Plain English. Marian Wharton
use this suggestive lesson assignment to meet your own need and find expression for your real individuality in full freedom.
This is the first of several lessons concerning verbs. The verb is perhaps the most difficult part of speech to thoroughly master, so do not be discouraged if there are some parts of this lesson you do not understand. Succeeding lessons will clear up these difficult points. Keep your eyes open as you read every day, and be careful of your spelling and pronunciation.
Some of us mis-spell the common words which we see and use every day. In a student's letter we recently noted that, with our letter before him in which the word was printed in large type and correctly spelled, he spelled College, Colledge.
Do not be satisfied with half-way things or less than that which is worthy of you. Demand the best for yourself. Read aloud this little verse from the Good Grey Poet, Walt Whitman:
"O, the joy of a manly self-hood;
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth."
THE WORD THAT ASSERTS
93. You remember when we studied sentences we found that we could not have a sentence without a verb or a word that asserts. The life of a sentence is the verb, for without the verb we cannot assert, question or command. It was on account of this importance that the Romans called the verb, verbum, which meant the word. Verbs, like nouns, are divided into classes.
94. In some of our sentences the verb alone is enough to make a complete assertion, but in other sentences we use verbs that need to be followed by one or more words to complete the assertion. Notice the following sentences:
The boy ran.
The boy found the ball.
The earth revolves.
The earth is round.
Do you notice any difference in the verbs used in these sentences? Notice that the verbs ran and revolves make the complete assertion about their subjects. Notice the verbs found and is. These are not complete without the addition of the words ball and round. If we say The boy found, The earth is, you at once ask, The boy found WHAT? The earth is WHAT? The sense is incomplete without the addition of these words ball and round. A part of the thought is unexpressed; but when we say The boy found the ball, The earth is round, the sense is complete.
So we have two classes of verbs, COMPLETE AND INCOMPLETE VERBS.
95. An incomplete verb is one that requires the addition of one or more words to complete its meaning.
The word or words added to an incomplete verb to complete its meaning are called the complement.
A complete verb is one that requires no complement to complete its meaning.
96. You can readily tell when a verb is complete and when it is incomplete by asking the question What? If you put the question what after the verb, and it makes a sensible question the verb is incomplete. For example:
Farmers raise—what?
The employer discharged—what?
We were—what?
The earth is—what?
If the question what? does not make sense after the verb, then the verb is complete. For example:
The sun shines.
Water flows.
Men work.
The question what after these verbs would not make sense, as:
The sun shines—what?
Men work—what?
Water flows—what?
So these verbs are complete verbs.
97. The same verb, however, may be complete or incomplete, according to the way in which it is used. For example:
The corn grows.
The farmer grows corn.
In the sentence, Corn grows, grows is a complete verb. You could not say The corn grows—what? for it does not grow anything. It merely grows, and the verb grows in this sense is a complete verb. But in the sentence, The farmer grows corn, you are using the verb grows in a slightly different sense. It is an incomplete verb, for you do not mean, The farmer grows, but you mean that the farmer grows CORN.
Exercise 1
In the following sentences, underscore the complete verbs with one line, the incomplete with two lines. Ask the question what? after each verb to determine whether it is complete or incomplete.
He returned today.
He returned the book.
The rose smells sweet.
He smelled the rose.
The trees shake in the wind.
The wind shakes the trees.
The ship plows through the waves.
The farmer plows the field.
The birds sing sweetly.
They sang the Marseillaise.
He worries over the matter.
The matters worry him.
The table feels rough.
He feels the rough surface.
It tastes bitter.
He tasted the bitter dregs.
Exercise 2
Use the following verbs in sentences as both complete and incomplete verbs, as for example, The snow melts. The sun melts the snow.
melts
write
stopped
answer
rings
fall
see
strike
INCOMPLETE VERBS
98. Do you notice any difference in the two verbs in the following sentences:
The boy found the ball.
The earth is round.
In the sentence, The boy found the ball, the word ball tells what the boy found. The verb found expresses action; it tells what the boy does. Boy is the subject of the action—the one who performs the action. The word ball is the object of the action. It shows the receiver of the action. In the sentence, The earth is round, is does not express action. The earth is not doing anything, it simply is. The verb is expresses a state or condition and is incomplete, for you do not know what state or condition is expressed until we add the other word or words which describe the state or condition.
Notice the following sentences:
The earth is round.
The earth is our home.
The earth is a sphere.
The earth is large.
The words round, sphere, home and large,