• Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

  Every verb is classed as being either transitive or intransitive.
  Transitive verbs describe an action that is happening to someone or something. This person or thing is known as the direct object of the verb. For example:
• “He’s reading a book.” (The action of reading is happening to the book.)
• “The people watched the game from the bleachers.” (The action of watched is happening to the game.)
• “I was eating a delicious steak for dinner last night.” (The action of eating is happening to
  a delicious steak.)
  Transitive verbs can also take indirect objects, which are the people or things receiving the direct object. For instance:
• “I sent my brother a letter.” (My brother receives the letter through the action of sent.)
  Conversely, intransitive verbs do not have objects—their action is not happening to anyone or anything. For example:
• “I can’t believe our dog ran away.” (There is no object receiving the action of ran away.)
• “There was a lot of dust in the air, which made me sneeze.” (There is no object receiving the action of sneeze.)
• “Don’t be too loud while the baby sleeps.” (There is no object receiving the action of
  sleeps.)

  Regular and Irregular Verbs

  Just as every verb is either transitive or intransitive, each one is considered to be either

  regular or irregular

  Most verbs are regular verbs, which means that “-d” or “-ed” can be added to their base form (the infinitive of the verb without to) to conjugate both the past simple tense and past participle forms. For example:
  
  

  Base Form	Past Simple Tense	Past Participle
  “I play violin.”	“I played violin.”	“I had played violin.”
  “I bake cakes.”	“I baked cakes.”	“I had baked cakes.”
  “I listen to my teacher.”	“I listened to my teacher.”	“I had listened to my teacher.”
  “I gather firewood.”	“I gathered firewood.”	“I had gathered firewood.”
  “I climb trees.”	“I climbed trees.”	“I had climbed trees.”

  Irregular verbs, on the other hand, have past tense and past participle forms that do not (or do not seem to) adhere to a distinct or predictable pattern, and they are usually completely different from one another.

  Unfortunately, this means that there is generally no way of determining how to conjugate irregular verbs—we just have to learn each one individually. There are many irregular verbs, but here are a few common ones:
  
  

  Base Form	Past Simple Tense	Past Participle
  “I see the horizon.”	“I saw the horizon.”	“I had seen the horizon.”
  “I grow bigger every day.”	“I grew bigger every day.”	“I had grown bigger every day.”
  “I give to charity.”	“I gave to charity.”	“I had given to charity.”
  “I sing on Tuesday.”	“I sang on Tuesday.”	“I had sung on Tuesday.”
  “I swim often.”	“I swam often.”	“I had swum often.”
  “I drive to work.”	“I drove to work.”	“I had driven to work.”

  
  
  Uniquely, the verb be is considered highly irregular, having three different present tense forms (is, am, are) and two past tense forms (was, were), in addition to its base form and its past and present participles (been, being).

• Forms and categories

  All verbs are either finite or non-finite and transitive or intransitive in a given sentence,
  depending on their form and function. There are many different forms and categories of verbs that we’ll be looking at in this chapter, and we’ll give a brief summary of the different kinds of verbs below. You can continue on to their individual sections to learn more.