verbs Archives | Numéro Cinq

Steven Axelrod, a former victim, er, I mean student, of the Shredder, sent me this link, no doubt because of my own obsession with listing and counting verbs and the quality of sentences.

More Parsing Larsson: Verb Inventory

After yesterday’s post about Stieg Larsson, I got an itch to compare his verbs to some other writers’. Not that verbs are the biggest problem with Larsson’s writing. Far from it. Still, I was curious. So here is an inventory of verbs from a page of Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” a page of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” and a page of Stephen King’s “Just After Sunset.”

I list these verbs in their base forms — i.e. “had been” and “were” are listed as “be.” Verbs forming independent clauses are in all caps. Verbs forming subordinate clauses are lowercase. Participial modifiers are not counted as verbs.

Larsson, page 414 — 18 sentences:

1. BE

2. BE

3. RECALL, HAVE, be

4. BE

5. UNDERSTAND

6. BE, FIND, find

7. BE, gnaw

8. NOTICE, take, keep

9. BE, BE, summarize

10. HAVE, BE, clear out, throw

11. THROW

12. BE, FIND

13. SEE, remove, deal with

14. SPEND, MISS, COME, HAVE

15. FIND, contain

16. GO, try, find

17. BE

18. DISCOVER, GO, USE

via Conjugate Visits: More Parsing Larsson: Verb Inventory.

Lately, NC has been overrun by some strange, possibly disturbing (disturbed?) posts. There have been trips to Wal-Mart, essays about dead, German philosophers, a gilded Michael Jackson and ‘Bubbles’ statue, and some impostor (or series of impostors) running around claiming to be DG. It’s all very confusing. It seems the perfect time to throw my “Top-10” essay back into the mix. How could it hurt?

For those of you following these posts with bated breath (and I know there’s at least one of you out there…Bubbles is a huge fan) it began as a series of short essays covering ten of the more important lessons I learned as student working with DG last semester at VCFA. DG approved this series and has been paying me handsomely for each installment. (By the way, Doug, the checks haven’t been arriving. Could you re-confirm my mailing address? Thanks in advance. These Talisker bills are adding up.)

I’m down to the top two. Number two covers, quite simply, verbs.

(Please note: all quotes in this post are from DG’s essay, “The Attack of the Copula Spiders.”)

I entered last semester (my third) bright-eyed and eager. Though tales and legends swirled regarding the dangers of the Shredder’s realm, I believed I could safely navigate the terrifying path, escaping with little more than a few scratches and cuts. Ah, the joy of innocence! Three steps into that primordial, Canadian forest, a sharp pain split my calf. Toxic venom spiraled toward my spine. Before I could hack off my own leg to prevent further injury, the face of a copula spider appeared, a spider bearing a shocking resemblance to DG. It mocked me as it scurried back to its upstate NY home. Arachnis copulataris. (Confused? Keep reading! )

“A copula spider occurs when a student uses the verb ‘to be’ so many times on a page that I can circle all the instances, connect them with lines, and draw a spider diagram on the page.” (See exhibit A)

Exhibit A: The Copula Spider