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Grammar
Course: Grammar > Unit 2
Lesson 3: Linking and helping verbsLinking verbs
Linking verbs are verbs that can connect ideas to one another, like "It is sunny out" or "she looks unhappy". Verbs like "to be", "seems", "appears", or other verbs that reference the five senses are linking verbs. "That smells good." "The cactus feels spiky."
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- Before you were saying that every sentience has a verb in it, but the sentience 'The bear is hungry' doesn't appear to have a verb. So are you saying that 'is' is technically the verb in this sentience as for it is linking the words??(60 votes)
- Ding ding ding! You got it, Amy!
Is
is a verb!(86 votes)
- I am going to sniff a bear.(18 votes)
- So forms of the word "to be" are always linking verbs but other words that link ideas together can also be linking verbs under some circumstances?(13 votes)
- Isn't "the bear smells like cinnamon" a simile?(10 votes)
- Yes. You're directly comparing the bear to cinnamon with the word "like", which means that you're using a simile.(10 votes)
- So about bears... they exist(13 votes)
- Parvati hit the ball so hard, it __ knocked__ a hole in the fence.
Parvati hit the ball so hard, it __knocks__ a hole in the fence.
which one is correct and why ?(3 votes)- The first one is correct, because both verbs are in the past tense.
The second one is incorrect, because though the first verb is past tense, the second is in the present tense, so the verbs do not agree in time.(22 votes)
- please can you explain what a verb is explicitly?(1 vote)
- A verb is a word that describes an action or a state of being. So
to walk
is a verb andto be
is a verb andto like
is a verb.(23 votes)
- Is the bear ok ?(12 votes)
- i still do not understand . what is a main verb.(3 votes)
- Every sentence must contain a verb, which is the word that shows the "action".
Some sentences contain two verbs, one of which is the action, and the other "links" or "helps".
Here are some examples:
The president tweets. (the only verb is, 'tweet'.)
The president is tweeting. (the main verb is 'tweet' and the linking verb is 'is'.)
The president tweets lies. (the main verb is 'tweet')
The president is a liar. (the main verb is 'is'.)
I hoope that helps.(9 votes)
- why are oranges called orange but apples are not called red(5 votes)
- The name of the fruit, "orange" comes from the name of the color. The color's came first. The name of the fruit "apple" came from somewhere other than its color.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello, grammarians. Today, we're talking
about verbs and bears. We had previously established at least one thing about the verb, and that was that it can show actions. But today I'd like to introduce the idea that the verb can link
ideas to one another. In fact, we have this whole class of verbs that we call "linking verbs." Or, if you want to call
it something fancier, we call that "state of being verbs." These linking verbs include all forms of the verb "to be," which I have handily written out for you. So, I am, he is we are,
be nice, they were being, they have been, he was, we were. Now we use a linking verb when we want to connect one idea to another. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna divide the screen in half between the action side and
the state of being side, just to show you what I mean. So we use action verbs to
show what something does, whereas we use state of being verbs to show what something is. So let's bring it back to this bear. Let's think of an action
for this bear to do. What is a bear-like thing to do? The bear eats a fish. That's an action. That's something the bear is doing. The bear is hungry,
however, is not something that the bear is doing, it's
something that the bear is. So what "is" is doing here, is connecting the word "hungry," to the word "bear." It's linking it. Some verbs can be used both ways. They can be used both as
actions, and as linking verbs. I'll show you an example of that. You could say, "The bear looked at me." Which is to say the bear is doing a thing, looking, at something, namely me. But we could also say,
using the same verb, "The bear looked lonely." Now in this case, this is
describing how the bear looks. What the bear looks like. This looking is not
something the bear is doing, it is how the bear appears to a viewer. So, "looked" is connecting "lonely" to "bear." It is linking "lonely" to "bear." It is a linking verb. By the same token, we
could say, for an action, "The bear smells a person."
What is it smelling? A person. But we could also say, "The bear smells like cinnamon." Which, I grant you, is pretty unlikely. Don't go smelling bears. But what "smells" is
doing here is connecting the idea of cinnamon, to the bear. The bear isn't smelling the cinnamon, the bear smells like cinnamon. And that's the difference between a linking verb and an action verb. A linking verb shows what something is, an action verb shows what something does. So the bear is hungry,
the bear looked lonely, the bear smells like cinnamon. These all reflect something
about what the bear is. How it's being. You can learn anything, David out.