Verbs

Verbs are a grammatical category that encodes actions, events, processes, or states. They are central to clauses, marking time and mode of expression across languages.

In many languages verbs inflect for tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number. English uses base forms that combine with auxiliary verbs to express tense and aspect; examples: walk, walks, walked, walking; be, have as auxiliary verbs with main verbs. Verbs can be finite (conjugated to show tense or agreement) or non-finite (infinitives, participles, gerunds).

Verbs can be classified by syntactic behavior: transitive verbs take direct objects (eat an apple); intransitive do not (sleep); ditransitive take two objects (give someone something). They also have voice: active vs passive (The ball was thrown by Mary). Mood: indicative, imperative, subjunctive. Aspect contrasts such as simple, progressive, perfect; tense markers locate events in time (past, present, future). Some languages have modal or auxiliary systems.

In usage, verbs interact with other elements to form phrases and participate in negation, question formation, and subordination. They form the core of predication and are often the most morphologically complex part of a grammar. Note that many languages have rich conjugation systems, while some rely on particles or affixes.