Sentences & Verbs (1)

3 questions for you.

Is English your mother tongue?

Do your parents talk to you in English all the time?  

Do you think English sentences are something easy to master? 

If your answers to the questions are negative, then this post is important to you.  

How?

It will probably change the ways you think about English sentences.  

Yet, don’t just sit where you are.  This post asks you to finish two tasks that are dangerous.  

You have to be a superhero or super heroine so you must get changed.

So are you ready now?







But wait a minute, before you transform yourself, there a sentence for you:

Our company planned to develop a new product.

I guess it’s easy to understand the meaning of the sentence, but the questions are:

●     What is ‘to expand’? Is it the same as ‘expand’?

to develop VS develop

●     Is there anything wrong with:

Our company planned developed a new product.

It is absolutely wrong to put 'planned developed' together in a sentence.  

What’s Wrong with Two Verbs Coming Together?

But why is it wrong?  

Why can’t we put two verbs together (in a sentence)?  

Before you know why, there are 2 problems for you to solve:

1. A Crash of Two Cars (Verbs)

2. A House with Two Wives (Verbs)

Problem 1: A Crash of Two Cars (Verbs)

Now you are a superhero or super heroine walking on a street.  

Do you know the name of the street?

The Street of Sentence

You may imagine that a sentence is like a one-way street and verbs are like cars.   What happens if two cars from opposite directions running into each other at full speed? 

So to prevent any car accidents (crash) from happening, you, the hero or heroine, have to do something about it. What is it?  You are going to get the answers after you have read the details of the second ‘accident’, a tougher one:



 Problem 2: A House with Two Wives (Verbs)

This time, there are two ladies sitting in one house.  They chat and chat and chat and chat.  They find out that they have lots of things in common, like the same models of mobile phones and taste for clothes.   

Yet, what they don’t want to know but finally find out is: 

                       they share the same husband.

So what is the point?  My point is:

An English sentence is like a house.  

It can’t have two wives (two verbs) in it.

So, what can you do to stop the fight? You will do something about it, right?

You have to think different, not about women, but about English.  

You have to group verbs into two types:

Big Verbs

&

Small Verbs 

What are Big Verbs & Small Verbs?

Although men think that sizes matter, in the world of English it is different.

Big Verbs and Small Verbs have nothing to do with their sizes. 

Big Verbs are only verbs that come first in a sentence, pretty much like a first-born child in a family.   In other words, a sentence is like a family, in which a first born child is privileged (given special rights). 

That is, a verb can be big or small, depending on its position in a sentence.   

Any verb that comes first in a sentence is a big one; any verb that comes next is a small one.

(If you want some grammar terms, Big Verbs are finite verbs and Small Verbs are non-finite.)

So in the sentence, ‘Our company planned to develop a new product’

‘planned’ is a Big Verb, and

‘to expand’ is a Small Verb.

	Big Verb	Small Verb
Our company	planned	to develop	a new product.

So to get the point of Big Verbs and Small Verbs, you may visualize sentences. 

 

Whenever you read a sentence, try to look for the first verb (Big Verb) and then the second verb (Small Verb).  

For example, the following sentence will be something different.

We plan to reduce our budget on travel allowances.  

↓

                                               

↓

We plan to reduce our budget on travel allowances.  

                                                                       

↓

                                               

↓

↓

                                   

plan           to reduce

Well, are we done?  Not so soon.  More about Big and Small Verbs are to come.      

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorenkerns/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/diloz/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89619746@N02/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnon/