系动词

hello grammarians today we're talking about verbs and bears so we had previously established at least one thing about the verb and that was that it can show actions but today I'd like to introduce the idea that the verb can link ideas to one another and in fact we have this whole class of verbs that we call linking verbs or if you want to call it something fancier we call that state of being verbs these linking verbs include all forms of the verb to be which I have handily written out for you so I am he is we are be nice they were being they have been he was we were now we use a linking verb when we want to connect one idea to another so what I'm going to do is I'm going to divide the screen in half between the action side and the state of being side just to show you what I mean so we use action verbs to show what something does whereas we use state of being verbs to show what something is so let's bring it back to this bear let's think of an action for this bear to do what is a bear like thing to do the bear eats a fish that's an action that's something the bear is doing the bear is hungry however is not something that the bear is doing it's something that the bear is so what is is doing here is connecting the word hungry to the word bear it's linking it some verbs can be used both ways they can be used both as actions and as linking verbs and I'll show you an example of that you could say the bear looked at me which is to say the bear is doing a thing looking at something namely me but we could also say using the same verb the bear looks lonely now in this case this is describing how the bear looks what the bear looks like this looking is not something the bear is doing it is how the bear appears to a viewer so looked is connecting lonely to bear it is linking lonely to bear it as a linking verb by the same token we could say for an action the bear smells a person what is it smelling a person but we could also say the bear smells like cinnamon which I grant you is pretty unlikely don't go smelling bears but what what smells is doing here is connecting the idea of cinnamon to the bear the bear isn't smelling cinnamon the bear smells like cinnamon and that's the difference between a linking verb and an action verb as a linking verb shows what something is an action verb shows what something does so the bear is hungry the bear looked and lonely the bear smells like cinnamon these all reflect something about what the bear is how it's being you can learn anything Dave it out