Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Verb (Linguistics)

Definition: 

A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that

  • typically signal events and actions
  • constitute, singly or in a phrase, a minimal predicate in a clause
  • govern the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause, and
  • in inflectional languages, may be inflected for

    • tense
    • aspect
    • voice
    • modality, or
    • agreement with other constituents in

      • person
      • number, or
      • grammatical gender.