Įnglish verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. Tlingit lacks a ditransitive, so the indirect object is described by a separate, extraposed clause.
Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases. In the objective the verb takes an object but no subject the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In English, they require a dummy pronoun, and therefore formally have a valency of 1. Weather verbs are often impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in null-subject languages like Spanish, where the verb llueve means "It rains". Ditransitive (valency = 3, trivalent): the verb has a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object.For example: "she eats fish", "we hunt nothing". Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and a direct object.Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has a subject.Zero valency does not occur in English in some languages such as Mandarin Chinese, weather verbs like snow(s) take no subject or object. Avalent (valency = 0): the verb has neither a subject nor an object.Verbs can be classified according to their valency: The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence. On the other hand, Basque, Georgian, and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement: the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages. Japanese, like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense/mood/aspect as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject - it is a strictly dependent-marking language. Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tense–aspect–mood and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish) with the subject.
The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb ( I walk, you walk, they walk, etc.). With the exception of the verb to be, English shows distinctive agreement only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which is marked by adding "-s" ( I walk, he walk s) or "-es" ( he fish es). In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number and/or gender. In many languages, verbs have a present tense, to indicate that an action is being carried out a past tense, to indicate that an action has been done and a future tense, to indicate that an action will be done. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood and voice. In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. (November 2008)Ī verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action ( bring, read, walk, run, learn), an occurrence ( happen, become), or a state of being ( be, exist, stand). WikiProject Linguistics or the Linguistics Portal may be able to help recruit an expert. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. This article needs attention from an expert on the subject.