The name itself tells us that Main Verbs are important. Main verbs are Verbs which show the major actions carried out by the subjects (I, we, you, he, she, it, they). Main Verbs are also known as Lexical Verbs or Principal Verbs. The term Lexical means related to the Vocabulary (words) or the dictionary.
Generally Main Verbs have ability to stand alone, however we can also find one or more than one Auxiliary/Helping Verbs helping them.
Main Verbs vs Helping Verbs
For Example, in the sentence,
“John has been working very hard lately”
There are three verbs but only one that shows the action of the subject.
has – auxiliary verb
been – auxiliary verb
working – main verb
Forms of Main Verb
Each main Verb has five forms.
|
Base Form |
Past tense |
Present Tense |
Continuous Tense |
Participle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Tie Jump Cook Date Marry Blame Teach |
Tied Jumped Cooked Dated Married Blamed Taught |
Ties Jumps Cooks Dates Marries Blames Teaches |
Tying Jumping Cooking Dating Marrying Blaming Teaching |
Ties Jumps Cooks Dates Marries Blames Teaches |
Examples of Main Verb Usage
They can be understood more clearly with the help of some more examples and their use in sentences.
1. Simple/Base form
Eat, play, sleep, laugh, study, dance, pass, sing, wake etc.
I never eat meat because I am a vegetarian.
Do they laugh this way?
You sing so sweetly.
Wake up and exercise daily.
Study two hours every day to pass tour exam.
2. Past Tense
Ate, played, slept, laughed, studies, danced, sang, woke etc.
We ate lobster yesterday.
She danced all night with him.
I sang like a toad.
We woke up to wish him his birthday.
I slept all day long.
3. Continuous –ing form
Eating, playing, sleeping, laughing, studying, dancing, singing, walking etc.
Can’t you see? I am eating.
My children are singing rhymes in their bedroom.
We are walking these days to work.
James is studying seriously.
Are you laughing at me?
4. Past Participle
Eaten, played, slept, laughed, studied, danced, sung, walked
I have eaten my breakfast.
She laughed at him.
His child danced on the stage.
We walked all the way back to home from the office.
You hardly studied.
5. Present Tense
Eats, plays, sleeps, laughs, studies, dances, sings, walks
Janet plays violin.
He studies very hard.
It dances funnily.
She walks to the grocery store every morning.
He laughs at my silly mistakes.
Points to Remember
- Generally, ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’ are considered Auxiliary Verbs/helping. However, at times they also act as main Verbs.
As Main Verb
I am a student and he is a teacher.As Auxiliary Verb
I am working as a teacher and he is working as a student.‘Am’ and ‘is’ are helping verbs as they are seen to be supporting main verb ‘working’. Sometimes even more than one helping verbs are seen to be supporting main verb in sentences.
- I most cases, the tense of the helping verb agrees with the tense of the main verb. But sometimes, the tense of helping Verbs can differ from that of main Verb. It’s not necessary that tenses of both Verbs should be same but they should be grammatically correct.
Same Tense
She told me that he was very handsome.Different Tense(still correct)
She told me that he is very handsome.