Verb groups

On the previous page we saw some single-word secondary verbs such as start and try (as in "I will start making breakfast", or "I tried to get there on time").

Would it shock you at this point if we told you that we can also have multi-word secondary verbs?

If that doesn't shock you, then cool, you're getting used to this grammar business—but what if we said quite often one of those extra words will turn out to be an adjective, just hanging out with the verbs?

Crazy, right? But it happens all the time (usually around being words like is, are, am).

Here are a couple of examples:

You can see the secondary verbs have incorporated adjectives—able and determined—but they are deeply buried inside the action, so we treat them as part of the verb group.

Not all adjectives can fit into this pattern. The ones that do generally describe internal states. Like, be able describes someone's ability, and be determined describes an attitude.

Go here for a list of some common secondary verbs that use a being-verb + an adjective.

Let's have some fun switching up the secondary verbs in that last snippet. We can use secondary verbs that need be or ones that don't.