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What are all the words that make up a complete list of linking verbs in English? My English teacher from what I can remember listed them as follows, am I missing any?

  • is • am • are • was • were • be • been • being
  • have • has • had
  • do • does • did
  • may • might
  • must
  • can • could
  • will • would
  • shall • should
  • seem • become • appear • look • smell • taste • sound • feel

(Thank You Mr. Weber of Era, Texas for being the best English teacher in the world.)

Mari-Lou A
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user50948
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    Perhaps it would be good if you would tell us exactly what you think a "linking verb" is, and how one can tell them from other verbs, because this list is all jumbled up. It contains some forms of some auxiliary verbs, and some forms of some sense verbs, and the rest are a variety of other kinds of verb. They don't behave at all the same way. – John Lawler Sep 01 '13 at 14:40
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    @JohnLawler It would also help if he asked just for citation forms instead of for inflections when those apply. – tchrist Sep 01 '13 at 14:54
  • http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/grammar-lesson-linking-verbs.php - If you don't distinguish between auxiliary verbs ( for tenses), modal verbs + infinitive (for modalities) and linking verbs (with subject complement) you will have difficulties in understanding grammar. Your list is a muddle. – rogermue Aug 29 '15 at 16:43

3 Answers3

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In your list, only the various forms of be (the first eight) and become, seem, appear, look, smell, taste, sound and feel are copular verbs. Others include remain, keep, stay, get, go, come, grow, prove, turn, turn out, end up and wind up.

Barrie England
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  • What do you mean by "copular" verbs, Barrie? Those are all different constructions; is this the list of verbs with To be-Deletion? – John Lawler Sep 01 '13 at 14:58
  • They are, in the words of the Longman Grammar, verbs that ‘report a state of existence or a logical relationship that exists between entities.’ They are ‘used to associate an attribute with the subject of the clause. The attribute is usually expressed by the subject predicative following the verb.’

    I thought that’s what the OP meant by ‘linking verbs’, but perhaps the British nomenclature is different from the American.

     – Barrie England Sep 01 '13 at 15:10
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    That's not a grammatical description, however; just about every predicate in our language "reports a state of existence or a logical relationship that exists between entities". It's certainly not a definition that can be used to construct tests to see whether a particular verb qualifies. Between this and your question about ergative in another item, I think I'm going to have to explain what I mean by verb categories; there are a lot of them, and "copula" or "linking" is not one. Kind of unsure how to handle it in this artificial Q:A format; maybe I'll ask a question. – John Lawler Sep 01 '13 at 15:21
  • Or take it up with Douglas Biber, the lead author of the Longman Grammar! – Barrie England Sep 01 '13 at 15:28
  • I thought linking verbs were the ones which you could follow with an adjective that describes the subject. For example "ice cream tastes good", "John seems strange" and "that is correct". If you try this with a non-linking verb, as in "he speaks correct", you will be corrected by grammarians. (Even though it would be a useful semantic distinction: the grammatical form "he speaks correctly" can either mean that he uses proper grammar or that he tells the truth.) – Peter Shor Sep 01 '13 at 15:54
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    I was about to post an answer quoting from the Cobuild treatment, which deals with link-verbs as those whose main role is grammatical, rather than semantic, filling a messy void between say 'Bob' and 'warm' / 'a man' in the kiddiespeak 'Bob warm' or 'Bob a man'. Moving on, once you get to similar constructions with say 'become' ('Bob became warm'), 'pass' ('she passed unnoticed'), 'blush' ('the rose blushed pink') 'escape' ('she escaped unscathed') the 'link-like' verb, as Cobuild says, now has semantic weight. However, I'd say 'blushed pink' is far more coherent than 'passed unnoticed'. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 16:27
  • That is, 'unnoticed' in 'she passed unnoticed' hardly seems to be a complement (in the 'necessary' sense) whereas 'warm' (or a valid alternative) is required in 'Bob became ___'. Cobuild doesn't seem to pick up on this fundamental (in my opinion) difference (though it has satisfyingly populated lists of link- and 'link-like' verbs). – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 16:34
  • @John: Please do (ask and answer a "contrived" question that will illuminate the point at issue here). In your first comment to the question you say OP's list consists of auxiliary verbs, sense verbs, and *some other verbs. But all I see is auxiliary verbs plus various others that more or less mean is, seems, becomes* (i.e. - X verb Y approximately equates X and Y in some sense). – FumbleFingers Sep 01 '13 at 17:38
  • @John Lawler I've just come back here on a search for duplicates. Have you explained what you mean by verb categories in a Q + A string? (I could check, but then a nudge, if not unnecessary, would be more pointed.) – Edwin Ashworth Apr 17 '15 at 15:08
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Barry quotes Longman:

[Link verbs] are, in the words of the Longman Grammar, verbs that ‘report a state of existence or a logical relationship that exists between entities.’ He adds: They are ‘used to associate an attribute with the subject of the clause. The attribute is usually expressed by the subject predicative following the verb.’

To which John Lawler replies:

That's not a grammatical description, however; just about every predicate in our language "reports a state of existence or a logical relationship that exists between entities". It's certainly not a definition that can be used to construct tests to see whether a particular verb qualifies.

Cobuild ( https://arts-ccr-002.bham.ac.uk/ccr/patgram/ch01.html ) (Section 6) simply classifies constructions in this area from the surface structure:

6 V adj

The verb is followed by an adjective group. This pattern has one structure:

Verb with Complement [there is a preceding subject not mentioned here by Cobuild]

I was hungry.

