Flaws in Most of the Current Definitions
of Verbs and Subjects (Flaws Now Corrected by the Strategies of the Hunter Writing System: Sentence Sense Text)

This article was printed in Syntax in the Schools (Vol. 11, No. 2 [Nov., 1994], 1-5).  It demonstrates how the traditional definitions of the verb and subject are invalid.

Out of curiosity not too long ago, I started a college first-year composition course (at a two-year college in rural New York) with a test of my students' knowledge of verbs.  For a 161-word passage in which there were 22 verb words, they were to pick out all verb words that were "at the center of a clause."  Only 15% scored higher than zero; 85% made as many errors of omission or commission (identifying as a verb a word that was not one) as they did of correct identification.

I gather from my discussion of these results with teachers who have attended my workshops around the country that this is not an isolated instance but a far-too-common occurrence.

I am sure that you share my concern that so large a proportion of students--students who had spent twelve years in our school systems--should have failed to be able even to identify so pivotally important a component of an English sentence as the verb.

If the verb were of little importance in English, this would be less alarming an instance of failure.  However--and contrary to the emphasis given the verb in some textbooks--the verb is the very core of English.  All other parts of the sentence depend on the verb either directly or indirectly for their role in the sentence and as an explanation for their inclusion there at all.  By way of illustration of the verb's importance to the structure of English, recall that verbs without subjects can form sentences--as in Listen! or Run!  However, subjects without verbs have no such privilege--as in We.... or Houses....

It is my position that a chief reason for this inability of students to find the verb--and their resultant inability to unravel the structure of any but the simplest of sentences--is the oversimplified and inaccurate, yet widespread, textbook definition of a verb as an "action word."

There are five chief ways in which the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students.

Many Nouns Look like Verbs

First, the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students because numberless words in English can function either as nouns or as verbs.  For instance at a workshop recently, a teacher was asked to list five verbs.  She chose these words: drive, love, cry, hit, and wave. All these words pass the action-word criterion for being verbs and--in students' eyes--would appear to be verbs, even in sentences like the following:

We went for a drive.
His love of food was his undoing.
The baby gave a loud cry.
Every player got a hit.
His wave was his sign of welcome.

The words in small capitals in these sentences, though they look like verbs, are all functioning instead as nouns.

This is a common occurrence in English.  Typically at these workshops, three out of five of the verbs selected by teachers could function either as nouns or as verbs.  In a recent cover-story article in Time (Nancy Gibbs, "The Trials of Hillary," Mar. 21, 1994, 28­37), there were 263 words that functioned as nouns but were mistakable as verbs.  In the same article, there were 325 main verb words (apart from gerunds, participles, and infinitives) that did not stem from the verb be.  Therefore, out of these 588 words (263 + 325), 45% were words that functioned as nouns but could have functioned as verbs.  However, 79 of the 325 main verb words--or 24%--were verbs that were mistakable as nouns.  In all, then, 342 of these 588 words (79 + 263)--or 58%--were verbs mistakable as nouns or nouns mistakable as verbs!

The fact that numberless words in English can function as nouns instead of as verbs and still appear to carry action invalidates the action-word criterion as a strategy for finding verbs.


Helping Verbs Carry No Action

Second, the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students because none of the helping verbs in English carry action.  Since the twenty-three words that make up our most common helping verbs are genuine components of verbs, students must recognize them as such.  Yet the action-word criterion for finding verbs would cause students to fail to identify any one of them as a verb (word). Here are examples of helping verbs at work:

We do swim often.
No one has decided.
Everyone is being told.
Ed may arrive on time.
Roberta could be coming too.

As you can see, none of the helping verbs (in small capitals) carries action.  In the cover-story article in Time already cited (Nancy Gibbs, 1994), there were a total of 560 verb words (helping verbs plus main verbs) used; this number excluded infinitives, participles, and gerunds. Out of these 560 words, 141--that is, 25%--functioned as helping verbs.

