WHEN we were children and just beginning to learn English grammar, many of us were taken aback by the strange failure of some verbs to work in certain sentence constructions. For instance, perhaps ...

To recall, intransitive verbs are handicapped by their inability to take a direct object. Another way of saying this is that ...

If an action concerns only one person or thing, you mention only the person or thing that carries out the action (the subject) and the action itself (the verb). Verbs which describe such actions are ...

The distinction between “lay” and “lie” continues to fade. Almost without exception, people say, “I laid on the couch.” They never seem to say, “I lay on the couch.” Plus, people usually throw in the ...

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Thomas Wier, assistant professor of linguistics at the Free University of Tbilisi: Short Answer: Yes, but not in English. What do we mean by ...

"Turn off the TV" is an example of a phrasal verb, which is a verb that has a base verb and one or two particles. Credit: MikeSleigh/Getty Images A ‘phrasal verb’ is a verb that has a base verb and ...

Listen to Prof Roly Sussex talk about how some verbs are actually transitive, and why. ABC Education brings you high-quality educational content to use at home and in the classroom. All our resources ...