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Watch Your Verbs For PDF
Watch Your Verbs For PDF
by
Mary Sarawit
Naresuan University
2014
Preface
I have been teaching English to Thai learners of English for over forty years. I
am fascinated by the power, beauty, and complexity of words and their subtle differences,
especially when looking at words across languages, specifically in the Thai-English context.
Words are classified into major groups: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
According to the second edition of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (1989), there
are around 85,738 nouns and 24,500 verbs. However, I would argue that verbs are the power
player in an English sentence; the verb decides what can be subject and also determines
whether it will have a complement and what kind of complement that will be. In general, the
verb speak requires a human subject capable of speech, slap requires an animate subject with
hands, demolish requires an object which is a structure capable of being destroyed. Some
verbs require gerund complements, some infinitive complements, and some clausal
complements. Because of the importance of the verb in the sentence and how it controls
other parts of the sentence, learners of English should carefully learn how individual verbs
are used. Nouns for the most part label things and the singular and plural status of nouns
must be learned, but verbs have more complex relations with subjects and complements as
well as active, passive, and middle voice.
Over the years, I have studied the errors Thai learners make with some English
verbs using contrastive analysis, error analysis, and corpus analysis, hoping to find a remedy
for the errors. With Watch Your Verbs, I have summarized these studies and added some
exercises. I hope both students and teachers will find the data, analyses, and exercises
helpful.
Mary Sarawit
July 2014
Index
page
1. Converse Verbs 1
4. Psychological Verbs 9
Some verbs are found to have the same area of meaning (semantically similar)
though they are used (syntactically) differently. These differences involve which noun
phrase (NP) can be the subject. For example, verbs like lead and follow may be described as
synonymous. Each has basically the same meaning, and each has the same two related noun
phrases. The two verbs differ in which NP can be subject: lead requires the Agent, the noun
phrase with the control to instigate the action and be the subject while with follow, the Agent
that initiated the action is the object in the sentence.
Verbs of this kind are called Converse Verbs. Following are the major pairs of
Converse Verbs.
Experiencer Stimulus
Jane likes classical music.
Stimulus Experiencer
Classical music pleases Jane.
Notice that both sentences basically express the same meaning: Jane experiences a state of
agreeableness brought on or stimulated by classical music. There are numerous Converse
Verbs in English. The following are a few more examples:
Stimulus Experiencer
That man frightens me.
1
Give and Get
Agent (Source) Receiver Object (Thing)
The teacher gave the student a book.
The verbs rent and blame also have NPs with converse relations, but the verb is the
same word.
Rent
Receiver Object (Thing) Agent (Source)
Jill rented a house from my mother.
The more you read and see the verbs in context, the easier it is to remember how the
verbs are related to the noun phrases in the sentence.
2
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 27.
1. You shouldnt blame/praise me. You are the one who forgot to close the window
last night.
2. Frank borrowed/loaned Joe 1,000 baht and told him to pay it back in four months.
3. Which season do you like/please best, winter or summer?
4. Snakes fear/frighten most people even when they are not poisonous.
5. We bought/sold some fruit for our lunch.
6. The scholarship students get/give a 6,000 baht stipend a month.
7. The young girl and old man stole/robbed the bank yesterday.
8. What likes/pleases you the most, his work ethic or his research output?
9. I got/gave a pair of new shoes at the Mall.
10. The new soft lighting pleases/likes everyone at the hotel.
11. The company complained/blamed the crash on the bus driver.
12. My brother bought/rented that motorcycle to his roommate.
3
Kill and Murder
The syntax and semantics of a verb are determined by what relations the verb has with
the associated noun phrases. Looking at the verbs kill and murder, while there is a common
semantic area: someone dies, there are differences in their meaning.
The differences in meaning and use for these two verbs are due to the noun phrase
relationships and restrictions. Kill requires that a NP which is either the Agent (Doer) or the
Instrument be present. Murder, unlike kill, specifies the Agent be present. That is, while
both murder and kill can have three NPs in the relationships of Receiver of the action, Agent
(doer of the action), and Instrument (thing or force involved in causing the action); and while
both verbs must always have a Receiver; murder requires an Agent (doer); but kill has a
choice between Agent or Instrument.
