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Mutating the Verb: When Dancing Does Not Dance
A ghost walks the
margins of this page, defined by what it used to be, retaining something
of its erstwhile form, yet changed. While this page is titularly
about verbs, as you read, you'll find the focus to be on verbals, the
mutated, changed verbs, passed over into an afterlife of sorts as Other
Parts of Speech. The reason for this seeming misnomer is that I want
to compare and contrast verbals with finite verbs, their previous
incarnation. The quick link immediately below should ease the minds
of those searching for something to justify the heading.
Finite verbs vs. Infinite Confusion
Identifying verbals can be somewhat tricky. While verbals are forms of verbs, they are NOT the action associated with the subject. In other words, they are not truly verbs because the part of speech of any word is determined by the role it plays in a sentence. This is the trick to understanding the question and answer at the beginning of the main page. Dancing does not dance when the word is a verbal, rather than the verb of the sentence. A dancer dances, but dancing describes the art of the dance; it is not the movement of the dancer. Remember that words can be more than one part of speech. Think of "telephone," which can be a noun ("I called her on the telephone."), a verb ("Telephone me in the morning.")
or an adjective ("Juanita ran into the telephone store for a new holster.").
Some grammar texts classify verbals as non-finite verbs; what we generally think of verbs are called finite verbs, because they are limited in time and number. In my teaching, however, when I refer to a verb, I am discussing the finite verb, the verb that we can conjugate, inflect, that expresses action or being or those auxiliary words that help such verbs express temporal relationships (tenses). Finite verbs perform the drama of the sentence, allowing the subject to be or not to be, to act or to be passively acted upon. Verbals are at best distant echoes of those dramas.
To understand the distinctions between finite and non-finite verbs, you need the mind of a grammarian. If you've read this far, obviously you have that sort of mind, but students, especially those not comfortable with the finer points of grammar, generally do not have such minds, and so, in the interest of having them comprehend the function of verbals, it is easier to ignore this distinction altogether and classify them as a separte part of speech with three distinct forms. I have found that many students have not been taught to think about the abstract qualities of words ans so become confused if I put too fine a point on a grammatical concept.
The Verb: The Pivot Point of the Sentence
I teach students to understand that verbals are words that have been formed from verbs and can be mistaken for them, if one does not look at the function of the various words in the sentence. Hence, when I teach the subject/verb/complement pattern I stress that the verb is the pivot point of the sentence. First find the verb, then you can find the subject ("Who or what [verbed]?") and all words that relate to those sentence anchors.
What I say is that verbals have mutated out of the main function of a verb. Sometimes, like verbs, verbals can take complements (e.g., giving a person his due , or to confess your sins) but they do not express action or being, nor are they linked to the subject as verbs are; also, they do not change form when the number or person of the subject changes. (I gloss over the fact that participles can express tense.) This gives them a concept to hold on to, once they have understood and recognized the real action in the sentence.
I would then have them consider verbal phrases such as those that introduce the following sentences:
Marching down the hill in front of my classmates, I was the first one inside.
Marching down the hill without adequate cover, the soldiers present easy targets for the enemy.
Marching down the hill in your birthday suit, you will be considered insane.
In these sentences, you can see how the verbal marching (introducing a participial phrase in each case) does not change form, even though the main verbs change with tense, person, and number. To help my students understand the function of the verbal, I tell them that marching cannot be a verb, since it is not the action of the sentence. At first, even though I have had them identify the subject/verb pattern, this still confuses them, since they can "see" people marching and want to assume that marching is another verb. I say to them that in sentences like these, words such as marching are like snapshots, pictures of the subject that the verbal phrase modifies (a marching-down-the-hill person). They are not what the subject is doing or being. In the first sentence, the marching subject, I, was first inside; in the second, the marching soldiers are presenting easy targets; in the last, you, the marching, naked subject are going to be considered insane. It's much easier to explain the difference when dealing with obvious modifiers or with gerunds.
The confusion comes from not understanding the difference between action and apparent action, between soldiers who are marching and marching soldiers. How do we teach the difference?
When Participles are Main Verbs, Not Verbals
Here the term participle refers to the main verb, part of the auxiliary/main combination. Although the form of the present participle (look up term participle) is identical to the word when used by itself (technically, as a gerundive, an adjective), its function is totally different when it follows an auxiliary verb. Then, the participle functions as the predicate or complement of the subject. For example:
Last night, shortly after the guard made his last round at the swimming pool, we stripped down and were merrily swimming naked under the full moon.
In this sentence, both uses of the word swimming could allow us to call it a participle, although it functions in two distinct ways; it is first used as an adjective, modifying pool, and secondly as the main action, in tandem with the auxiliary were.
Next, Nouns: Dramatis Personae
