Questions tagged [verbs]
This tag is for questions about verbs. Verbs are words that express an action, occurrence, or a state of being. Add this tag to single-word-requests if you are looking for a verb. Add the tag word-usage if you are asking about the usage of the verb.
4,702 questions
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Is "don't" an auxiliary verb?
I remembered my teacher told me that "don't" is an auxiliary verbs. But today I jave just learnt that only "do" in "don't" is an auxiliary verb and "don't" is ...
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A verb for "stopping someone from making progress"
I am practising doing precis & composition. Came across a sentence that needs to be shortened into fewer words:
The people who are your rivals will mostly try to stop you from progressing.
I ...
- 362
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Could you please help me with modal verbs Be to (if there is another way to say it?) [migrated]
Could you please help me - I can not understand this stucture.
Maybe I can change this academic English? Maybe I can use street English in this case? (And how?)
The train is to leave in 16 minutes.
...
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"you have done nothing but complain": why isn't complain a noun? [migrated]
A question on EL&U was migrated to ELL, concerning the sentence
Since I came to work, you have done nothing but complain.
This question is about a separate issue concerning the same sentence.
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Is "shelve" the only verb formed as a back-formation from the plural of its noun form? (shelf -> shelves -> shelve)
When I checked the etymology of the verb shelve, I was surprised to learn that it is a back formation from shelves, plural of shelf. Etymonline adds "probably", though:
1590s, "to ...
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Grammatical perspective: "go home" or "come home"
Husband and Wife are at home. Husband is going to point A and wife is going to point B later in the day.
Wife asks
After going to point A will you come to point B or will you go home?
Husband claims ...
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Usage of 'allow' vs. 'enable' in technical documentation for devices
I am translating some documents about a device. The device has a function (feature) that lets users make a special measurement. In this case, which is better to use: allow or enable (or another verb)?
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How to write "the positive sign is replaced by negative sign and negative sign by positive sign"?
I am writing a math equation that reads something like
+x-y=F(-z)
Call that equation (1).
I need to say that the equation
-x+y=F(+z)
also holds true. That is, the equation (1) holds when the positive ...
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Is a Comma Needed Before a Present Participle That Immediately Follows Either a Verb or a Past Participle?
Do I need a comma between the past and
present participles in the following sentence?
He's hailed enlightening the masses.
I'm trying to say the reason why he is hailed is because he enlightens the ...
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The "-ed" consonant blending into another consonant leading to potential past-tense ambiguity
I live in the US so this is mostly directed at American English (and I don't know whether other English-speaking locales have this issue or whether they handle it differently).
In the following ...
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Are the following usages of "had" and "needed" lexical or auxiliary?
In Exercise 8 of Chapter 3 of their A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, Huddleston and Pullum ask the reader the determine whether the highlighted verbs are auxiliary or lexical. The answers ...
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a question about a resultative verb [duplicate]
In sentences such as this, is 'wipe' a resultative verb?
He wiped the table clean.
What would 'clean' be classified as? Object complement?
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How to understand these examples for determining whose complement an element following the object of a light verb is?
CaGEL says on p292 that
7 Light verbs
7.1 General issues
...
Complementation
Where there are elements following the noun, as in [ 1 iib/iiib],
there is some indeterminacy as to whether they are ...
- 10.2k
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Does CaGEL call the verbs which are commonly classified as "phrasal verbs" prepositional verbs?
CaGEL says on p272-p274 that
6 Special verb + preposition combinations and related types of complementation
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Selection of preposition by the verb
The preposition to of Kim referred to your book in ...
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Are an idiom, and a combination of a light verb and a noun, a lexical unit and a syntactic unit?
CaGEL says on p273 that "An idiom is a lexical unit, and there is no requirement that lexical units coincide with syntactic ones":
6 Special verb + preposition combinations and related ...
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