Classification of verbs

There are four main types of verbs: notional, auxiliary, link, and modal.

Notional verbs have the meaning of their own and can be used without other verbs, as a simple predicate:

She writes a lot of letters every day.

Auxiliary verbs combine with notional verbs to build analytical forms. Auxiliary verbs have lost their lexical meaning. They are do, have, be, shall, will, should, would:

Do you know this person?

He is writing a test now.

They have never met us.

Shall we go? They will help you. They said they would help you.

Link verbs are used in compound nominal predicates. They are: be, feel, seem, look, become, get, grow, taste, come and others. Some of them have lost to some extent their lexical meaning; in other cases their lexical meaning is not important:

We are students.

It becomes colder every day.

The road came white and straight in front of us.

The soup tastes good.

Modal and semi-modal verbs express the speaker's attitude toward the action or state described by the infinitive. They are: can/could, may/might, must, shall, will, should, ought, would, need, dare, be, have. As a rule they are not used alone and are followed by a notional verb. Modal verbs are a kind of modal auxiliaries as they build forms without other auxiliary verbs:

You can go now.

Must we come again?

You shouldn't believe everything he says.

Semi-modal verbs can use auxiliaries in negative and interrogative forms:

Do you have to go there again?

You needn’t read the text. You don’t need to read the text.

There are verbs that can be used both as notional and auxiliary and there are verbs that can be used as notional, auxiliary and semi-modal or auxiliary and modal.

How often do you do such things?

He is at home. He is sleeping. He is to come soon.

He has this book. He has read it. He had to read it last week.

Will it rain, do you think? I mustn’t, but I will.

We shall start at 5. You shall be sorry.

She said she would come. We asked her but she wouldn’t listen.

I thought I should call you. You should have called.

Wherever you might go you will meet him. You might have cleaned the room.

According to lexical meaning verbs can be terminative, non-terminative, and verbs of double aspect character.

Terminative verbs denote actions implying a certain limit, e.g. come, find, bring, etc.

I’ ve brought you a book. Here it is.

Non-terminative verbs denote actions that do not imply any limit, e.g. live, possess, hope, stay, etc.

I hope to meet you again.

Verbs of double aspect character can be both, depending on the context, e.g. see, read, learn, etc.

She can see well. I haven’t seen him yet.

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE VERBS

The verb has the grammatical categories of person, number, tense, aspect, and voice.