adminCharles Dube
BEFORE venturing into adjectives can we examine some facts about verbs, a subject of discussion last week. Let us find verbs by their features. There are four features that can help identify verbs. A word that is a verb must at least have one of these features, but some verbs will have all four.
Verbs have tenses. Tense is the time expressed by a verb. There are two kinds of tenses: simple and perfect. The three simple tenses are present, past, and future. The three perfect tenses are present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. Jane walks to school in the morning. (walks – simple present.) Jane walked to school in the morning. (walked – simple past). Jane will walk to school in the morning. (will walk – simple future.)
Jane has walked to school. (has walked – present perfect). Jane had walked to school. (had walked – past perfect.) She will have walked to school. (future perfect). The tense of the verb is formed with one of its three principal parts; present, past, and past participle. The present form is the form of the verb used with : (to) jump, (to) look, (to) play, (to) go, (to) grow. The past form is the one that shows past time: jumped, looked, played, went, grew. The past participle form of the verb is the form of the verb used with the helping verb has or have: (has) jumped, (has) looked, (has) played, (have) grown.
Here are examples of verb tenses under the following headings: Present, Past, Past participle. Jump, jumped, jumped. Look, looked, looked. Play, played, played. Grow, grew, grown. The following list shows how verb tenses are formed under the following headings: Tense, how formed, example. Simple present – present form of verb > I drink, he drinks. Simple past – past form of verb > I drank, he drank. Simple future – present form + will or shall > I shall drink, he will drink. Present perfect – past participle form of verb + has or have > I have drunk, he has drunk.
Past perfect – past participle form of verb + had > I had drunk, he had drunk. Future perfect – past participle form + shall have or I will have > I shall have drunk, he will have drunk. Using irregular verbs: Irregular verbs are verbs that do not follow the regular pattern of forming their principal parts.
Some irregular verbs form their past and past participle forms by a change in spelling. For example under the following headings: Present, past and past participle – begin, began, begun. Choose, chose, chosen. Give, gave, given. Know, knew, known.
Others are the same in both their past and past participle forms, for example the following: build, built, built. Teach, taught, taught. Think, thought, thought. In sentence construction, a verb must agree with its subject. Verbs and their subjects can both be singular or plural. When a subject is singular, its verb must also be singular. We are talking about subject verb agreement which is the bases of sentence construction.
Sentence examples showing subject and verb agreement: The boy plays football. (singular subject – the boy and singular verb plays.) The student writes his homework. (singular subject – the student and singular verb – writes.)
When a subject is plural, its verb must also be plural. Most verbs drop the –s ending to form the plural. The stones weigh several hundred kilos. (plural subject – the stones, and plural verb –weigh). The apples are fresh. (plural subject – the apples. (plural subject – the apples, and plural verb – are).
We end here with verbs but it does not mean all the features about them have been covered. More will be done later. Let us try to understand verbs. Adjectives are words that modify nouns and pronouns. Overall, adjectives describe nouns and pronouns.
The make what you say and write interesting for others. Several ways can be used to identify adjectives: their definition, their division into classes, and those features that distinguish them from other parts of speech.
Let us identify them from the following sentences: The autumn leaves fell to the ground; they were brown and crisp.
Adjectives – the autumn leaves, brown and crisp. The bony dog desperately searched or food. Adjective – the bony. Adjectives answer the questions what kind? Which one? Or how many? About the words they modify. You talk of the beautiful chalets found in the resort town of Victoria Falls (what kind of chalets? Those sheep (which sheep?) twenty –five students – how many students?
You may test yourself by identifying adjectives in the following sentences: The small, ambitious children tried to pull the heavy box up the stairs. We decorated the house with colourful balloons; they were green, yellow, orange, and blue. The weary travellers waited in the crowded airport during the storm. The clear sky tonight predicts good weather tomorrow. We were proud of the football team when they won.
These words in isolation are of no help; they only become useful in sentence construction. That is when understanding of part of speech becomes useful.
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