In my formative years, I was taught that verbs are action words. That is a good way for my teachers of those years to introduce the verb to me. I sincerely cherish the method they adopted to achieve that. They connected what I had known from home, in terms of physical activities, to the new and abstract idea about what a verb is. Despite the popularity of the elementary school definition, linguists claim that it is insufficient. They argue that it confines the part of speech to physical activities, leaving out the other side of it, which expresses the stative quality of the verb. Although this other side of the verb is somewhat left out at the rudiment level of English studies, a good knowledge of it is a contributing factor to candidates’ excellent performance in the subject in WASSCE, NECO and UTME. It is against that backdrop that the episode of the Linguists’ Forum this weekend focuses on stative verbs.
What is a stative verb?
A stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being. Generally, stative verbs refer to mental processes, emotional state, appearance, bodily sensation, senses and possessions as in:
Mental Processes: think, imagine, know, understand and agree.
Emotional State: hate, love, like, hope and want.
Appearance: seem, look and appear.
Bodily Sensation: ache, hurt and itch.
Senses: smell, see, feel, taste and hear.
Possession: own, possess, have and belong.
These verbs are mostly used in simple tenses to demonstrate a constant mental/physical state and quality in a short time. They do not take continuous tenses/progressive forms. Therefore, it will be ungrammatical to add “ing” to them. Let us consider the following sentences.
1. The man knows us (correct).
2. The man is knowing us (wrong).
3. The manager hates gossip (correct).
4. The manager is hating gossip (wrong).
5. Tunde looks nice in the suit (correct).
6. Tunde is looking nice in the suit (wrong).
7. The pastor’s heart aches for the poor in his congregation (correct).
8. The pastor’s heart is aching for the poor in his congregation (wrong).
9. I see the moon (correct).
10. I am seeing the moon (wrong).
11. My friends have cars (correct).
12. My friends are having cars (wrong).
Meanwhile, some stative verbs can be used as action words. When this happens, such verbs are not functioning as stative verbs. They will be referred to as nonstative verbs. They perform dual functions, depending on the words that are used together with them in the sentences in which they occur. That is why such verbs are called dynamic verbs. They are used correctly in the following examples because they are not used for a state of being but to describe specific activities:
13. Ahmad is seeing Kadijah tonight (not about the sense of sight but the act of keeping company with someone for dating).
14. We are having a meeting tomorrow (not for possession but the act of partaking in something).
It should be noted that both stative and nonstative verbs can be used as gerunds, that is, nouns that are formed by adding “ing” to verbs, as in:
15. Seeing is believing.
16. Chinedu will never forget working for him.
In sentences 15 and 16, “seeing, “believing” and “working” are not verbs in the contexts they are used. They are gerunds or verbal nouns.
Takeaways
• A verb can be defined as an action word or a state of being.
• When a verb refers to a mental/physical state or quality, it is a stative verb.
• Stative verbs are not used for continuous tenses/progressive forms because they do not take “ing.”
• If you have been using stative verbs with “ing” in your daily/informal conversations and you think you are correct, you need to refrain from doing so. The use of the English language is expected to be formal in examination situations and conscious use of stative verbs is not an exception in this regard.
Lateef Iyanda Kugbayi, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Department of English Language
Zamfara State University
Talata Mafara
[email protected]/+2347032985052
