, driver, sister, friend.
Bristol, Severn, Brazil, pen, dog, money.
Love, beauty, industry, nature, greed,
pain.

Types of noun
All nouns can be divided into common
and proper nouns.
Common nouns can then be divided into
countable and uncountable nouns.
Both countable and uncountable nouns
can then be further divided into
concrete and abstract nouns.
Well look at each type in turn.

First, look again at those types

and how they relate.
proper
abstract

nouns

countable
concrete
common
abstract
uncountable
concrete

Proper nouns
Proper nouns start with capital
letters.
They are the names of people, places,
times, organisations etc.
They refer to unique individuals.
Most are not found in the dictionary.
They often occur in pairs or groups.
Here are some examples.

The Jam

Tony Blair

Oxfam
Coronation Street

Carly
Christmas
Keynsham

John
President Bush
Thames

Sony
China

Coca Cola
Bridget Jones

Portugal

The Ford Motor Company

Macbeth

King Henry
Saturn

Common nouns
All nouns which are not proper nouns
are common nouns.
A few examples: cup, art, paper,
work, frog, bicycle, atom, family,
mind.
Common nouns are either countable or
uncountable.

Countable nouns
Use these tests for countable nouns:
Countable (or just count) nouns can be made
plural: a tree two trees; a man men; a
pony ponies.
In the singular, they may have the determiner
a or an: a sausage; an asterisk.
We ask: How many words/pages/chairs?
We say: A few minutes/friends/chips?

Uncountable nouns
Use these tests for uncountable nouns:
Uncountable (or non-count) nouns cannot be
made plural. We cannot say: two funs, three
advices
We never use a or an with them.
We ask: How much money/time/milk?
(Not How many?)
We say: A little help/effort. (Not A few.)

Dual category nouns

Some nouns may be countable or
uncountable, depending on how we use
them.
We buy a box of chocolates (countable) or
chocolate (uncountable).
We ask: How much time? but How many
times? (where times = occasions).
We sit in front of a television (set) to
watch television (broadcasting).

Remember that both countable and uncountable nouns can be

divided into concrete and abstract nouns.
The distinction between concrete and abstract nouns is the
most important one of all when you are analysing linguistic
data. A lot of abstract nouns in a text will have a big impact on
its register.
The Plain English Campaign has an excellent website which will
tell you more about the stylistic impact of abstract nouns.

Concrete nouns
Concrete nouns are the words that most
people think of as nouns.
They are mostly the names of objects and
animals (countable) and substances or
materials (uncountable).
Cake, oxygen, iron, boy, dog, pen, glass,
pomegranate, earthworm and door are all
concrete nouns.

Abstract nouns
Abstract nouns name ideas, feelings and
qualities.
Most, though not all, are uncountable.
Many are derived from adjectives and
verbs and have characteristic endings
such as ity, -ness, -ence, and -tion.
They are harder to recognise as nouns
than the concrete variety.

Abstract noun or adjective

You wont confuse abstract nouns with
adjectives, as long as you apply a few
tests.
Happy is an adjective. It behaves like
one: very happy; so happy; happier; as
happy as
Happiness behaves like a noun: The
happiness I feel; her happiness; great
happiness.

A few more
Verb or
adjective
Abstract noun
examples
We were different from
each other.

The difference between us.

My work is precise.

I work with precision.

The air is pure.

The purity of the air.

I composed this tune.

This tune is my
composition.

It is so beautiful.

It has such beauty.

You support me.

The support you give me.

The morphology of nouns

Nouns change their form for only two
grammatical reasons:
Countable nouns have a plural form. This is
usually formed by adding s, of course, but
there are some irregular forms.
The possessive form of a noun is created by
adding s (Henrys cat) or just an apostrophe
(all our students results).

Irregular plurals
Some nouns retain plural endings from Old
English:
Men, geese, mice, oxen, feet, teeth, knives.
Loan words from Latin, Greek, French and
Italian sometimes keep their native ending:
Media, bacteria, formulae, larvae, criteria,
phenomena, gateaux.
Graffiti, an Italian plural, is now an
uncountable noun in English.

Noun phrases
When we see a noun as performing a role in a
sentence, we think of it as a noun phrase.
A noun phrase may function as the subject or
object of a clause.
A noun phrase may consist of a single word (a
noun or pronoun) or a group of words.
The most important noun in a noun phrase is
called the headword.

Examples of noun phrases (headword in

brackets)
(She) always bought the same
(newspaper).
A young (man) in a suit was admiring the
(view) from the window.
Concentrated sulphuric (acid) must be
handled carefully.
My old maths (teacher) was Austrian.

The syntax of noun phrases

The headword of a noun phrase may be premodified by determiners, adjectives or other
nouns.
For example, a large, dinner (plate).
It may be post-modified by a prepositional
phrase.
This is simply a noun phrase with a
preposition at the beginning.
For example, a (painting) by Rembrandt.
Can you spot the modifiers in the last slide?
(Left arrow key takes you back)

Clauses modifying nouns

We can use a clause (a group of words
containing a verb) to post-modify a noun.
A clause which post-modifies a noun is called a
relative clause or adjectival clause.
Here are some examples:
This is the (house) that Jack built.
(People) who live in glass houses should not
throw stones.