Verb Classes

The idea that there are verb classes in English can be

illustrated into several versions in terms of formal
grammars as we will see in Brown and Millar's, Stageberg's
and Quirk et al. We will see how each one of these authors
tackles the verb classes and then one will be able to see the
differences between these versions. In the those three
versions the concentration will not be on what precedes
the verb in the structure of the sentence since we know
well that the constituent preceding the verb is consistent
and cannot be changed in the basic patterns of sentence. So
what is concerned here is what follows the verb which thus
reflects the class of verb that precedes. The classes of verb
can be classified in terms of form as we will see in both
Stageberg's and Brown and Millar's whereas Quirk et al.
tackle the topic in terms of function. Either way will be
very useful to show how verbs are categorized.

a. Brown and Millar

In this text book, the verbs are classified in terms of form (hence
Np, Vp, adj, etc.). Here the author put the English verbs into six
classes. The classes are as follows:

1. 'Copular' or 'linking' verbs

Here both verb 'to be' and 'linking verb' are put in the same class
to be called 'copular verbs'.

NP
This can be seen in the following environment:Adj
‫ــــــــ‬

Let us consider the following examples:

• Bob is a child
• Bob is sick

It is clear in the above examples that both (NP , Adj) occur after
the copular verb. One should pay attention to that both preceding
and following NP must agree in number. For example:

• He is a an employee.
• They are players.
• * They are a doctor. * she is nurses.

Some exception to this generalization that we can see cases where

collective nouns are introduced preceding verb 'to be' . For
example:

• They are a good team.

• They are a nice family.

Since both NP and Adj can be put in the same slot, that is to say,
after the copular verb, we can put them in the same class. This
would be as follows:
 Vcop ‫ـــــــــ‬.

This class can be given the traditional terminological label

‫ـــ‬Predicate (pred.). This means that we can put pred. as a label to
represent either NP or Adj. Thus the following would show the
environment:

‫ ـــــــــ‬Pred.

Then we need to have a rule in our grammar to show the effect:

NP
Pred Adj

In the use of the node 'Pred' there are two advantages: it offers a
unique environment for the classification of copular verbs, and it
enables us to ensure that predicate NPs agree in number with the
subject of sentence.

Other copular verbs include : appear, look, sound etc.

2. 'Intransitive' verbs

This type of verbs can be seen in the following environment:

‫ ـــــــــ‬#

For example:
 • The boss shouted.
• The old women died.

It is seen clearly that such kind of verbs occurs at the final slot,
that is to say, occurs as the final constituent in the structure. The
symbol '#' put here as an indicator to show the boundary of the
constituent. This symbol is put to the right hand of the verb in this
case. There are so many intransitive verbs including: sleep, stay,
rise, lie, etc.

3. 'Transitive' verbs

This type of verbs are seen in the following environment:

‫ ـــــــــ‬NP

As in:

• He bought a car.
• They robbed the bank.

Both BUY and ROB are called transitive verbs because the action
of the verb requires some following entity to be effected by the
action of the verb to have the idea of the sentence completed,
otherwise, the sentence would be senseless or uninformative. The
following examples show the case:

• * He bought.
 • * They robbed.

When somebody hears some speaker saying such an utterance, he

would say 'bought what?' or 'robbed what?'. So the existence of
NP to follow the verb is obligatory in this case.

NP + V+ NP

Examples:

• The student read the story.

There are corresponding sentences of the form:

• The story was read by the student.

• What the student did to the story was read it.
• What happened to the story was that the student read it.

In such sentences, it is impossible to have copular verbs:

• He became a minister.
• *A minister was become by him.
• *What happened to the minister was that the man became
him.

4. 'Di-transitive' verbs

These verbs occur in the environment:

‫ ـــــــــ‬NP + NP
 Examples:

• She sent me a message.

• I gave the soldier a rifle.

These verbs are called 'di-transitive' since they are followed by

two NPs. This kind of verbs allows another structure by reversing
both of the following NPs in position:

• She sent me a message.

