The Russian verb as part of speech

Any action, process, attitude or state of an animate or inanimate object in Russian is expressed by a verb. In turn, this part of the speech is presented in various ways. This article describes in detail which questions the verb answers, indicates their characteristics and examples.

What is a verb in Russian?

In Russian, a verb is an independent part of speech, denoting a process, attitude, action, or state of a person, object, or phenomenon . The grammatical meaning of the verb is expressed: by the categories of type, recurrence, transitivity, mood, voice, number, person, gender and time. The verb as part of speech is represented by several kinds of forms:

Conjugate forms:

• Infinitive;
• Participle;
• Gerund

Word as part of speech: verb

The definition of the verb, given in school textbooks, sounds like this: it is a part of speech that answers questions that denote action , and it can be expressed in a state (hurt), a property (stutter), a sign (obscure ) and in an attitude (being jealous). The initial, which answers the question “what to do”, is called the infinitive, or indefinite form, which can be any of its members in a sentence.

For example : to understand (the subject) means to feel; be (predicated) rain; friends asked him to sing (in addition); she went out for a walk (circumstance).

Children begin to study the topic of the section describing how to analyze verbs as parts of speech as early as grade 4, and in subsequent years they return to it repeatedly. However, before proceeding directly to the analysis of the verb, it is convenient to study its characteristics

What questions does the verb answer?

The verb answers the questions “What to do?” (imperfect), “What to do?” (the perfect shape). In the composition of sentences, verbs most often act as predicates, however, in the Russian language constructions are used in which the verb forms are used as a subject, definition, circumstance or addition.

Examples of verbs in a sentence:

• Утром посмотрели интересный фильм.

In the morning we saw an interesting movie.

• В центре города стоит памятник великому поэту, о котором нам рассказал экскурсовод.

In the center of the city there is a monument to the great poet, of whom the guide told us.

• Учитель спросит этот текст на следующем уроке

The teacher will ask this text in the next lesson.

Characteristics :

The grammatical categories of voice, type, reflexivity, and transitivity are inherent in all verbs and verb forms, while other categories depend on the speech situation in which the verb is used:

• The inclination is inherent exclusively to conjugated verbs;
• The number is not characteristic of the infinitive and gerunds;
• Gender: inherent to the forms of the subjunctive mood, verbs in the past tense and participles;
• Time is characteristic of the forms of the indicative mood;
• The face is inherent in verbs indicative of the present and future tense, as well as imperative forms.

Verb tenses

How to indicate a change in a verb by tenses? In Russian, for these purposes, there is a grammatical feature such as the tense of the verb. The article describes the ways of determining the tense of the verb , the peculiarities of changing the verb for tenses, as well as the varieties of this grammatical characteristic.

What is a tense?

The verb tense is a grammatical characteristic of the verb , which denotes the change of verbs in tenses. The category of time is represented by a system of opposite verb forms of the past гулять, смеяться (to walk, laugh), future писать, читать (write, read) and present верь, стой (believe, stand) and serves to determine the moment in which the action or process called by the verb takes place. The category of time is inherent only to the verb forms of the indicative mood.

When can a verb be used?

There are three tenses of the verb in Russian :

• The past tense of the verb indicates that the action called by the verb took place or happened before the moment of speaking вчера ты вернулся из отпуска, работал над проектом весь год (yesterday you returned from vacation, worked on a project all year long).
• The present tense of the verb shows that the action called by the verb occurs at the moment of speaking сейчас я делаю домашнее задание, теперь они идут в кино (now I’m doing my homework, now they’re going to the movies). Also, the present tense forms can indicate typical or constant actions that are not directly related to the moment of speech она всегда обедает в кафе, газета выходит по четвергам (she always dines in a cafe, the newspaper is published on Thursdays).
• The future tense of the verb indicates that the action called by the verb will occur or will occur after the moment of the speech, in the future завтра буду работать весь день, через неделю они пойдут в муезей. (Tomorrow I will work all day, in a week they will visit the museum.)

The type of verb depends directly on what tenses the verb has: imperfective verbs have the forms of the three tenses , while perfective verbs only have past and future tense forms.

How to determine the tense of a verb?

The tense forms of verbs are formed using a series of suffixes that form words and changes in numbers, people in the present and future tense, in numbers and gender in the past tense.

Verb as part of speech

Any action, process, attitude or state of an animate or inanimate object in Russian is expressed by a verb. In turn, this part of the speech is presented in various ways.

The grammatical meaning of the verb is expressed : by the categories of type, conjugation, recurrence, transitivity, state of mind, voice, number, person, gender and time. The verb as part of speech is represented by several kinds of forms:

• Conjugate forms (read, go);
• Infinitive (search);
• Communions (written, bright);
• Gerunds (drawing).