Verb phrases

In English, the verb phrase is the locus of a wealth of information about the events, states, processes, etc. that a clause or sentence denotes. A verb phrase referring to an event, for example, may contain information about such crucial elements of meaning as whether we know the event to have happened, when the event took place, whether or not the event was completed, and other similar aspects of meaning. We discuss the verb phrase in terms of a traditional distinction between the categories of modality, tense, aspect, and voice. This section on verb phrases contains the following subsections: