VERBS
§ Hinge life into situations, hinge action
§ Most complex, important word class ® express great number of grammatical categories
§ Way we perceive processes:
states, activities (produced by agent), actions, acts, events, happenings (without helping by agent)
§ Semantic classification of verbs is based on our perception of 3 processes:
material process – may be observed in their progression as they happen (walk, read, write)
relational process – process established relation between entities (belong, be, depend, see)
mental process – in people’s minds; not directly observable (know, think, like, hate)
Lexical morphology:
Simple
meaning conveyed by one form
I write
I am writing / have been writing still simple; just different form of writing
Multi-word verbs
meaning conveyed by two or more forms
look up, look forward to
