Learn English - Verb Phrases: Linking Verbs

Hello!
We're looking at linking verbs like 'be' and 'become' and we're asking 'why is Robert pleased?'
and 'what will Helen become?' and 'what's the music all about?'. Hope you enjoy it!
We're looking at 'I am pleased' and 'I became a teacher', two different kinds of linking
verbs and here's a picture. This is a picture of Robert and Robert is looking happy as you
can see and so I'll just write underneath there, with my pen, I'll write 'Robert is
pleased', 'Robert is pleased'. Ok, why? I'll just write 'why' here, that's the question,
'why is Robert pleased?'. And another picture, this is his daughter Helen and I'll just write
at the bottom there 'his daughter Helen' and then something about Helen. There's an arrow
and there's another picture of Helen, 'Helen became a teacher', here's a picture of the
graduation ceremony.
Let's go back to the first one again, 'Robert is pleased' - I'll just underline 'Robert'
and 'pleased' and link them together because it's the same person, isn't it? So 'is' is
a link between two things about the same person. I could say something else, I could write
'a father' here and again I could link that 'Robert is a father'. I could put many other
things too; 'Robert is European', 'Robert is middle-aged' all sorts of things.
Right, let's go other to the other one now. His daughter Helen, I'll underline that. Now
she wasn't a teacher (I'll put a dotted line there) but she became a teacher, so there
was a moment when she wasn't a teacher and then she was. Those of two different kinds
of linking verbs - the one on the left are called 'current' (I'll just write 'current'
there) and the one on the right is called 'resulting', that's a resulting copula.
Now I'm going to look at them in more detail, so first of all let's have a look at some
other verbs which are current. I've got a picture here of a young man eating some food
and I want to talk about the food. First of all the look of it, so there's an eye and
I'll write 'the food looks good', so 'the food' and 'good' both refer to the same thing.
Here's another one, here's a mouth, and again I'll say 'the food' (but I'll just write 'it'
this time) 'it tastes nice' - 'it' and 'nice' refer to the same thing. Here's a nose, you
can guess what this is going to be 'it smells OK', so there are three ways.
Now let's go over onto the other side and try saying the same thing but this time with
a noun. 'It looks like a good meal', notice we're using 'like' so the food looks good,
it looks like a good meal. Now say the same thing with 'it tastes' - so 'it tastes like
Chinese food', yes, you probably guessed that. And the last one 'it smells like my Mum's
cooking'. Three verbs: 'look', 'taste' and 'smell' and here's another picture, this time
a little band and this time it's going to be about the ear and it's going to be what
the music sounds like. So 'the music' (I'll write there) 'sounds great'! And exactly like
the other three I could equally say 'it sounds like Dave Brubeck', a jazz musician I used
to like.
So there we have four verbs 'look', 'taste', 'smell' and 'sound' that are all current copulas,
I've just written 'current' at the top there. Now let me turn my little, my little stand
and I'm going to look at four verbs which are resulting. Here's the first one, 'get'.
Let's put something with 'get', we'll put 'ready', I'm going to do a little drawing
myself here (not very good) - that's me not ready and there's me looking tidy, now I'm
ready. Before I wasn't ready, now I'm ready so there's a change. Get, 'get rich' - I was
poor then I got lots of pounds, dollars and euros and yen and now I'm rich (I wish!!)
Let's try another one 'tired'. I was fresh, I worked all day and I got tired, there you
see me fresh then tired. And finally, the last one 'upset'. I started off the day happy
but sadly I became upset because I had some porblems. So there you see the change from
not ready to ready, from poor to rich, from happy to tired and from happy to upset.
Now let's move on to the next verb of my four, these verbs are all quite specialist by the
way, so 'go' is commonly used with 'mad' which has got two meanings. You can say 'he went
mad' meaning he became very angry and upset or more serious than that, he was in need
of psychiatric care and treatment. You also use 'go' with colours - you can say 'go red',
'go grey/gray' (notice the two spellings of grey), my hair went grey over the years for
example. And here's another verb 'turn' and that's often used with colours to turn yellow,
I'll just draw a little green leaf there and I'll draw a yellow leaf (if I can find my
yellow pen) and draw a little red arrow between them just to show that it changes from one
to the other. So to turn is to change. You can equally turn red, like a traffic light
or a face and when the traffic light goes from red to amber to green and back to red
again.
One last verb, the slow one, which is to grow. And a common way of using it is to talk about
somebody 'growing old'. And one hopes growing up. So I'll just draw a young face on the
left then a slow process and an older face on the right which is growing old and hopefully
wise. So these are all resulting copulas, I'll just write 'resulting' up the top there.
And just to finish I want to tell you about links to the website where you can find a
PDF where you can test yourself with answers and you can also find lists of current and
resulting copulas, which you may find helpful. That's it! Bye for now!