Agent Receiver
Someone killed Bill.
Someone murdered Bill.
Instrument Receiver
An overdose
of morphine killed Bill.
A comparison of these sentences shows that murder always requires in its meaning
and use that the Agent be involved; it indicates intention. Even in the passive voice, the
meaning of there being an Agent is retained.
Receiver (Agent)
Bill was murdered. (by someone)
There are additional semantic differences between the two words. Murder is the
unlawful killing of a human being. Killing is sometimes considered lawful as in war or in
countries with the death penalty.
4
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 27.
5
Protect and Prevent
The verbs protect and prevent can often be troublesome. The verbs differ in structure
and meaning relations. One of the basic structural differences between protect and prevent is
that prevent takes a sentential complement (subject + verb), but protect doesnt. The
sentential complement is in the form of a gerund as prevent your being injured or prevent
you from being injured. Prevent is a one place verb while protect can have two places (a NP
and a prepositional phrase) after the verb. Compare the following sentences:
However, note two differences: (1) suspect could be followed by a noun clause, but
prevent cant be followed by a noun clause, and while suspect takes the usually of with the
gerund, prevent takes from.
The structure of protect is more straight forward. It takes two places: protect (1) me
(2) from danger.
6
What follows protect already exists and the sentence means that Philip is kept safe
from the planes that are flying, but with prevent what follows has not happened. Prevent
here means that Philip was not allowed to fly the planes. It never happened. Take a look at
the difference in meaning between the follow two sentences.
With protect the sentence means that she has a painting, and that he has kept it safe.
With prevent the sentence means that he has not allowed her to paint. The object of protect
above is simply her painting, but the object of prevent is more complex for it is she paint.
Remember to protect your knowledge of English verb usage for it can prevent you
from making errors.
7
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 27.
8
Psychological Verbs
Psychological verbs are verbs that refer to a psychological state. The verbs interact
with two noun phrases: the Stimulus of the psychological feeling or state and the Experiencer
of this feeling or state of being. The trouble in using these verbs is that some of the verbs
require that the subject of the sentence be the Stimulus, but others require that the subject be
the Experiencer. Take a look at the following two sentences:
Love requires that the subject be the Experiencer of the love and the Stimulus of the
feeling of love is the object of the verb. With bother, the subject is the Stimulus that causes
the state of feeling bothered and the object is the Experiencer of this feeling of being
bothered. As long as the relationships are the same with the English and Thai verbs there
shouldnt be any problem in using these verbs. The problem comes when the relationships
are not the same. Take a look at the following two sentences:
The verbs bore and interest take the Stimulus as the subject and the Experiencer as
the object. However, the Thai verbs and require that the subject is the Experiencer
and the object is the Stimulus. Below are the two basic patterns and the verbs which take
each pattern:
Other verbs: miss, trust, like, enjoy, Other verbs: bother, interest, content,
remember, regret, prefer, love, embarrass, bore, insult, please, frighten,
hate, respect, understand, worry surprise, satisfy, anger, amuse, worry
Note that worry shows up for both patterns: I worry that I will not pass the exam and
Janets behavior worries me.
It is also possible to move the Experiencer and Stimulus around by using passive
which means to add the verb to be and by or sometimes with and in:
I am confused by statistics.
I am interested in modern painting.
I am bored with Johns excuses.
9
These psychological verbs can also be turned into present and past participles and
then used as adjectives. It is important to remember that the present participle comes from an
active form and the past participle from a passive form. Note the difference in meaning
between the two participles in the following sentences:
The first sentence means that the clown did something funny to make the children
laugh while the second sentence means that the clown was amused by the funny monkey. In
the same manner, the bored man fell asleep because he was bored by having nothing to do
while the boring man has few friends because that man is boring and never does anything
interesting.
We use these psychological verbs quite frequently because they tell how we feel, so
be careful how you use them so you convey what you mean.
