Verbs in English and their Spanish counterparts

Abstract

Peculiarities of verbs in English are a great challenge for teachers of ESL/EFL, for Spanish students, for those interested in contrastive linguistics. Indeed, globalisation has furthered the interest in acquiring languages and studying their intricacies. Nevertheless, of all the lexical categories, verbs have been the least favoured as to the collection of linguistic data and information, at least until recently. Therefore, in this article, I will attempt to describe an overview of some of the aspects of syntax, semantics and morphology of verbs under the light of contrastive linguistics. Hopefully, it will also throw light upon the cognitive effort demanded from students of English to acquire and use verbs in English, their didactic implications. Conclusions might be drawn from any said comparison when teaching/ learning English. Likewise, teachers and students’ awareness should help in a betterment of the active knowledge and use of verbs. Several examples will be provided to illustrate the points under discussion.