VERB 



G05C 



VERB 



who occupied the city in 1914, at the time when 

 Huerta's insult to the American flag; mad* 1 war 

 with Mexico a possibility. Under the direction 

 of Robert J. Kerr, who was appointed civil gov- 

 ernor by Admiral Fletcher, the prison of San 

 Juan de Ulloa and the town itself were given a 

 thorough and much-needed cleaning. 



The most notable institutions of the city 

 are the artillery school, a national school for 

 sailors, the public library and one of the bi->i 

 hospitals in Mexico. The industrial establish- 

 ments include fruit-preserving plants, cigar, 

 furniture, broom, toy and candy factories. 

 Fishing is an important occupation, and there 

 is a prosperous export trade in ores, coffee, to- 

 bacco, sugar, hides, rubber and dyewoods. Vera 

 Cruz was founded in the sixteenth century by 

 Cortez, and has had a somewhat troubled his- 

 tory. It has been twice occupied by American 

 troops in 1847 and in 1914 (see MEXICO, sub- 

 title Government and History). Population in 

 1910, 40,000. 



VERB, that part of speech which is used to 

 assert something of a person or thing. In a 

 sentence the verb is the predicate, and that of 

 which it asserts something is the subject. Some 

 verbs express action, and others express being 

 or state of being, as in the following: "The 

 storm wrecked the house;" "The house is a 

 wreck;" "The king lives." Action verbs give 

 life and movement to language. A more vivid 

 effect is obtained, for instance, by use of the 

 expression, "The mountains rise 10,000 feet 

 above the plain," than by the statement "The 

 mountains are 10,000 feet high." There can be 

 no complete expression of a thought without 

 a. verb. In the two expressions, The brave sol- 

 dier and The soldier is brave, there is one idea 

 brought out the bravery of the soldier; but in 

 the first case the idea is merely suggested, in 

 the second the idea is asserted by means of the 

 verb. The latter expression is a complete sen- 

 tence. 



Classes of Verbs. A comparison of the sen- 

 tences, The storm wrecked the house and The 

 house is a wreck, shows that the first differs 

 from the second in the important particular 

 that it contains an object (house), which is 

 used to complete the meaning of the verb 

 (wrecked). Verbs which take or may take ob- 

 jects are said to be transitive; verbs which re- 

 quire no objects, that is, which exert no action 

 on objects, are called intransitive. There are 

 many verbs, however, which are used both 

 transitively and intransitively, according to the 

 meaning they convey. A type verb of this kind 



is the verb sing, as shown in the following: 

 She sings this song beautifully; She sings beau- 

 tifully. Forms of the verb to be are always 

 intransitive, and this is true of most verbs 

 which do not express action. 



Another classification, dividing verbs accord- 

 ing to their use. distinguishes between principal 

 and auxiliary verbs. A principal verb is one 

 that is used by itself to express action or state, 

 or which, if used in combination with some 

 other verb, has the leading place in the ex- 

 pression of the thought; auxiliary verbs are 

 helping verbs, and they do not express com- 

 plete ideas by themselves. They are be, can, 

 do, have, must, shall and will. In the expres- 

 sion will run, will is the auxiliary, and run is 

 the principal verb. It should be noted that be, 

 do and have are sometimes used as principal 

 verbs. In the expression 7 have a book, have 

 is a principal verb, but in 7 have taken my 

 books home, have is used with taken simply to 

 express a certain tense form, and is a pure 

 auxiliary. 



Verbs are further classified as to their change 

 in form. According to some authorities those 

 verbs which form the past tense and past parti- 

 ciple by adding d or ed to the present tense are 

 regular; they call those verbs irregular which 

 make these changes in other ways. Love (past 

 tense loved) by this classification is a regular 

 verb, and run (past tense ran) is an irregular 

 verb. Other authorities prefer to call those 

 verbs that form the past tense by a change of 

 vowel in the root form strong verbs, and those 

 that add an ending to the present tense weak 

 verbs. In this classification run is a strong verb 

 and love is a weak verb. The weak verb may 

 change the root vowel and also take an ending, 

 as lay (laid) and catch (caught). Other au- 

 thorities use the terms old and new and ancient 

 and modern to distinguish verbs in respect to 

 changes of form, but discussions of this sort, 

 though of interest to philologists, are not of 

 great practical value to the student of gram- 

 mar. 



Properties of Verbs. Verbs have five proper- 

 ties voice, mode, tense, person and number. 

 By this is meant that verbs have certain forms 

 by which they express certain qualities. 



Voice is a quality that belongs only to verbs 

 used transitively. It denotes whether the sub- 

 ject is acted upon by the verb, or whether the 

 subject is the actor. When the verb expresses 

 action on the part of the subject, it is in the 

 active voice, as The teacher read a story ; when 

 the subject is represented as acted upon the 



