Verbs are one of the superior elements of English grammar which signifies the 'action' or a 'state of existence' of a being. Without verbs it is nearly impossible to construct a sentence. The words such as work, climb, and sleep are all verbs and denote some action which is why such words are called as 'action verbs'. It may be partly true that verbs only speak of action. However there are words such as 'be', 'will', 'may' which do not denote any action yet help the action to perform. Well this is where we classify the broader term 'verb' in to two main kinds, Main verb and Auxiliary verb (or helping verb since it helps the main verb).
a. List of verbs
i. Main verbs: As the name stands the verbs that perform the main function of action are called as Main verbs. E.g. she walked past me silently. Over here the word 'walked' is a main verb as it is performing the primary function of a walk. Without this word the sentence wouldn't have been completed.
ii. Auxiliary verbs: These are known as helping verbs as they 'help' the main verb to perform an action. It could also be said the other way round that they help in constructing the sentence joining along with the Main verb. E.g. I would be of some help to her. The word 'would be' together is a phrasal helping verb which is used in the grammatical structure of a sentence. Some other helping words that are often found in use are will, shall, be, could, can and so on.
There are other kinds of verbs too to be considered which directly or indirectly become a part of the above mentioned category is. Let's have a look at them as well.
i. Multi-word verbs: e.g. I look forward to taking this assignment.
The combined phrase in the above example is a multi-word verb. In such kinds the phrasal verb is associated with a preposition such as 'to' as exemplified above.
ii. Gerunds: Over here the verbs convert themselves into adjectives or nouns such as, 'Dancing is fun' where dancing is an action but takes the place of a noun in this sentence.
b. Linking verb list
Linking verbs are those which actually are far away from denoting any action & rather take up the role of describing the subject. For example, 'She looked annoyed'. Although the word 'looked' very much relates to the action but as we can see the sentence defines this verb as rather describing 'her' who 'looked annoyed'. Had it been 'She looked for solace' then surely 'looked' would have been the action verb here. Such words are known as linking verbs and the list of some of the words is as follows:
Grow |
Is |
Smell |
Am |
Seem |
Been |
Become |
Being |
Turn |
Was |
appear |
were |
c. Past tense verbs Verbs that explain the actions in past are known as past tense verbs. E.g. We played on the ground. The verbs which have –ed as an ending are the past tense verbs. As we can see from the example the word 'played' is a past tense verb. Such verbs are known as 'regular verbs'. However we also have verbs which often do not end with –ed as their ending such as 'wrote', 'clung', 'drank'. Such words which do not end with the suffix –ed are called as 'irregular verbs' which does the same function as that of the regular verbs.