Let’s Know Verb

                       Nidhu Bhusan Das

          Verb is a versatile term. It signifies many ideas. Sometimes we say it is an action word. But on scrutiny we come to understand this is not the real comprehensive identity of the versatile word. All verbs do not signify and show action. When we say,” We play football.” we definitely mean physical action and movement. But when we say,” I know you”, what physical action does it mean or show? None. It is also said, verb is a ‘Predicate Word’. To predicate means to say. In this sense verb is a saying word.Yes, verb says something about the subject in a sentence. But why and what is a subject? This question leads us to think anew, and it brings us to certain reasonings.

        Let’s think of the position of the sun in the Solar System. The sun is at the centre and the planets move around it while the satellites orbit their respective planets. Now let’s assume that Verb is the sun and the core elements in the sentence are magnetically related to the Verb and other elements modify/qualify the respective words. They are related to those words like the satellites are related to their respective planets. We may go for some examples to understand the arrangements.

1.      Ram plays.

2.      Ram plays [football].

3.      Ram plays [football] [in the evening].

4.      Ram plays [football] [in the evening] [with his friends].

5.      Ram plays [football] [in the evening] [with his friends] [on Saturday and Sunday].

        Here we have come to what is known as verb’s arguments. In this context we may refer to linguistics for guidance. Every noun and pronoun will be taken to be Noun Phrase (NP).In the first sentence the NP is ‘Ram’, in the second, we have an additional NP which is ‘football’. The NP ‘Ram’ is the subject and the other NP ‘football’ is the object of the verb. Here the expression ‘of the verb’ is the key to the understanding of the ‘role’ of the verb. The Prepositional Phrase (PP) means and suggests that the subject NP and the object NP belong to the Verb, not the other way round, as the planets belong to the sun. In the third sentence the added adverbial phrase(AdvP) ‘in the evening’ refers to the verb, and contains the NP ‘the evening’.(A sentence in its minimum form, in fact, can be seen as logical juxtaposition or organic association of two phrases-one NP and One VP).Other elements are adjuncts.

        The Verb dictates the use of NPs.The Verb is the chooser of NP(s).It chooses or decides which NP(s) and what type of Noun and how many it expects and will take. Let’s see how the verb chooses specific form of noun/pronoun in specific position. The specific positions are slots like the slots in a TV channel, In a TV channel, if one slot is for music; another slot is for drama, another for serial, and so on. The nouns that fill the slots are the arguments of the verb. Example:

1. She played cards.
2. She played he.
3. Her played it.

     In the second instance the (pro)noun ‘he’ and in the third sentence the (pro)noun ‘her’ in the specific slot(position) of object and in the third  instance the (pro)noun ‘Her’ in the subject position are wrong kinds of arguments which are not expected by the verb played,and,thus,  give rise to unusual sentences ,though the grammar is not disturbed, in the strict sense. The arguments that are necessary for the verb to generate sensible sentence are the verb’s core arguments. (to be continued)