• Ashe sent a message to me

Similarly, the following sentences are possible in swapping both

NP's in positions:

• A message was sent to me by her.

• I was sent a message by her.

In the last examples, both NPs (objects) can be put in the first slot
to be regarded as 'subjects'.

5. 'Intransitive Locative' verbs

These occur in the following environment :

‫ ــــــــ‬PP

Examples:

• The cat stood on the carpet.

 • The gun leant against the wall.

Most of these verbs require having PP following. So it would be

uninformative to have these verbs alone in the sentences without
being followed by PP:

• *The lamp stood.

• *The gun leant.

The function of PP is as an indicator to location, that is why these

verbs are called so.

6. 'Transitive locative' verbs

These occur in the following environment:

‫ ــــــــ‬NP + PP

Examples:

• Bob put the book on the table.

• She placed the bag behind the door.

These verbs in the above examples are similar to those in the

previous section but what differs is that these verbs are followed
by an NP coming immediately after the verb as an object , then the
PP. these verbs resemble transitive verbs in that they are
corresponding sentences like:

• The book was put on the table by Bob.

• The bag was placed behind the door by her.
This kind of transitive verbs differs from the type we have
mentioned previously is that these verbs require being followed
not only by an NP but also by A pp. Thus a sentence like the
following would be uninformative:

• *Bob put the book.

• *She placed the bag.

These verbs differ from di-transitive verbs is that the latter are
followed by two NPs whereas the former are followed by NP+PP.
consider the following:

• Bob put the book on the table.

• *Bob put the book the table.

So far we illustrated six different verb classes. Each can be

distinguished in terms of the environment in which the members
of the class can occur, and in terms of the sentences that can be
related to a sentence containing a verb from a particular class.
Some of these have been illustrated; others the reader is left to
discover for himself.

We need now to account for these different classes in a formal

grammar. One way is to label each of the verb classes, producing a
constituent structure grammar of the following:

S NP + VP

Vcop + Pred
 Vi

Vt + NP
VP
Vdt + NP + NP

Vil + pp

Vtl + NP + PP

NP

Pred Adj

Together with a set of lexical rules of the form:

Vcop {SEEM, TURN, APPEA, …},

Vi {DIE, TALK, WORK, SMILE, …}.

This is not all the case. We have some problems concerning this
issue that we can find what is called 'cross-classification'
involved: i.e. many verbs occur in more than one class. For
example we have seen the verbs STAND and LEAN. An alternative
approach is to have a lexicon listing the class membership of each
verb, an a lexical insertion. This approach leads to the listing in
the lexicon of the different class memberships of each verb in the
form:

STAND Vil, Vtl

And so on, but does not solve the clumsiness of the constituents
structure rules.

A different approach lists in the lexicon the environments in

which particular verb can occur, without actually seeking to name
each individual verb class. Thus we list STAND as:

STAND V; ‫( ـــــــ‬NP) PP

In this representation V indicates that STAND is a verb. Brown

and Millar call this characterization as 'inherent
subcategorization' since they describe the form class to which a
particular item belongs, which seems to be an inherent property
of the item itself. The representation ‫( ـــــــــ‬NP) PP indicates that
STAND must occur with the following PP, and may optionally,
occur with an immediately following NP. This is equivalent to
saying that STAND is either an intransitive locative or a transitive
locative verb, since these two environments define these verb
classes. We call such characterizations 'strict sucategorization':
this always refers only to the syntactic environment relevant to
the subcategorization of the item in question which means other
constituents of the VP. This approach simplifies our grammar:
instead of listing individually all the different expansions of VP we
can present the rules as follows:

S NP + VP

Pred

PP
VP V + (NP) + NP

NP

Pred Adj

Recall that, by our conventions, items curly-bracketed together

are alternatives; items in ordinary parentheses are optional. The
VP rule here allows us to produce the string : V + Pred; V; V + NP,
V + PP, V + NP + NP; V + NP + PP ‫ ـــــ‬this is just the set of
environment described above. The strict subcategorization
frames for a given verb include just those categories that are
introduced as sisters of V in the NP. Note that only the sisters of V
are necessary for strict subcategorization.
b. Stageberg

In the classification of verbs, Stageberg, as with Brown and Millar,

classifies verbs in terms of their forms. He shows nine different
basic patterns of sentences showing the differences in the verb
types.