Though I must point out that

  1. happy , say, in she looked happy is obviously a complement (in the sense of being grammatically obligatory) whereas young in my father died young isn't, and

  2. happy , say, in she was happy is obviously modifying (specifying an attribute of) the subject whereas unnoticed in she passed unnoticed looks more to be modifying the manner of her passing (ie has a suspiciously adverbial flavour),

this is a start for analysing this structure / these structures. And Cobuild give a comprehensive semantic breakdown of which verbs appear in such structures.

Edwin Ashworth
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As I use the term, English only has one copula: the verb "to be". The object of a copula takes nominative case, not accusative, so "It is I" not "*It is me." (Although some people do accept this usage for some reason.) Also, in formal semantics, the copula disappears. So "John is a man" turns into something like "exists(x) {John(x) and man(x)"}

None of the other verbs on the list meets either of those tests. For example, we have to say "John smells him"; no one accepts "*John smells he." Semantically, "John smells a man" becomes "exists(x,y) {man(x) and John(y) and smells(y,x)}

I've heard of "psuedo-copulas," but none of my graduate-level linguistics classes had any use for the distinction. I suspect the modern notion of theta roles eliminated the need for a special category of pseudo-copulas. That is, we can specify that "to smell" is a transitive verb that can take either a noun phrase or an adjective phrase as a direct object.

Carnie has a good explanation of theta roles. Heim describes the copula in semantics.

Greg Hullender
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    The "some reason" is that English pronouns don't really have case in the same way, e.g., Latin does. As such, the traditional nominative form is used only when the pronoun is the sole subject of the verb and the verb has the same number and person as the pronoun. Otherwise, the traditional objective form is used. This means that the objective form is unmarked and the nominative form is marked, which is the reverse of how it is in Latin and German. – siride Sep 01 '13 at 16:01
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    In regard to linking verbs, note that verbs like "smell" can be regular transitive verbs, or they can take a predicate adjective: "this smells good", which makes them similar to, but not the same as true copulas. – siride Sep 01 '13 at 16:02
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    Another "some reason" is that the 'rule' that one must use the 'nominative' for complements is of fairly recent imposition, and many people are adopting a partial reversion to the former one. To quote Pope Pullum, "If someone knocks at your door, and you say "Who's there?" and what you hear in response is "It is I," don't let them in. It's no one you want to know." ( http://news.ucsc.edu/2002/04/107.html ) And to quote 99.99...% of English speakers, "It's us." – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 16:40
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    As regards 'link verbs' or 'linking verbs', see my comments above for how Cobuild (and many dictionaries) include verbs other than be in this category. Indeed, ACGEL (Quirk et al) do; seem is clearly labelled as copular. Obviously, there is the complication that there is more than an equivalence with all such verbs other than be (and perhaps equal). I think OP is requesting a list of verbs used in similar structures (and getting more than he bargained for!) 'used to associate an attribute with the subject'(BE) But, as I imply, 'passed unnoticed' smells adverbial rather than adjectival. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 17:01
  • I mentioned the fact that some verbs can take an AP as well as an NP as objects. The question is whether there is value in equating those with "to be," which has rather different properties. – Greg Hullender Sep 01 '13 at 17:36
  • Cute comment about "it's no one you want to let in." :-) It's also very clear that "*It's I" fails entirely.

    The point, however, is that if I say "It is I," 100% of native speakers will recognize that as valid (if snooty). If I say "He smells I" 100% of speakers will call that invalid. It's a long way from snooty to invalid.

     – Greg Hullender Sep 01 '13 at 17:39
  • @siride : Is be a 'true copula' then? Copular and non-copular usages (for different polysemes) are listed at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/be by both AHD and Collins. It's usages of individual polysemes, not the verbs themselves, that are link. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 18:47
  • @EdwinAshworth: I don't think that disagrees with what I wrote. Note that there is no meaning of "smell" that is equivalent to the nominal copula "be". You can say "John is a man", but you can't say "John smells a man" (unless you are meaning to say that he is noticing the smell of some other man). – siride Sep 01 '13 at 18:53
  • @siride : I'm questioning your assertion 'verbs like "smell" can be regular transitive verbs, or they can take a predicate adjective: "this smells good" [-] which makes them similar to, but not the same as true copulas'. The following statements are more accurate: The verb 'smell' has intransitive, transitive and link-verb usages : 'Your feet smell.' 'I can smell his feet.' 'Your feet smell foul.' Likewise: The verb 'be' has non-copular and copular usages : 'I think, therefore I am.' 'He is wise/an idiot.' – Edwin Ashworth Sep 01 '13 at 23:08
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    The sense verbs come in three varieties, with very different grammar and meaning. – John Lawler Sep 01 '13 at 23:26
  • @EdwinAshworth: so you think a sentence like "I smell a rat" or "I smell something good cooking in the kitchen" are not valid English? – siride Sep 02 '13 at 00:07
  • @siride : That's not a rejoinder worthy of this website. I'll spell it out - I'm addressing your implied claim that 'true copulas are similar to but not the same as verbs like "smell", which though they can take a predicate adjective, can be regular transitive verbs'. Why should one call "be", which also has non-copular usages, a 'true copula' then? As J Lawler says, '[some] verbs [like 'smell'] come in [different] varieties, with very different grammar and meaning'. 'Be' comes in copular and non-copular varieties. Can you mention any verb that has only a copular usage? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 02 '13 at 07:24
  • @Greg Hullender You say '[I]f I say "It is I," 100% of native speakers will recognize that as valid (if snooty)'. No, I'd only go as far as 'grammatically correct as regards traditional grammar'; like Pullum, I'm not going to even come close to recognising much modern value (so an unqualified 'it is valid' is disingenuous). – Edwin Ashworth Jan 17 '15 at 09:40