For Deleuze, language has two opposing tendencies: ‘it is the task of language […] to establish limits’, while being the one ‘to go beyond them’. The first tendency is articulated by words that consolidate identities, that indicate qualities, that ‘denote the state of affairs’, that is, nouns and adjectives, while the second tendency corresponds to verbs, which ‘express events or logical attributes’:

In the first step, the verb is put into opposition with two other categories, while both sides of the opposition are at the same level as parts of speech. Later, Deleuze develops another opposition, which initially only seems to be a repetition of the first. Yet here opposites are no longer at the same level. When he tries to think of how an event exists within a proposition, he argues: ‘not at all as a name of bodies or qualities, and not at all as a subject or predicate. It exists rather only as that which is expressible or expressed by the propositions enveloped in a verb.’ Changing the first element of the opposition, replacing the noun and adjective with the subject and predicate also in some respects transforms the status of the verb. If we limit ourselves to the first opposition, this could lead to the conclusion that the close link between verb and event is only a result of the fact that a verb expresses an event. Shifting the opposites creates a much more delicate situation, as the verb is one of the components of the predicate, so in some respects it is presented at both opposing poles. The verb is an inherent part of the first element, while being a singular element on the opposite side, thereby demonstrating the inner surplus of the proposition and the inability to be fully subsumed under the category ‘part of speech’. The verb is both a type of word and the ‘word’ (le verbe, das Zeitwort), at the same time it exists and insists.

This inner antagonism leads Deleuze to determine two poles of the verb, the present and the infinitive.