Verb

To find out about verbs, look up the words in small capitals in the following summary.

Funny video about verbs in English.

1. Verbs are a word class divided into auxiliary verbs and main verbs

A. Auxiliary verbs go before main verbs in verb phrases. The main verb is followed by its verb pattern (of object, complement, etc.).

subject	auxiliary verb	main verb	verb pattern
He	has	asked	them to leave.

B. Main verbs refer to states and actions [see state verbs and action verbs].

C. When we choose different verb forms we choose between: present or past tense, perfect or progressive aspect (see aspect), and active or passive voice.

D. Verbs express different types of meaning, including present time, past time and future time, unreal meaning, possibility, and obligation.

E. In the way they change their forms, verbs are either regular or irregular. We can learn the regular verbs by rule, but we have to learn the irregular verbs separately. We can Google or find the irregular verbs online.

F. Verb forms are either finite (for example: takes) or nonfinite verbs (for example: taking). The nonfinite verbs are infinitives (for example: to take) and participles (for example: taking, taken), which can be used to form nonfinite verb phrases and nonfinite clauses.
Ex: It's fun taking your kids to the zoo.

G. The most common verbs in English are the primary verbs be, do, and have.

H. There are two types of auxiliary verb: primary auxiliary (be, do, and have) and modal auxiliary (for example: will, can, and would).

J. This blog contains information about different kinds of verbs. You can look up: causative verb, intransitive verb, linking verb, perception verbs, state and action verbs, transitive verb.

2. Endings used for forming verbs from other words

Examples:

suffix	origin word	verb	meaning
-ise / -ize	public	publicize	to make something public.
-en	deaf	deafen	to someone deaf.
-ify	simple	simplify	to make something simpler.

See Suffixes for more details.

Also, prefixes are useful for changing the meaning of verbs:

Examples:

prefix	origin word	verb	meaning
re-	build, pay, use	re'build, re'pay, re'use	agian, back
dis-	connect, like	dis'connect, dis'like	do the opposite
over-	do, eat, work	over'do, over'eat, over'work	too much

Many verbs have no prefixes or suffixes, and have the same form as nouns.
Ex: call, love, move, place, walk.

But some verbs have a similar form to nouns but a slightly different pronunciation and spelling, that is, the verb has a voiced consonant at the end:
Ex:

noun	verb
advice /ədˈvaɪs/	(to) advise /ədˈvaɪz/
belief /bɪˈliːf/	(to) believe /bɪˈliːv/
house /haʊs/	(to) house /haʊz/
use /juːs/	(to) use /juːz/

See the lesson stress for differences of stress between nouns and verbs.

I hope this article helps. If you have any question, please leave a comment below.