We have partnered with TradePub to bring you free industry magazines and resources - no coupons or credit cards required!

Visit: englishforums.tradepub.com


Share this topic:
This question is Not Answered
Latest post Fri, Jan 30 2004 3:37 PM by Guest. 1 replies.
Suggest an answer | | |
Guest  +  20868 Fri, 30 Jan 04 03:37 PM
Are ONLY verbs always used like these?

to work = She worked all night.

to flow= Tears flowed all over her cheeks.

Is "ed" only added to verbs? What's the rule? Let's say if I come across a word that is a noun. How do I know if it could be used XXXed in the sentence. Please explain with some examples. Thanks.
suzi  +  20884 Fri, 30 Jan 04 06:22 PM
A very interesting question: the --ed ending IS one of the signs to tell us that a word is a verb. The tricky thing in English is that some words can belong to more than one "word class" so some verbs can be nouns (and vice versa.)

From the examples you give, we can have "the work" (which would be a noun)

and "the flow" ( which would also be a noun)

We can only decide which way to label a word when we can see what it is "doing" in any particular sentence.

In a way you are looking at it back to front, you do not need to learn a list of verbs and nouns, but if you DO want to label a word as a verb or a noun you have to look at it in context.

You can spot verbs because they often hang around in gangs with pronouns and other verbs:
"to walk" can become
He walks.
He does walk.
He is walking.
He was walking.
He walked.
He had walked.
He had been walking.
He will walk.
He will be walking.

You can spot a noun when it is used with "a or an or the"
or when it has a plural form. (Of course that might be hard to spot, as we use the letter "s" so often in Englsih grammar, and you might mistake a verb ending for a plural)

Shakespeare sometimes used a noun as a verb (even when the rest of the world doesn't) my favourite is in Othello:
when Cassio says he does not want Othello to see him "womaned"
meaning: he doesn't want to be seen with a woman round his neck!

Joined on Wed, Jan 7 2004
Full Member 465
© MediaCet Ltd. 2009, v5.0.3614.32638. All content posted by our users is a contribution to the public domain, this does not include imported usenet posts.*
For web related enquires please contact us on webmaster@mediacet.com, status updates are available at status.mediacet.com.
*Usenet post removal: Use 'X-No-Archive'. You may not have understood that your posts would end up in the public domain. Please send proof of the poster's email, we will remove immediately.