Verbs are words that express an action, state of being, or relationship between two things. They tell the reader what the subject (actor) in a sentence does or is or is being. Verbs come in three types: action, linking, and helping, as described in the following sections.
PRACTICAL POINT
Both nouns and verbs can be inflected; that is, you can add letters to the base of a noun or verb to change its syntactic function without changing its fundamental form. You can inflect most nouns by adding –s or dropping the y and adding –ies to form the plural. You can inflect a verb to change its tense or mood or make it agree with the subject of the sentence in person and number; for example, I holler (present tense using the verb’s base) becomes I hollered (past tense with the base plus the inflection, holler + ed). To find out a whole lot more about inflecting verbs, turn to Chapter 6.