AKA: doing verbs, material processes

Examples: I write the songs that make the whole world sing. The cow jumped over the moon.

🧾Definition

Action, or doing, verbs are processes that express an action or event where something happens. In most action verbs, an agent is responsible for action, which is directed towards a goal and/or recipient.

🔬Discovery

✅Form

• Action verbs can be transitive or intransitive. Transitive verbs have an object (the goal of the verb). Intransitive verbs do not: they only have one participant.

💬Functions

Action verbs are found in all KLUs and perform a variety of functions that express events. From a functional perspective, it is often interesting to draw attention to action verbs that do more than this, though, for example:

• Action verbs that imply feelings: she shuddered (=she felt fear or cold); she jumped for joy (=she felt happy)
• Action verbs that hide agency, especially by the choice of intransitive (technically, ergative) verbs: the gun fired (=someone fired the gun)

📝Practice

• Please answer these questions and share your answers with a colleague or PLC: