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What Can Thanksgiving Teach You
About English Grammar? |
Every year around the Thanksgiving holiday, a strange
ceremony happens in Washington, DC. The president stands
outside the White House, gives a brief speech and then
officially pardons a turkey.
A pardon is a declaration that someone will not be
punished.
In this ceremony, President Barack Obama promises not to
cook and eat a certain turkey, even though turkeys are
the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
You might be asking yourself, "What is the connection
between turkeys, Thanksgiving and grammar?"
In today's report, we explore what turkeys can teach you
about English verbs.
In particular, we will show you how Thanksgiving can
teach you to use stative verbs. We will also show you
the difference between stative and progressive verbs.
What is a stative verb?
The term stative verb refers to a verb that has a
stative meaning. In other words, these verbs show or
describe conditions or situations that do not do
anything but exist.
Verbs that commonly have a stative meaning include:
verbs that show emotional states, such as love and
dislike;
verbs that describe sense perceptions, such as smell or
taste;
verbs that show existence, such as seem or look.
In the present tense, a verb with a stative meaning is
generally used in its simple form. "I love turkey," or
"Americans like turkey" are two examples.
Verbs that have stative meanings are generally not used
in the progressive tense. So, you will probably not hear
a native speaker say, "I am loving turkey," or
"Americans are liking turkey."
Thanksgiving and stative verbs
Do not fear: we can use our Thanksgiving example to make
the point clearer.
Imagine you are at an American store. You hear a
conversation between a customer and a store employee.
The customer wants to buy a turkey that weighs 10
pounds, or 4.5 kilograms.
Unlike the turkey from the pardoning ceremony, this
turkey will have a sad fate: the dinner table.
The conversation you hear might go like this:
Customer: How much does that turkey weigh?
Butcher: It weighs 10 pounds.
Customer: How much does it cost?
Butcher: It costs 20 dollars.
In the dialogue, you can hear two examples of stative
verbs: weigh and cost.
The butcher said, "The turkey weighs 10 pounds,” and
"The turkey costs 20 dollars." In both cases, the verbs
have a stative meaning: The butcher is describing a
condition or situation that simply exists – the weight
and cost of the turkey.
Now imagine you are eating Thanksgiving dinner with an
American family. You might hear any one of the following
sentences:
"I love turkey!"
"I dislike turkey."
"The turkey smells wonderful!"
"The food tastes great!"
"The turkey seems undercooked."
"The turkey looks awful."
All these sentences include stative verbs. You might
notice that the verbs are also in the simple present
form.
Why not use a progressive verb?
So, why would an English speaker not say, "The turkey is
seeming undercooked," or, "I am disliking turkey?"
Susan Conrad and Douglas Biber are two English grammar
experts. They say that, in general, English speakers use
the progressive tense only when the subject of the verb
actively controls the state or action.
In addition, English speakers generally use the
progressive only when the verb describes an action or
state that happens over an extended period of time.
So, you would not hear an English speaker say, "The
turkey is seeming undercooked" because the subject of
the verb, the turkey, does not control its state – being
undercooked.
For the same reason, you would not hear an English
speaker say, "I am disliking turkey," because the verb's
subject, I, probably does not have control over the
action of disliking turkey.
Now, some verbs can have stative and progressive
meanings.
Consider these examples:
"The food tastes good."
"President Obama is tasting the food."
In the first sentence, the food does not control whether
it is good or bad. As a result, the verb taste has a
stative meaning because it simply describes the
condition of the food.
In the second sentence, "President Obama is tasting the
food," the subject of the verb, President Obama, has
control over his action.
In addition, the action takes place over an extended
period of time: Obama must think about tasting food,
then raise the food to his mouth, then consider its
quality. So, you could say that the verb taste in this
example has a progressive meaning.
What can you do?
The next time you are reading or listening to the news,
pay special attention to the verbs.
Notice when the progressive form is used, and when the
simple form is used. Then ask yourself why. Does the
verb's subject control the action? Does the action occur
over an extended period of time? Or does the verb simply
describe a condition that exists?
If you are still confused about whether you should use a
simple or progressive verb in your own conversations,
Conrad and Biber have one tip that might help you.
They say that in conversations, English speakers use
simple verbs around 120 times in every 1,000 words.
Progressive verbs are much less common: they appear
fewer than 20 times in every 1,000 words.*
I'm Alice Bryant.
And I'm John Russell.
John Russell wrote this story for Learning English.
Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.
* See Conrad, Susan and Biber, Douglas. Real Grammar: A
Corpus-Based Approach to English. Pearson-Longman. 2009.
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