Definition of Impersonal Verbs

As its name indicates, impersonal verbs are those that do not have a person, that is, they do not incorporate a personal pronoun and therefore do not have a subject. The impersonal verbs, also called defectives, are the so-called meteorological verbs (for example, the verb forms such as it is raining or snowing), the verb to have with its third form person of singular (there will be, there was or there is) and also when the impersonal se is used (it is said or spoken).

Illustrative examples of sentences with impersonal verbs

If I affirm "in the jungle It rains a lot "we can see that we have information about the place where the action occurs (the tropical forest) and about the amount of rain (a lot), but no subject appears, since no one performs the action. In this case, we would be talking about a sentence with the impersonal verb to rain.

By saying "there are many shirts in the closet", it can be seen that there is a complement direct (many T-shirts), but there is no subject either, as we are using the verb haber, which is impersonal. In this sense, it must be remembered that it would not be correct to say that "there were many shirts in the closet", since that there is must always be in the singular, regardless of whether the direct object is in the singular or plural.

In the sentence "it dawns very early", we find an impersonal sentence because the verb dawn refers to a phenomenon of nature and, consequently, there is no subject that accompany.

Impersonal communication versus personal communication

When we communicate we can speak in an impersonal way. Thus, if I say "it did not make sense" or "that makes things look negatively" we are communicating impersonally and in this way the speaker does not get emotionally involved message. If we want to transmit our own connection with our ideas, we will be faced with a circumstance of communication personal. In this sense, it is very different to say "I consider you to be wrong" or to say "you are considered to be wrong".

The classification of sentences according to the type of subject

Depending on the type of subject, there are the aforementioned impersonal sentences and, on the other hand, personal sentences. A personal sentence is understood to be one that has a subject, which can be an explicit subject in the sentence (I'm hungry or Juan drinks milk) or a subject implicit (also called elliptical subject) as would be the case of the following sentences: I'll bring it to you later or let's go to movie theater (in the first sentence the implicit subject is me and in the second it is us).

It should be noted that in some cases we know the subject of the sentence by its context, as for example in the compound sentence "She'll pick up your suitcase tomorrow, it was red, right?" the verb form was refers to the suitcase, which acts as a subject implicit.

In some sentences the subject is not a noun or a pronoun, but a collective subject is used (for example, in the sentence "a crowd went to the party", a crowd has the function of subject).

Photos: iStock - LaraBelova / Tempura