PATTERN 1

The formula of the pattern is as follows:

N be Aj

Example: she was sick

The three first patterns in Stageberg's contain the verb 'to be' in
the second slot of the pattern.

Here in this pattern the third slot contains an adjective.

Concerning this pattern, Stageberg uses a test to show whether

the element occurring in the third slot is an adjective or not. This
can be achieved by the expansion using the intensifier very:

• The food is good The food is very good.

• The food is poisonous The food is very poisonous.

However, this cannot be applied to all cases. Consider the

following examples:

• The woman is dead *The woman is very dead.

 • The answer was correct * The answer was very
correct.

(These are anomalous sentences, due to the fact that adjectives

including 'dead' and 'correct' are non-gradable, thus, they cannot
be preceded by intensifiers such as 'very').

Stageberg's test of whether the third-slot element is an adjective

or not didn’t work in the above examples since the intensifiers
such as very cannot precede non-gradable adjectives, and since
this test can be only applied to gradable adjectives, we are still
confused whether a given word is an adjective or not.

Stageberg focus during illustrating the basic sentence patterns on

the grammatical meaning of each component of the pattern. The
grammatical meaning here represents the function of the
components of the parts of speech. In this pattern, Stageberg
states that the grammatical meaning of the adjective is 'the
modifier of the subject'.

Stageberg also categorizes verbs by looking to what follows the

verb in the pattern. In the following examples, we can see how he
regards an adverbial phrase playing the of role (function) an
adjective:

• The teacher was in a bad mood. (= irritable)

• His explanation was over my head. (= incomprehensible)
PATTERN 2

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N be Av

Example : He is there

In this pattern, Stageberg shows that the grammatical meaning of

verb 'to be' is "be located" or "occur."

Pattern 2 is not capable of taking pattern1 expansion.

He also says that the third slot should have, in this pattern, an
adverb. The occupying word to the third position is either
uninflected word such as here, there, up, tomorrow, yesterday etc.
and/or irregularly inflected with the forms such as upper,
uppermost, inner, inmost, etc.

Sometimes a prepositional phrase with a there or then meaning

will occupy the third position:

• The cat is on the table.

• The match was at three o'clock.

PATTERN 3

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N1 be N1

Example: John was a pilot.

Here we have two NPs in this pattern each one is labeled by
numbering '1'. This means that both first N and second N indicate
the same referent. Thus, in the above example john and pilot refer
to the same person. The grammatical meaning of verb 'to be' in
this pattern is "be identified or classified as".

It should be noted that the symbol N does no only mean a single-

word noun but a noun phrase as well. As in:

• John was a very professional pilot.

But this should not be confused with a sentence like this:

• These shoes are the wrong size.

The grammatical meaning of the phrase the wrong size is "which

describes the subject". Thus, this phrase functions as an adjective
which should be regarded as a component belonging to pattern
three, specifically its third position.

PATTERN 4

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N LV Aj

Example: the soldier looks tired.

The verb of this pattern is called 'linking verb' since it links the
adjective of the sentence to the subject (NP) this adjective
modifies.

These linking verbs include: seem, look, appear, etc. If verbs like
these, however are followed by an adverb or adverbial, then the
pattern will not be number 4 but instead it will be pattern 6
(which we will discuss later). Example:

• The clown appeared quickly on the stage.

• The doctor grew rapidly in knowledge.

Here, as in pattern 1, the grammatical meaning of the adjective is

the modifier of the subject.

PATTERN 5

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N1 LV N1

Example: Bob became an officer

As in pattern 3, pattern 5 contains two Ns one precedes and the
other follows the verb, but both have to the same referent.

The linking verb here links the second N with the first N.

This pattern's sentence should not be confused with other

sentences containing two Ns which do not have the same referent
and thus belonging to different patterns (as in pattern 7 which it
will be tackled later).

In both pattern 3 and pattern 5 the grammatical meaning of the

second N is "that which identifies the subject" and is called the
subjective complement.

PATTERN 6

The pattern of this formula is as follows:

N InV

Example: He died.

Here in this pattern, InV refers to 'Intransitive verbs' i.e. verbs

which are self-sufficient; it can stand alone with its subject.

These verbs can be modified by words and word groups known as

adverbs and adverbials. For example:

• The student arrived early.

However, we should pay attention to that there are many verbs
can function as transitive and sometimes intransitive depending
on the context in which these verbs occur. For example:

• He smiles (Intransitive)
• He smiled his wicked smile (transitive)

The subject of the verb in pattern 6 and also in patterns 7,8 and 9
has the grammatical meaning of " performer of the action".

Stageberg mentions that some intransitive verbs cannot occur

alone but take an adverbial modifier, such as: lurk, sneak, lurch
etc.

PATTERN 7

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N1 TrV N2

Example: the boat hit a whale.

The symbol TrV refers to what is called 'transitive verb'. The

transitive verb is the verb that cannot stand alone with its subject
unless it is followed by an object (N 2). Here we have two different
Ns; N1 and N2. In this case each N belongs to a different referent.
However, we can find some cases where both Ns refer to the same
entity but still the third-slot N functions as an object. The first
kind is the reflexive pronouns such as yourself, himself, etc. The
other type is that including reciprocal pronouns such as each
other, one another. As in:

• She saw herself.

• You will see yourself in the mirror.
• We found each other.

The grammatical meaning of N1 in this pattern is "is the

performer of the action" whereas the grammatical meaning of N2
is the one which is effected by the action of the subject (N 1).

A transitive verb has two forms ‫ـــــ‬active and passive. As in:

• The cat ate the rat. (active)

• The rat was eaten by the cat. (passive)

Stageberg shows some transitive verbs that cannot undergo the

state of being passivized. These verbs include: contain, lack, has
(possess) etc.

And also verbs with reflexive pronouns are not made passive:

• He scratched himself.
• * himself was scratched.

PATTERN 8
The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N1 TrV N2 N3

Example: He sent me a message.

In this pattern, the transitive verb can be followed by two objects

N2 and N3, where the former represents the indirect object and
the latter is the direct object. Each one of the three Ns in this
pattern has its own different referent and that is why each one is
labeled differently from the others (N 1, N2 and N3). Again, with
reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, we should notice that N 1 and
N2 indicate the same referent. As in:

• He bought himself a hat.

• They sent each other massages.

The grammatical meaning of N1 in this pattern is just like that of

pattern 7 which is "the performer of the action". The grammatical
meaning of N2 is "that which is effected by the action of the verb
performed by the subject N1". The grammatical meaning of N3 is
"that which is the beneficiary of the action of the verb".
It is clear that when N2 is replaced the sentence would be also
acceptable and N3 would be changed to be N2 and thus we have
pattern 7:
 • He sent me a message He sent a message
N1 TrV N2 N3 N1 TrV N2
(Pattern 8) (Pattern 7)

However, the omission of N3 from pattern 8 would spoil the whole

structure of the sentence that the sentence would be
uninformative:
• He send me a message *He sent me

Not all transitive verbs can be applied to this pattern to take up

two objects but there is a small number of verbs that can do so.
Both N2 and N3 can replace each other's positions, but when the
latter comes first, the former should be preceded by a preposition
such as 'to, by, of, etc.':

• He send me a message He sent a message to me

In this above example, to me is regarded as "object of

preposition".
The case of passivation is possible in this pattern, and we will find
two possible forms of passive structure:

• A message was sent to me.

