Concept in Definition ABC

concept definition

Verboids, or non-personal forms of the verb, are those words that are not conjugated. This means that they do not contain tense, person, or number morphemes; they do not adhere to any of the three known conjugations. They also do not contain mode accidents. However, they are often used to form verbal constructions that make up the compound tenses of the indicative and subjunctive moods. It is the case of the participle.

Quote (APA)

Indira Ahmed Fernandez | Jul. 2022
Bachelor of Hispanic Letters

Although they are identified in category of verbs, they are not in the strict sense of the word, since they indicate action, but without being completely inscribed in the communicative situation. They need other words to acquire full meaning in the discourse. In addition, although they share the lexical signs of the verb forms, they are characterized by the impossibility of functioning as the nucleus of the sentence.

Verboids are classified into three levels: infinitives, participles, and gerunds. They are also known as nominal forms of the verb, according to Alarcos Llorach, and Andrés Bello calls them “verbal derivatives”. For the latter, they are species of nouns that derive immediately from some verb and that imitate it in the way they are constructed with other words.

Infinitive

These function as a name, that is, as a noun, within the sentence and are characterized by the endings -ar, -er, -ir. Its functions coincide with those of the noun, so it exercises all the functions of the noun already as a subject, predicate, complement or term.

Example. Drink water is very important.

Subject: drink Water
Predicate: is very important.
Head of the predicate: it is

Although it lacks the morphematic variations of gender and number, its units exclusively adopt the traits of the masculine singular.

Example. The to eat, the to know.

The infinitive also serves to designate the verb from which it is derived. Thus fear, although not a verb, is used to name the verb fear, fear, fear, regardless of its particular forms of person, number, etc. In Latin, the verbs were enunciated with the first person, the second person and the infinitive. Thus, today, using this system, the verb mentioned would be enunciated as follows: I fear, you fear, fear.

Participle

They are derived from the verbal root by means of a derivative that gives the result the proper function of the adjective in the sentence. The derivative is variable according to that of the verbal root: the most frequent are -ado, -ido (sung, eaten); but there are other irregular expressions like -to, -so, -cho (broken, written, said).

By representing the adjective function, it accepts morphemes related to gender and number, and also admits the gradation that these may have.

In a group, it functions as an adjacent to a noun:

Example.
- Sheets(noun) From the tree falls(participle).

Together with verbs, it works like attribute:
Example. The students is it so(verb)tired(participle).

Gerund

These function as adverbs and have the endings -ando, -iendo (walking, from walking; eating, eating), which gives an idea of ​​continuity in the action that is performed. Generally, its meaning is related to the simultaneous realization of the fact that is described while speaking.

Its meaning is like that of the infinitive, insofar as it represents the action of the verb in abstract. But his job it is diverse in that it modifies the verb in the same way that adverbs and complements do, meaning a mode, a condition, a cause or a circumstance.

This verboid gives to a proposition the form and office of adverb, participating in the nature of the verb without really being it.

Example. missing(gerund) all the groceries, they had to surrender(verbal phrase) a discretion

In this example the subject is they (omitted) and all the following words constitute the attribute of the true proposition. The gerund modifies the verbal phrase, since it denotes a circumstance, a cause. In this way the situation in which they had to surrender (they, the soldiers) is caused by the lack of food.

Verboids are used in building not only in compound tenses, as already mentioned, but in verb phrases: where a conjugated verb, a relative object (introduced by the pronoun “that”) and generally a infinitive.

examples.
- We had to go.
- We must do.
- Could you tell me.

They can also be accompanied by reflexive pronouns as suffixes: loveI know, returntea, yieldI know.