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General characteristics of the verb

According to content, verbs can be described as words denoting actions (e.g. to walk, to speak, to play), process (e.g. to sleep, to wait, to live), state (e.g. to be, to like, to know), relation (e.g. to consist, to resemble, to lack) and the like.According to form, verbs can be described as words that have certain grammatical features that they have the categories of tense, aspect, voice and etc.

According to function, verbs can be defined as words making up the predicate of the sentence.
Verbs can be classified under different heads.
1. According to their meaning verbs can be divided into two groups — terminative and durative verbs.
Terminative verbs imply a limit beyond which the action cannot continue. To put it differently, they have a final aim in view, e.g. to open, to close

Durative verbs do not imply any such limit, and the

action can go on indefinitely, e.g. to carry, to live, to speak, to know, to sit, to play.

According to their meaning and function in the sentence English verbs are classified into notional and structural ones.

Notional verbs always have a lexical meaning of their own and can have an independent syntactic function in the sentence. (e.g. During the war he lived in London.)
When a verb is used as a structural word, it may either preserve or lose its lexical meaning.. Here belong modal verbs and link-verbs.

A modal verb is always accompanied by an infinitive — together they form a modal predicate. (e.g. The party is at eight. You must dress suitably for it)
A link-verb is followed by a predicative; together they form a nominal predicate. (e.g. It became very hot by noon.)

English verbs are characterized by a great variety of forms which can be divided into two main groups according to the function they perform in the sentence: the finite forms and the non-finite forms.

style="text-align: justify;">The finite forms have the function of the predicate in the sentence and may also be called the predicative forms.
The non- finitive or non-predicative forms can have various other functions; they are used as the predicate of the sentence only by way of exception. The finitive forms of the verb have the following grammatical categories:
1. Person and Number. We find three persons (the first, the second and the third) and the two numbers (the singular ant the plural) in finitive verbs. 2. Tense, Aspect and Phase. 3. Voice. 4. Mood.

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