Understanding Verb Types and Grammatical Concepts

Key Vocabulary and Their Meanings

• Rented: Tenant.
• Settle: A wooden seat.
• Harm: *Faire mal* (French).
• Bleak: *Ombrívol* (Catalan).
• Farmyard: Corral.
• Realize: To start to understand something.
• Haunt someone: To come back after death to visit someone; ghosts haunt people or places.
• Trembling: Shaking.
• Mistress: The woman in charge of the house.
• Cheated: Something dishonest or unfair.
• Treating: To behave in a certain way towards someone.
• Became lame: *Ser coix* (Catalan).
• Punish: To make somebody suffer because they have done something wrong.
• Swore: To speak very rudely and unpleasantly to someone.
• Ashamed: To feel unhappy or uncomfortable because you think you are not as good as other people.
• Revenge: To harm someone because they have harmed you.
• Pinched: To hurt someone by holding their skin tightly between your thumb and fingers.
• Anger: *Colera* (Catalan), sudden, terrible anger which makes someone behave in a wild and dangerous way.
• Inherited: *Heredar* (Spanish).
• Right: To be able to do something without asking someone else if you can do it.
• Faint: To fall down suddenly because you are frightened or ill.
• Hearts: To make someone very unhappy.
• Mortgaged: To borrow money from someone and to say to that person they can take your property if you do not pay back the money.
• Will: On the will, they write the name of the person who will inherit all their money and property.
• Disturb: To stop someone from resting.
• Wrapped: To put paper around something to make it into a parcel.

Impersonal Sentences

• Grammaticalized: *Haber, hacer, bastar con, sobrar con, es, son*.
• Unipersonal: Nature, atmosphere, weather; *llovió, granizaba* (Spanish).
• Eventual: *Te han llamado, dicen que, han tirado, si vas al* (Spanish).
• Reflexive: *Se respira, se canta* (Spanish).

Determiners

Articles, demonstrative adjectives (*este*), possessive adjectives, numerals, indefinite adjectives (*algun*), interrogative adjectives, exclamatory adjectives.

Adjectives

• Specifying
• Explanatory

Degrees of Adjectives

• Positive: Quality without changes, *niño alegre* (Spanish).
• Comparative: *Tan bueno como* (Spanish).
  • Equality
  • Superiority
  • Inferiority
• Superlative: Maximum degree.
  • *Muy, bien, -mente* (Spanish)
  • *-ísimo, -érrimo* (Spanish)
  • *Super, hiper, extra, requete, ultra, archi* (Spanish)
  • Repeating: *Está bueno, bueno* (Spanish).

Verb Types

Transitive Verbs

The action transits, passes from the subject to a being or thing. Examples:

• *Juan come pastas* (The action "comer" passes to "pastas", the "pastas" are eaten).
• *Los niños estudian historia* (The action "estudiar" passes to "historia", it is studied).
• *Marisa riega el jardín* (The action "regar" passes to "jardín", it is watered).

Intransitive Verbs

The action does not pass to a being or thing. Examples:

• *Rita y Lorena ríen*.
• *El caballo trota por el prado*.
• *Voy a jugar al pin-pong*.

Reflexive Verbs

The action returns to the subject: *lavarse, peinarse, vestirse, bañarse*.

Reciprocal Verbs

The action is mutual. *Roberto y Diana se aman* (Roberto loves Diana and she loves him). Examples: *mirarse, besarse, quererse, cuidarse*.

Auxiliary Verbs

Ser and haber. They are used to conjugate the compound tenses of verbs. Example: *El maestro ha vuelto a repetir el tema*.