Verbs are among the most important words because they move the meanings of sentences along. Verbs show actions of body or mind (skip, speculate), occurrences (become, happen), or states of being (be, seem). They can also change form to show time, person, number, voice, and mood.
| TIME | we work, we worked |
| PERSON | I work, she works |
| NUMBER | one person works, two people work |
| VOICE | she asks, she is asked |
| MOOD | we see, if we saw |
Helping verbs (also called auxiliary verbs) combine with other verbs (often called main verbs) to create verb phrases. Helping verbs include the various forms of be, do, and have (which can also function as main verbs) and the words can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would.
You do need some sleep tonight!
I could have danced all night.
She would prefer to learn Italian rather than Spanish.
See Chapters 23 and 24 for a complete discussion of verbs.