1.  What are Sensory Verbs ?

• In short, these are verbs used to describe senses.

E.g.

See= ‘Can you see that bird?’

Look = ‘She looked at the picture.’

Hear = ‘I heard your mother calling out to us.’

Sound = ‘She sounds like a cat.’

Feel = ‘Abdul felt the ground shake.’

Taste= ‘Can you taste the cake ?’

Watch = ‘They watched the play.’

Smell = ‘The durian smells terrible.’

2.    Bare infinitive 

•  Base infinitive are words in their simplest form. E.g. watch, see, smell

3.   Sensory Verbs + Bare Infinitive / -ing Form

• Sensory verbs can be followed by bare infinitive or gerund form.

E.g.

bare infinitive : The boy saw the thief crawl over the fence.

gerund : The boy saw the thief crawling over the fence.

• Many students are tricked by the sensory verb “saw”. It is in past tense, and therefore, they assume that it would be followed by another past tense, which would be “crawled“.

4.  PSLE 2014 Grammer Question 

• Try this question. 

When the boys knocked against the flower pot, Clara saw it ___________________ over.

(1) topple

(2) topples

(3) toppled

(4) was toppling

• The correct answer is 1. The verb is in the bare infinitive form.   Option 4 would be correct if the answer does not include “was”.

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