Some of the words that function as helping verbs can alternatively function as a main verbs--namely: the words am, are, is, was, were, be, being, and been.  Because these eight words do not carry action as main verbs either, textbooks have added another criterion ("definition") for finding verbs; they call these words "state-of-being" words.  Unfortunately, English has tens of thousands of state-of-being words that have no relation to any of these eight words; among these are nouns like happiness, royalty, and gratitude and adjectives like thin, healthy, and muscular.  This fact disqualifies this second "definition" of a verb as an acceptable one.

Out of the 560 verb words in the above-cited article in Time, there were--besides the 141 words used as helping verbs--an additional 94 words from the verb be that functioned as main verbs.  These latter words made up 17% of the verb words in the article.  In combination therefore, the all-too-common textbook definition(s) for finding verbs would fail to clearly identify both the helping verbs and the eight words from the verb be when these function as main verbs--that is, 42% of the verb words in this article!

Because the definition of a verb as an "action word" fails to identify any helping verbs and its definition as a "state-of-being word" fails to identify only components of the verb be, both these "definitions" are invalid.


Adjectives and Adverbs Can Appear to Carry Action

Third, the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students because adjectives and adverbs can seem action-filled. Would students not have some ground for justification if they were to call words like slow, fast, active, frisky, and haltingly verbs if an "action word" was the definition by which they were to arrive at a decision?  Here is a sentence in which this would seem to be the case:  The poky train was nowhere in sight.

The confusion for students does not end there. Again in the above-cited article in Time (Gibbs, 1994), there were--besides the 263 nouns that were mistakable as verbs--70 adjectives and 17 adverbs whose spellings matched the spelling for words that dictionaries also list as verbs.

Clearly the action-word "definition" of a verb is not only noninclusive, it is also nondiscriminating.

Verb-Based Words Can Function as Nouns or Adjectives instead of as Verbs

Fourth, the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students because words that stem from verbs and are carrying action sometimes function as adjectives or nouns and not as verbs.  This is the case when they serve as verbals. Examples are the words arguing and lengthening in these sentences:

Fred enjoys arguing.
The lengthening days of spring invite cheerfulness.

In the first sentence, the word arguing functions as a noun; in the second, the word lengthening functions as an adjective.  The failure of the action-word criterion to differentiate such words from the same words when they function as verbs is an intrinsic flaw in the action-word "definition" of a verb.


Some Verbs Carry No Action

Fifth, and finally, the definition of a verb as an "action word" can mislead students because some verbs carry no action, even when they function as verbs.  Notice how the action-word criterion fails to identify the verbs in these sentences:

Drab sentences lack lively words.
Many students own outdated dictionaries.
Correct sentences have correct punctuation.
Oceans contain both natural and historical treasures.
Office machines rest at night.

As you can see, the verbs lack, own, have, and contain are clear-cut examples of common verbs that never carry action.  The use of the verb rest in the fifth sentence is an example of a word that in certain contexts could not possibly imply "action."  Since there are bona fide verbs that carry no action, the definition of a verb as an action word is again unjustifiable.


Subjects Do Not Always Help Students Find Verbs

Some people will pose the argument that the verb is easy to find because it accompanies subjects.  This argument has several serious drawbacks.

First, many sentences have more than one verb.  As a result, intervening objects of verbs, objects of prepositions, and subjects of other verbs can make it too difficult for students to isolate just the wording that is functioning as subject. Here is an example:

Though Pablo had earned a great deal of money from lawn mowing, the amount of his savings was inadequate for the purchase of a new pair of sneakers.

For this sentence, it is only with great difficulty that students might arrive at the conclusion that was is the key verb in the sentence if they must first uncover the fact that the amount of his savings is the key subject.

Second, even the chief subject in the sentence (the one that accompanies the verb in the main clause) can be too long to be of much assistance to students for finding an accompanying verb.  Note this example:

The taunts from underachieving students over the industriousness of their classmates could cause an unfortunate lessening of their enthusiasm.