10
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 28.
11
Study and Learn
As with all verbs, correct usage involves understanding the complement structure:
what follows the verb and the meaning of the verb. Without knowledge of the syntax and
semantics of the related verbs like study and learn, it is easy to make errors when using these
verbs.
I would like to review some of the differences among the following verbs: study,
learn, practice, train, and drill. The words are all related to gaining more knowledge or skill
in something. Lets look at study and learn. Both are process verbs, but learn presupposes
that one gain knowledge while study has no such requirement. Look at the following
sentences:
Incorrect I learned English, but I still dont know it.
Correct I studied English, but I still dont know it.
Both are correct, but the sentence with learn assumes I know how or what it takes to
be a good student counselor while the sentence with study makes no such assumption.
There are other grammatical difference in using study and learn. We dont normally
use adverbials like hard, a specific time, or a specific place.
Maybe it would be helpful to think of know and learn as a pair. They differ in that
know is not a process verb and so cannot be used in the continuous or the command form.
Turning now to the three remaining verbs: practice, train, and drill, there are
problems in usage involving both grammar and meaning. Practice takes as its complement
an inanimate object, but train requires an animate subject.
In addition, practice can take a sentential complement, but it must be in a gerund form
whereas train can take a sentential complement, but it must be in the infinitive form.
12
The volunteers were trained to react quickly in an emergency.
Train is similar to teach in that you teach (train) someone to do/be something.
However, train has an added requirement in that it assumes a certain standard for the
outcome.
He taught me to be an ice skater.
He trained me to be an Olympic ice skater.
Train is also unusual in that it has two patterns: one in which the subject is the Agent
and a Cause in that the object is caused to do something and one in which the subject is only
the Agent.
Agent/-Cause
James trained to be a concert pianist.
Receiver Agent-Cause
James was trained to be a concert pianist.
The last verb to be considered here is drill. Drill is similar to train in that it takes an
animate object and has both a subject which is both agent and cause and also a subject which
is simply the agent of the action of drill. In addition, drill carries a special meaning of
making someone do an activity repeatedly, such as the act in the following sentences:
Agent Cause
The soldiers drilled for three hours.
Receiver Agent-Cause
The soldiers were drilled for three hours.
The use of words, such as study, learn, practice, train, and drill which have overlapping
syntactic and semantic content require a thorough understanding on the part of the user and
lots of time and practice in using them in context.
13
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 28.
14
Winning and Losing
The focus here will be on four verbs: win, lose, defeat, and beat.1 These verbs can
cause problems for Thais because of the differences in how the Thai counterparts and
are used.
In analyzing the verbs, we must consider the relationship between the main verb and
other constituents in the sentence. Basically, there are three semantic parts related to the
verb. These are the Winner (W), the Loser (L), and the Goal (G). As I will try to point out, it
is the difference in how each verb is related to the Winner (W), Loser (L), or Goal (G) that
accounts for the differences in usage for win, lose, defeat/beat, and and .
The chart below outlines the basic structure for each verb. The last part which
appears as a prepositional phrase is optional. The second noun phrase is obligatory. Even
with verbs like win where it is often deleted, the meaning is understood. That is, we can say
a) I won the game or b) I won. However, even for sentence (b) we understand that I won
(something).
Pattern Example
W win G(L) I won the tennis match with Bill.
W defeat L(G) The English majors defeated the Bio major in the third game.
L be+defeat W(G) The bio majors were defeated by the English majors in the
third game.
L lose2 G(W) Bill lost the tennis match to me.
L be+defeat G(W) Our team was defeated in the game with team C.
G be+lose L(W) Over a billion dollars was lost by Britain to Japan.
G be+win W The 2010 World Cup was won by Spain.
G be+lose W3 The oil rich region was lost to the rebels.