• I was sent a message.
Notice that the transformation of these cases into passive is not
acceptable where the reflexive or reciprocal pronoun take up the
first slot of the construction as the subject of the sentence. As in:
• He bought himself a hat.
• *Himself was bought a hat by him.
• They sent messages to each other.
• *each other were sent messages by them.

The passive construction of the same cases was also not correct
where N3 transformed to be the subject of the sentence:

• *A hat was bought to himself by him.

• *Messages were sent to each other by them.

If both objects are pronouns, the direct object should come first:

• He sent it to me.
• *He sent me it.

Pattern 9

The formula of this pattern is as follows:

N1 TrV N2 plus one:

a. N2 b. Aj c. Av (of place), uninflected e. verb, present
participle f. verb, past participle g. Prep phrase h. Inf phrase
with to be.
Examples:

a. The basketball team chose Charlotte captain.

b. He considered her brilliant.
c. I thought the caller you.
d. We supposed him upstairs.
e. I imagined her eating.
f. I believed him seated.
g. We considered her in the way. (= bothersome)
h. We thought Chico to be a fine player.

This pattern is similar to pattern 8 but differs in that the final

position of this pattern is occupied by one of the several selective
items which are mentioned in the above examples.

Both N2s in this pattern refer to the same entity. We can see in the
example (a) The basketball team chose Charlotte captain that both
'Charlotte' and 'captain' refer to one person. The underlying
structure of the phrase Charlotte captain is Charlotte is a captain
(pattern 3). here the first N2 is considered as a direct object,
whereas the second N2 is considered as 'object complement'.

The removal of any of the elements that occur in the final slot
would leave us in pattern 7.

In this pattern, only the direct object (the first N 2) can be used as
the subject of the passive form of this pattern:
 • The basketball team chose Charlotte captain.
• Charlotte was chosen captain
• *Captain was chosen Charlotte.

c. Quirk et al.

In this text book, there are 7 basic patterns of clause types. The
elements of these patterns are dealt with in terms of their
function not their form. Hence the basic elements available for
these patterns include: 'S (subject), V (verb), O (object), C
(complement), A (adverb)'.

The formulas of these seven patterns are as follows:

1. SV Subject + Verb

e.g. He slept.

2. SVO Subject + Verb + Object (the object is obligatory)

e.g. They rewarded me.

3. SVC Subject + Verb + Complement (the complement is

obligatory)

e.g. The lecture was completely informative.

4. SVA Subject + Verb + Adverbial (the adverbial is

obligatory)
 e.g. She had been in the garden.

5. SVOO Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object (only

the direct object is obligatory)

e.g. My mother bought my brother a bike.

6. SVOC Subject + Verb + Object + Complement (the complement

is obligatory)

e.g. The players considered the coach unqualified.

7. SVOA Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial (the adverbial is

obligatory)

e.g. I will put these rods here.

These seven classifications can be categorized in three

economical and inclusive patterns:

1. Two-element pattern SV

O
2. Three three-element patterns SV + C
A

O
3. Three four-element pattern SVO + C
A

From these threefold classification, there are three main verb

classes:
1. Intransitive verbs : such as : laugh, die, sleep, etc.
2. Transitive verbs : these are verbs that are obligatorily followed
by an object (or two) e.g. kill, hate, watch, etc. These verbs are
subcategorized as follows:
a) Monotransitive verbs: these occur in the pattern SVO. They
require only one object.
b) Di-transitive verbs: these verbs occur in the pattern SVOO.
They take up two objects (direct and indirect).
c) Complex transitive verbs: these verbs occur in the patterns
SVOC (the complement here is called object complement)
and SVOA.
3. Copular verbs : verbs that are obligatorily followed by either a
subject complement (subject complement) or an adverbial (SVC,
SVA). These verbs include: be, become, sound, etc.
 The comparison between patterns
(Brown and Millar's, Stageberg, .Quirk et al.)
By comparison we can sketch an idea that all the three patterns of
agree that the elements are to be included obligatorily,
furthermore, they agree that what follows the subject is critical ,
not what precedes.
• Brown and Millar's , and Stageberg the classification of the
verbs patterns is based on form rather than on the function.
Thus they classify the patterns components in terms of their
formal distribution (NP, VP etc.).

while Quirk's is different because he focuses on the function of

the elements rather than on their form, so the classification is in
terms of the elements function within the pattern, ex. (S, V, O,
etc.).

