Inchoative Verbs: The Start of an Action

Overview

Inchoative verbs, also known as conclusive verbs or inceptives, are a class of verbs that denote the beginning of an action, state, or process. They focus on the initiation point of a change.

Key Concepts

The core idea of an inchoative verb is to express the onset of something. Unlike verbs that describe an ongoing action (e.g., running) or a completed action (e.g., ran), inchoatives specifically capture the moment something starts.

Deep Dive

In many languages, inchoative meaning is often expressed through specific verb forms or affixes. For example, Latin had an inchoative suffix -sc- (e.g., crescere ‘to grow’, from creo ‘I create’). English often uses auxiliary verbs or specific lexical items to convey this sense.

• Examples: begin, start, commence, dawn, sprout, blossom, melt, freeze.
• The sentence “The sun began to rise” highlights the inchoative aspect of the verb ‘rise’.

Applications

Understanding inchoative verbs is crucial in linguistics, semantics, and morphology. They help analyze temporal aspects of verbs and how languages encode the initiation of events. This is important for natural language processing and machine translation.

Challenges & Misconceptions

A common misconception is that inchoative verbs are always single words. Often, they are formed using phrases or constructions. For instance, “It started to rain” uses an auxiliary ‘started’ to create an inchoative meaning for ‘rain’.

FAQs

What is an inchoative verb?

An inchoative verb signifies the beginning of an action, state, or process.

How are inchoative meanings expressed in English?

In English, inchoative meanings are often conveyed through specific verbs like begin, start, or through phrasal constructions.

Are all verbs of starting inchoative?

Generally, yes. Verbs that explicitly denote the commencement of something are considered inchoative.