Search results for 'tag:Prepositional verbs tag:Clauses' matching tags 'Prepositional verbs' and 'Clauses'

Verbs

ganesh77 — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:38:41 GMT

The list isn't meant to be exhaustive or carefully arranged. Any additions, corrections or further examples would be welcomed.

1 main verbs; lexical verbs (all verbs which are not auxiliaries or modals)

2 action verbs; event verbs; dynamic verbs (a verb which can be used in continuous tenses) i.e. eat, run, talk

3 state of being verbs; existence verbs; state verbs; stative verbs; static verbs (a verb which describes a state and is not usually used in a continuous tense) i.e. be, own, know

4 regular verbs (a verb that has four forms and follows the normal rules)

5 irregular verbs; strong verbs (a verb not following the normal rules for inflection)

6 auxiliary and modal verbs (which make up verbal phrases) â 23 in total

7 linking verbs; copulative verbs; copulas (a verb which links the subject and complement of a clause) i.e. It is warm today.

8 transitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that involves more than one person or thing, and so is followed by an object) i.e. Sheâs wasting her money.

9 intransitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that only involved the subject and so has no object) i.e. She arrived.

10 multiword verbs

a type 1 â intransitive [phrasal verbs; adverb particle

b type 2 â transitive (inseparable) [prepositional verbs; preposition particles]

c type 3 â transitive (separable) [phrasal verbs; adverb particle]

d type 4 â transitive (with two inseparable particles) [phrasal-prepositional verbs; first particle is an adverb, second particle is a preposition]

11 compound verbs

12 delexical verbs (a verb which has very little meaning in itself but is used with an object to describe an action) i.e. She gave a small cry.

13 ditransitive verbs (a verb which can have both a direct and indirect object) i.e. She gave me a kiss.

14 ergative verbs (a verb which can be used transitively to focus on the performer of the action, or intransitively to focus on the thing affected by the action) i.e. He boiled the water. The water boiled.

15 reporting verbs; performance verbs; performative verbs (a verb used with a quote or a reported clause to describe what people say or think) i.e. suggest, say, wonder

16 reciprocal verbs (a verb which describes an action involving two people doing the same thing to each other) i.e. They met in the street.

17 reflexive verbs (a verb which is typically used with a reflexive pronoun) i.e. Donât cut yourself with that knife.

18 defective verbs (a verb without all the inflected forms of a regular verb) i.e. modals

19 finite and non-finite

a infinitives

b gerunds; verbal nouns

c participles

20 catenative verbs (a verb that takes other verb forms as objects; found at the head of a series of linked constructions) i.e. We agreed to try to decide to stop eating snacks.

21 causative verbs (a verb that designates the action necessary to cause another action to happen) i.e. The devil made me do it.

Re: Is "mention about" wrong?

CalifJim — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:08:24 GMT

I checked the first couple of pages of Google hits for "mention about" and "discuss about" and most of them are totally wrong. Apparently it is a common mistake.

However, note that you will get hits on these combinations which are correct because mention (or discuss) goes in one phrase or clause and about goes in another.

There are many things to discuss | about this new software.
= There are many things about this new software to discuss.
You are discussing things (about the software), not 'discussing about' the software.

There is something I forgot to mention | about the restaurant.
= There is something about the restaurant that I forgot to mention.
You are mentioning something (that you forgot), not 'mentioning about' the restaurant.

Further, you will get hits where mention is not even a verb, but a noun.

The magazine gave a nice mention about the winner of the Nobel Prize.
This is not the act of 'mentioning about' the winner. This is saying something nice about the winner.

discuss about and mention about as prepositional verbs, followed by the object indicating what was discussed or mentioned, are incorrect.

CJ

A strange sentence?

miriam — Sat, 29 May 2004 03:52:39 GMT

Can anyone help, please?
Last Wednesday, we were talking about the passive voice in class, and we found something in a book called "English Syntax: A Grammar for English Language Professionals", by R. A. Jacobs, which surprised us.

In the chapter about passive voice, under the heading 'Prepositional verbs' we found the following examples, in which an intransitive verb is followed by a prepositional phrase:
"Seven monarchs have slept in that four-poster bed."
"A surveyor walked through the forest."

The author says about these sentences:
"The sentences make an assertion that includes a specification of the location in which the monarchs slept or through which the surveyor walked. Thus, syntactically and semantically, these sentences should not have passive voice counterparts. They have an intransitive verb plus a preposition, and they don't seem to have a suitable candidate for subject, since the subjects of passive voice clauses are prototypically the entities affected by the action expressed by the verb. Yet such counterparts exist:
'That four-poster bed has been slept in by seven monarchs.'
'The forest was walked through by a surveyor.'
We may not think of the bed as being affected by the sleeping, and certainly the forest seems unlikely to be affected by someone walking through it. But in fact we can envisage a slept-in bed with its rumpled sheets. We understand the bed to have ben somehow affected by having had so many high-ranking people sleep in it. Its value as an antique must surely have been enhanced. Notice that 'slept in' cannot be replaced by 'died in'. We don't normally visualise a 'died-in' bed."

My question here is: why is 'slept in' acceptable but 'died in' isn't?
Is there actually a grammatical rule to account for this? Or is it the author's personal opinion on the matter? What, if any, is the difference between both sentences?
If you ask *me*, I don't like 'slept in' any better than I do 'died in'.

I'll appreciate any help.

Miriam