WG4 L
W L(G)
L W(G)
LG4 W
1
The structure of beat is basically the same as that of defeat. However, if the goal is a
test or examination beat is the preferred word. Therefore, beat and not defeat is used
in the following sentence: I beat my friend in the exam; my score was 92, but his
was 89. Defeat seems to require that there be an acknowledged contest. A test or
exam is not usually a contest between two parties with a winner or loser. Beat
appears to be more general in that it can be used in an acknowledged contest, such as
a boxing match or a war where the winner and loser are quite evident or in an exam
or other such situation where the sense of a winner or loser is less clear.
15
I beat Bill on the English quiz.
I beat you: Im 59, and youre 57.
France beat the U.S. in producing a rabies vaccine.
2
Lose can also take the pattern L lose W G as in I lost to Bill in the tennis match. In
addition, lose has a special pattern where the subject is neither the W or L but rather
a Cause: You lost us the game. Here, us is the Loser, game is the Goal, and you is
the Cause of our losing the game. The winner isnt stated. If the winner were to be
included it would be something like the following: You lost us the game to the Thai
team.
3
The prepositional phrases with to in sentences with lose can be tricky. While most
of the time, the prepositional phrase refers to the winner as in sentences A and B
below, there are also examples where the to phrase refers to the loser as in sentences
C and D or to neither winner nor loser but rather to the cause of the situation as in
sentence E.
4
L G W
A: The socialists lost the election to the right wing.
G W
B: Over $800,000 was lost to the embezzlers. (The loser is the bank/company.)
G L Cause
C: Rolando was lost to the team for six weeks due to a leg injury.
G L
D: Although the sun was lost to them, the light was sufficient, and they rode
ahead on their bikes.
G Cause
E: Guard J.D. Pollock was lost to knee injury for the rest of the season. (The
loser is the team.)
5
In this Thai pattern WG L as in the pattern LG W the constituent for the Goal
is incorporated into a Verb form: and . There are examples of English
incorporating the goal into the verb, but the verb win becomes redundant: I won the
race with Bill becomes I outran Bill.
Above all, the semantic intent of the writer must be understood through the situation
presented. The semantic roles that usually occur with verbs of winning and losing as well
as the basic patterns are intended to be a helpful guide for the writer/reader.
16
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 29.
17
Say and Tell
Id like to examine some of the rules for using say and tell. Say and tell share
semantic and structural properties. Both verbs are concerned with communication and both
are transitive verbs which permit direct and indirect object complements. An additional
difficulty for Thai students of English at the beginning or intermediate levels of proficiency is
that both verbs have as one of their translations the high frequency Thai verb . The
structure of is much closer to tell than say.
Say and tell hold a converse relationship in the following sentences:
They are converses in that basically both sentences have the following constituents:
Speaker, Verb, Information, and Addressee. There is a speaker who communicates
something to someone, the only difference being that say and tell in these sentences require
their complements (Information-direct object and Addressee-indirect object) in opposite
orders.
This similarity can be deceptive for there seems to be an underlying difference
between say and tell in that tell seems to require that information be directed toward
someone. Even when the addressee is optionally deleted in the surface structure, the sentence
with tell carries a meaning that the information was directed to some addressee.
As already noted both say and tell take two object complements. However, while tell
allows the indirect object to be moved before the direct object as well as placed after the
direct object say does not. Only in the case of a long direct object, usually in a clause form
does say allow for the indirect object to move before the direct object, and in such a case it
must retain the prepositional maker to of the indirect object.
In an attempt to summarize the structure of tell and say, the two verbs are presented
with their complements in Tables I and II, respectively.
18
Table 1 Tell and its complement structure
Note again when the language is directed specifically to someone tell is the preferred
choice of verb. There are also differences between the two verbs for the passive voice with
some restrictions on the use of passive with say.
Active Passive
Joyce told me that Joe had left. I was told that Joe had left.
Joyce told Joe to leave. Joe was told to leave.
Joyce said nothing to the committee. Nothing was said to the committee.
Joyce said to me that Joe had left. .
Joyce said for Joe to leave. .
We do get passive with said when the object of the active sentence is a clause. In this
case, the subject of the clause is raised out of the clause to be subject of the passive sentence
as can be seen in the sentences below.
19
Active Passive
Joyce said that Joe had left. Joe was said to have left.
Joyce said that the vaccine was effective. The vaccine was said to be effective.
As mentioned before, you need to be extra careful when using say. Notice the
differences between the almost identical patterns below with ask and say.
I asked Nick to go. (Nick will go.) I said for Nick to go. (Nick will go.)
I asked to go tomorrow. (I will go tomorrow.) I said to go tomorrow. (Someone
(not me) will go tomorrow.)
Discussion of say and tell while not encompassing all possible uses of these verbs is
offered as a guide for students and teachers of English as a foreign language in Thailand.
Source: Humanities (Srinakharinwirot University, Phitsanulok), Year 2, #2, Oct. 1987, p.62-
72.
20
Practice
Choose the best answer. The correct answers can be found on page 29.
1. Fred told/said to the students that the test had already begun.
2. John told/said Adele why Dan looked so unhappy.
3. She tells/says what she thinks.
4. The teacher told/said that we would take a field trip to the science museum next month.
5. The announcer told/said the audience that the guest speaker would be delayed about 40
minutes due to traffic.
6. The anthropologist told/said a story that had been passed down orally for over one
thousand years.
7. The public relations officer told/said what he thought the committee members wanted to
hear about the release of the new product.
8. I told/said you to e-mail the news to all the members.
9. It is told/said that preparing well is the best way to overcome stage fright.
10. Nothing was told/said about how long the meeting would take.
21
Introduce and Suggest
The sentence above with introduce involves two errors: one syntactic and one
semantic. First of all, syntactically introduce takes to + NP not an infinitive as the student
had given here with to read. The other problem is that there are semantic restrictions on the
inanimate NP. It must be something new or different. Therefore, read is not really anything
different or novel here. There are three basic patterns:
Suggest was far more troublesome for my Thai students. Over 78% made errors in
constructing sentences with suggest. The most common error was using someone after
suggest followed by an infinitive. The basic pattern for suggest is suggest + something
where the something is in the form of a clause, gerund, or noun.
There is an optional variation to this pattern where the person receiving the suggestion
precedes the suggestion.
22
SOMEONE SUGGEST to SOMEONE SOMETHING
I suggested to my sister that she buy a small car.
Because the suggestion is usually in the form of a clause, when passive is used It
usually takes the position of the subject as in the sentence that follows:
Semantically the complement of suggest usually has not occurred yet, for example, I
suggest that you take a trip to Chiangmai. Suggest is also peculiar in that it does not take
normal tense markings in the clause following the main verb suggest.
The key here is to focus on the main verb and the semantic and syntax requirements
of the verb.
23
Practice
Correct the following sentences. Sample sentences can be found on page 30.
24
Loyal and Honest
Finally, I want to examine the words loyal and honest, especially in terms of how
these words are used by Thais. In 2010, I used error analysis and corpus data to examine the
usage of loyal and honest and the Thai words , , and . I found that
students who rely on bilingual dictionaries will often find when translating loyal and
honest into Thai and honest and loyal when translating into English. In English,
loyal means faithful and honest means truthful. There is never any overlap between the two
meanings. In addition, because honest has a higher frequency of use in English, students are
less familiar with loyal.
Error analysis revealed that grammatical errors were more numerous than semantic
errors for both words: loyal 46.66% vs 3.39% and honest 28.57% vs 8.93%. For the most
part, students had trouble with the two following patterns:
In addition, the students did not use the correct prepositions. Words in English often
require specific prepositions, such as interested in and annoyed with. In the case of loyal and
honest, loyal takes to + person and honest takes with + person: He is loyal to his friends; he
is honest with his friends.
The semantic errors were basically due to the use of honest in contexts for which
English would require loyal, eg., My sister has a loyal dog which is always at her side. This
means her dog is faithful to her. The dog cannot be honest because this requires a conscious
choice between truthfulness or lying.
With the easy availability of free on-line corpus sites, such as the Corpus of
Contemporary American English (www.americancorpus.org) which comprises 450 million
words from over 160,000 texts, anyone wishing to see how a word is used can simply type in
a word, click, and see the word in context in hundreds or thousands of sentences. This is
language in use.