• Stageberg uses numbers to label noun phrases in the patterns to

emphasize the different referents for the different labeled nouns,
for example, N1 represents the subject of the sentence if it occurs
initially, if N1 occurs after the verb it signifies the same referent.
N2 represents a different referent in the object position.

Quirk's does not label numbers to elements. So eventually there

is no need to label the subject as 'S1' because there is only one
subject occurring initially in the sentence. However, in the pattern
 'SVOO' the two objects need to be labeled to indicate which one is
the direct object and which one is the indirect one.

While Brown and Millar, do not label components. Because of the

focus on the form of components rather than on their function.

• (Brown and Millar) and Quirk refer to 'linking' verbs and verb
'to be' as 'copular' verbs, that is to say, 'to be' and linking verbs
belong to the same class. Quirk et al. use this copular verbs in two
of the seven patterns ‫ ــــ‬SVC, SVA. In SVC pattern, C includes either
an adjective or a noun.

Brown and Millar apply copular verbs in the following pattern:

NP
NP + Vcop +
Adj

Where NP and Adj belong to the same form class which is referred
to as 'predicate' (pred.).

Stageberg is not economical in his patterns when he

distinguishes between verb 'to be' and 'linking' verbs separately.
He puts verb 'to be' in his first 3 patterns 'N be Aj', 'N be Ad' and
'N1 be N1'.

He presents linking verbs in two different patterns ‫ ــــ‬Pattern 4

and pattern 5 'N LV Adj' and 'N1 LV N1'.
• Stageberg specifies pattern 6 to include intransitive verbs 'N
IntrV' regardless of whether this verb is followed by an adverbial
or not. Brown and Millar put intransitive verbs in two different
types 'intransitive' locative verbs NP + Vil and 'transitive
locative' verbs NP + Vtl + PP which is obligatorily followed by an
adverbial which is not necessarily a prepositional phrase but one-
word adverbial might occur such as 'here, there, upstairs, etc.'

Quirk et al. specify pattern 1 (SV) to intransitive verbs.

• Stageberg specifies pattern 7 to 'transitive' verbs, that is,

obligatorily followed by an object 'N1 TrV. N2'. Quirk et al. put
such kind of verbs in patterns 2, 6 and 7 'SVO, SVOA, SVOC' and
call such kind of verbs as "monotransitive verbs", that is, followed
by one object. Whereas Brown and Millar call this type of verbs
'transitive verbs' 'NP + Vt + NP' (type 3) and 'transitive locative'
'NP + Vtl + NP + PP' (type 6). These verbs are obligatorily followed
by an adverbial which is not necessarily a prepositional phrase
but one-word adverbial might occur such as 'here, there, upstairs,
etc.'
• In Stageberg's pattern 8 contains verbs that are followed by two
Ns, that is N2 and N3 (indirect and direct object). Quirk's pattern 5
contains a type of verbs can take up two objects 'SVOO'. Brown
and Millar's "Di-transitive verbs" 'NP + Vdt+ NP + NP' (type 4).
• Stageberg uses the symbol N despite the fact that the symbol NP
is more general as it includes the N.
• Stageberg sheds some lights on grammatical meaning (thematic
roles) of the pattern components i.e He describes the transitive
verbs as those where action passes over from the subject to the
object.
• Quirq et al do not distinguish between action verbs and the
dummy verb BE in the first pattern s + v .