Baby Verbs (2)

Only Two Ways to Agree (with someone)?

Do you know how many? How many what? How many ways are there for you to agree with your coworkers?

Well, there can be lots of ways, right? But to make English easier, you may group them into 2 ways only. Which two?

• To agree with Baby Verbs
• To agree with Non-Baby Verbs

Well, what are Baby and Non-Baby Verbs?



A. What are Baby and Non Baby Verbs?

Read the following two sentences.  Which one is a sentence
with a Baby Verb and which one a Non-Baby Verb?

1. The starting point for any good discussion is a shared understanding of the aim of a company.    2. In 2001 Apple launched its iPod brand of portable media players.

In sentence 1, the verb is ‘is’, a Baby Verb linking the left and the right as shown below:

1. The starting point for any good discussion

is (Baby)

a shared understanding of the aim of a company

 

Common examples of Baby Verbs include: be, is, am, are, was, were, being, and been.

In the second sentence, the verb is ‘launched’, a Non-Baby Verb showing that a company (Apple) does something to its products (iPod).

2. (In 2001) Apple

launched (Non-Baby)

its iPod brand of portable media players

Common examples of Baby Verbs include: work, discuss, suggest, think, decide, guess, & develop.

B. Agreeing with Baby or Non-Baby Verbs


So, now you are back to the question mentioned at the beginning of this post. What are the two ways to agree with your coworkers? Before you get to them, there is a question for you. Is the sentence correct? I am fully agree with you.   The sentence is absolutely, definitely, totally WRONG.   


Why? ‘Am’ is a Baby Verb while ‘agree’ is a Non-Baby.  The two (Baby and Non-Baby Verbs) usually do not come together hand in hand.  So, the two ways of saying it are: 

a. with a Baby Verb (am),  I am totally with you; and

b. with a Non-Baby Verb (agree), I fully agree with you.     

So next time, when you agree with Mr Right, either be a Baby or a Non-Baby.  

Further examples (for agreeing) are:

Baby Verbs	Non-Baby Verbs
That is (That’s) not a bad idea.	I can’t agree with you more. (Yes, it means you agree with Mr Right.)
I am (I’m) fond of the idea of building a new team.	You can say that again.

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More on Baby Verbs (3)








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This post is adapted from the book:

FeelGoodGrammar: 

How to Make Sentences in Business English


Buy the book:

Kindle (ebook)      Amazon (paperback)     Kobo (ebook)