English verbs
English verbs express actions, events, states, or relations and serve as the main or auxiliary part of a clause.
Lexical verb: A verb that supplies a clause’s main lexical meaning rather than grammatical support. Lexical verbs carry the actions, events, and states expressed by English clauses.
English grammatical tense: The grammatical system that locates situations in time through verb forms and constructions. English contrasts past with present forms, while future time is commonly expressed with auxiliary constructions.
Noun: A word class whose members commonly name entities, substances, places, or abstract ideas. Nouns can name actions too, but they occupy different grammatical roles from verbs.
English language teaching: The practice and study of teaching English to people learning it as an additional or foreign language. Verb tense, aspect, and irregular forms are central challenges for English learners.
Auxiliary verb: A verb that combines with another verb to express grammatical contrasts such as tense, aspect, voice, or modality. Auxiliaries help form questions, negatives, passives, and complex verb phrases.
Grammatical aspect: The grammatical marking of how an event unfolds, including whether it is ongoing, completed, or habitual. Progressive and perfect constructions present events from different temporal viewpoints.
Adjective: A word class whose members typically describe properties of nouns or serve as complements. Adjectives can describe states, but they do not function as English verbs.
English verb conjugation: The formation of English verb forms to express grammatical distinctions such as tense, person, and number. Conjugation charts summarize the forms learners encounter, including irregular paradigms.
Inflection: A grammatical change to a word’s form that expresses features such as tense, number, or person. English marks some distinctions through verb endings, including third-person singular present and past tense.
Grammatical mood: The grammatical marking of a clause’s status, such as assertion, command, or hypothetical possibility. English verb forms and constructions distinguish statements, imperatives, and some hypothetical clauses.