Many students would be hard-pressed to identify could cause as the verb after so lengthy a subject as the taunts from underachieving students over the industriousness of their classmates; and this subject contains neither a clause nor a verbal phrase.

Finally, and most importantly, it is the verb that serves as an anchor for a subject (not vice versa).  This is because there is no sure way to find subjects independently of the verb that furnishes its reason for existence.  For a fuller discussion of this and of how best to find subjects, see Anthony Devereux Hunter, Sr., The Hunter Writing System: Sentence Sense, 1991, Delhi, NY: Hunter & Joyce, 128-29, 145-47, 253-54.

All of the above discussion clearly demonstrates why countless students fail to master verbs . . . and sentence structure.

There Is Room for More Research

If students have been unable to find verbs (and subjects) because they have lacked valid strategies for identifying them, then research studies based on instruction utilizing such strategies might themselves be invalid.  In addition, if there are valid strategies for finding verbs (and there are)--and these do enable students to gain insight into how sentences work--then certainly the benefits of learning such strategies in a classroom setting deserve to be researched. Such instruction could conceivably turn out to be an indispensable component of a student's education.

There Are Valid Strategies for Finding Clause-Centered Verbs

Fortunately, there are two strategies by which students can accurately find those verbs that serve as the hub of a clause.  In fact, these may be the strategies by which all of us, subconsciously, make our determinations as to which words are verbs and which are not.  These strategies rely on the fact that there are two kinds of such verbs:  the kind that starts with a word from the list of twenty-three helping verbs and the kind that does not.

The first strategy is for finding verbs whose first (and sometimes only) word is from the list of helping verbs.  Students can learn to recognize all such words (there are twenty chief ones) and then use them as a springboard for finding accompanying helping verbs (if any) and an accompanying main verb, if any.  For example, in the sentence The cookies may have been eaten, the helping verb may is the springboard for identifying may have been eaten as the whole verb phrase.  By and large, the last word in a verb phrase must be a word that has an -ing way in which it can be written as part of the English language.  For the above sentence The cookies may have been eaten, the word that follows the helping verbs may have been and accompanies them--eaten--is a verb because this word does have the alternate spelling eating as part of English.  (Other examples from the list of chief helping verbs are is, have, do, and can.  For a complete list of the chief helping verbs, see Robert L. Allen, Rita Pompian, and Doris Allen, Working Sentences, 1975, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, inside the back cover.)

The second strategy is for finding verbs when none of the words from the list of helping verbs is visible.  Such words must be in a present or past tense form--such as, want, wants, or wanted. English has an alternative form for each of these expressions of tense and/or number--namely: our do, does, and did substitutions (as in do want, does want, and did want).  Students need these substitute expressions of the present and past tense when they want to add not to deny a statement.  For example, they can deny the statement Fred wants more candy by saying Fred does not want more candy.  The second strategy works like this:  whenever students can use such a substitution (without adding not) as a replacement for a word and the sentence is acceptable English, the word is a verb.  For example, for the sentence Paula worked hard yesterday, they can substitute did work for worked and still have acceptable English; the sentence would read Paula did work hard yesterday.


The Ability to Find Single-Word Verbs Has Special Importance

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this second strategy for finding verbs.  To begin with, this strategy gives students a sense of achievement because it always works.  In addition, it improves their self-image because they can now unerringly pinpoint this hidden, yet indispensable, component of a clause.  Finally, it uncovers for students the embedded helping verb that enables them to turn statements with these kinds of verbs into questions.

With these strategies as a foundation, students can be led to become owners--too often for the first time--of the structure of the language that they will depend on not only for effective learning but also for skilled employment.

¹Reprinted with the permission of the Assembly for the Teaching of  English Grammar (www.ATEG.org), an assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English.

[Back to top]