+Hints for Oral Instruction+.—The man caught makes no complete assertion, and is not a sentence. If I add the object complement fish, I complete the assertion and form a sentence—The man caught fish. The action expressed by caught passes over from the man to the fish. Transitive means passing over, and so all those verbs that express an action that passes over from a doer to something which receives, are called +Transitive verbs+.

Fish swim. The verb swim does not require an object to complete the sentence. No action passes from a doer to a receiver. These verbs which express action that does not pass over to a receiver, and all those which do not express action at all, but simply being or state of being, are called +Intransitive verbs+.

Let the teacher write transitive and intransitive verbs on the board, and require the pupils to distinguish them.

When I say, I crush the worm, I express an action that is going on now, or in present time. I crushed the worm, expresses an action that took place in past time. As tense means time, we call the form crush the present tense of the verb, and crushed the past tense. In the sentence, The worm crushed under my foot died, crushed, expressing the action as assumed, is, as you have already learned, a participle; and, as the action is completed, we call it a past participle. Now notice that ed was added to crush, the verb in the present tense, to form the verb in the past tense, and to form the past participle. Most verbs form their past tense and their past participle by adding ed, and so we call such +Regular verbs+.

I see the man; I saw the man; The man seen by me ran away. I catch fish in the brook; I caught fish in the brook; The fish caught in the brook tasted good. Here the verbs see and catch do not form their past tense and past participle by adding ed to the present, and so we call them Irregular verbs.

Let the teacher write on the board verbs of both classes, and require the pupils to distinguish them.

DEFINITIONS.

CLASSES OF VERBS WITH RESPECT TO MEANING.

+A Transitive Verb is one that requires an object+. [Footnote: The object of a transitive verb, that is, the name of the receiver of the action, may be the object complement, or it may be the subject; as, Brutus stabbed Caesar, Caesar was stabbed by Brutus.]

+An Intransitive Verb is one that does not require an object+.

CLASSES OF VERBS WITH RESPECT TO FORM.

+A Regular Verb is one that forms its past tense and past participle by adding ed to the present+. [Footnote: If the present ends in e, the e is dropped when ed is added; as, lov_e_, lov_ed_; believ_e_, believ_ed_.]

+An Irregular Verb is one that does not form its past tense and past participle by adding ed to the present+.

SENTENCE-BUILDING.

Place the following verbs in two columns, one headed transitive and the other, intransitive. Place the same verbs in two other columns, one headed regular and the other, irregular. Build these verbs into sentences by supplying a subject to each intransitive verb, and a subject and an object to each transitive verb.

Vanish, gallop, bite, promote, contain, produce, provide, veto, secure, scramble, rattle, draw.

Arrange the following verbs as before, and then build them into sentences by supplying a subject and a noun attribute to each intransitive verb, and a subject and an object to each transitive verb.

Degrade, gather, know, was, became, is.

A verb may be transitive in one sentence and intransitive in another. Use the following verbs both ways.

+Model+.—The wren sings sweetly.

The wren sings a pretty little song.

Bend, ring, break, dash, move.