25
Practice
Fill in the blank with honest or loyal. Correct answers can be found on page 30.
1. In buying a second-hand car, you must be very careful because very often the
..buyer is dealing with an unfair seller.
2. I want a/an .. government.
3. My coworkers are always .. to me.
4. If you are .., you will not cheat on the test.
5. I want my friends to be .. with me and tell me what they really think.
6. Dogs are .. companions and will stay with their owner when they are injured.
7. The negotiator said that there would have to be a/an ..atmosphere if they were
to begin talks to solve the dispute.
8. Harold has given me 20 years of ..service, and it is not possible that he stolen
the jewels.
9. The presidents most ..voting bloc are the young voters under 40 years of age.
10. Everyone thought Franco was .. to the company, and so we were shocked to
learn that it was Franco who leaked the news to the newspapers.
26
Key
Converse Verbs
1. Blame: blame someone for a bad deed; praise someone for a good deed.
2. Loaned: Frank gave Joe 1,000 baht for him to pay back later.
3. Like: You like the season; the season (winter or summer) pleases you.
4. Frighten: Snakes cause people to be afraid; people fear snakes.
5. Bought: bought for lunch; sold to someone.
6. Get: Students get (receive) the money; the school gives the students the money.
7. Robbed: robbed the bank; stole the money from the bank.
8. Pleases: His work ethic pleases you; you like his work ethic; you are pleased by his
work ethic.
9. Got: I got (bought) the shoes at the Mall; I gave my sister the shoes.
10. Pleases: The lightening pleased everyone; everyone likes the lightening.
11. Blamed: blamed the bus driver for the bus crash; complained about the crash/bus
driver.
12. Rented: rented to; bought from.
27
Psychological Verbs
1. Interest: I am interested in world events; I enjoy world events.
2. Regrets: That he never finished college bothers Steve; it bothers Steve that he never
finished college.
3. Bore: I am bored by quiet weekends sometimes; sometimes I enjoy quiet weekends.
4. Confuses: I am confused by physics; I dont understand physics.
5. Respect: Your decision is respected; your decision worries us (different meaning).
6. Admire: Classical musicians are admired.
7. Insulted: The teacher was insulted by the students behavior.
8. Bother: The tennis players are bothered by those small flying insects at night; the
tennis players hate those small flying insects at night.
9. Prefer: Working at night is preferred by only a few people; only a few people are
content with working at night.
10. Angers and Fear: Most of the shop keepers are angered by the new sales tax; most of
the shop keepers hate the new sales tax; they fear they will sell fewer products; they
are frightened that they will sell fewer products.
28
Winning and Losing
1. Loses: loses the game, defeats his opponent.
2. Defeated: defeated his team.
3. Lost: lost the game.
4. Lost: lost the match; Brazil defeated Chile; Chile lost (the match) to Brazil.
5. Beat: You beat me with your higher grade.
6. Lost: lost the game.
7. Beat: Novak won the trophy by beating Federer in the final.
8. Win: win the election by beating/defeating your opponent.
9. Won: Germany defeated Argentina in the final, beating Argentina in over-time with a
score of 1-0.
10. Defeated: win the contest by defeating/beating all the other players.
29
Introduce and Suggest
1. I tell my children to study hard; I suggest that my children study hard.
2. Harold introduced us to his family.
3. You should tell the students to clean their rooms weekly; you should suggest to the
students that they clean their rooms weekly. (Tell is stronger here.)
4. Please introduce me to your new friend from Spain.
5. A salesman recommended/suggested that Jill use his goods.
6. I suggested a new job to my friend; I suggested that my friend try a new job.
7. My teacher suggested (that) I apply for a scholarship.
8. I suggest that you (should) travel abroad before beginning your job.
9. The students were told (passive/teacher is the one who told them) that they needed to
study harder for the next test; the teacher suggested (not very strong) that the
students needed to study harder for the next test.
10. The doctor suggested to Ken that he lose some weight.
30