C H A P T E R P R E V I E W
This chaptcr examines verbs, the most systematic o f the four form classes. You will analyze the underlying rules that enable you to conic up with the wide variety o f verb phrases that you use every day. This analysis o f your verb expertise, in fact, probably illustrates better than any other part o f grammar what the word system means.
By the end o f this chapter, you will be able to • Identify the fives forms that all verbs have.
• Rccognize auxiliary verbs and understand how they combine wirh m ain verbs.
• Understand the verb-expansion rule and use it to analyze and produce verb strings.
• Define the terms tense, mood, and aspect.
• Identify modal auxiliaries and explain their uses.
• Recognize and use the stand-in auxiliary do.
• Recognize the grammaticality o f the African American
Vernacular verb system.
T H E F IV E V E R B F O R M S
Before analyzing the system for adding auxiliaries, wc will identify the five forms that all o f our verbs have so that we can conveniently discuss them, using labels that reflect our emphasis on form rather than meaning. Here again is the regular verb laugh, which we saw in C hapter 2, along with the irregular verb eat:
64 Part II: The Grammar o f Basic Sentences
Regular Irregular
base form (present tense) laugh eat
-s form (present, 3rd person, singular) laughs eats
-ed form (past tense) laughed ate
-ing form (present participle) laughing eating
-en form (past participle) laughed eaten
M ost o f our verbs— all except 150 or so—-are regular, as are all the new verbs that we acquire. For example, here are two recent acquisitions:
I faxed a letter to you yesterday.
I have c-mailcd the invitations to our reunion.
As the verb laugh and these two new ones illustrate, regular verbs are those in which the past tense and the past participle arc form ed by adding the
sufRx -ed (or, in a few cases, -t) to the base form . Am ong the irregular
verbs, there are m any patterns o f irregularity, b ut the deviations from regular verbs show up only in these two form s, the past and the past participle. All verbs, with m inor exceptions, have regular -s and -nig forms. (The exceptions are detailed in “ELL Issues” on page 66.)
In our discussion o f verbs, we will use the label -ed to denote the past tense form and -en to denote the past participle form. The past o f regular verbs provides the -ed label; the past participle of irregular verbs like eat (as well as our most common verb, be, and about fifteen others, including
drive, give, break, and speak) provides the label for the past participle, which
we call the -en form. This means that the -en form o f laugh is laughed; the
-ed form o f eat is ate.
Anyone familiar with a foreign language will appreciate the sim plic ity of our small set o f only five verb forms. Instead of adding auxiliaries to express differences as wc do in English, a speaker of French or Spanish must add a different suffix to the verb. French verbs, for instance, have more than sev enty different forms to express variations in person, number, tense, and mood.
A speaker o f English uses only two different forms {eat, eats) to express the present tense in first, second, and third person, both singular and plural; the speaker of French uses five:
Sin g ula r P lu ra l
1st person I eat (je mange) we eat (nous mangeons) 2nd person you eat (tu manges) you eat (vous mangez) 3rd person he eats (il mange) they eat (ils mangent)
Chapter 4: Expanding the Main Verb 65
The speaker of English uses only one form {ate) ro express the simple past tense in all three persons, both singular and plural. Again, the French speaker uses five, all different from the first set. In fact, for the various tenses and moods, the speaker o f French uses fourteen such sets, or conju gations, all with different verb endings.
The Irregular Be. The only English verb w ith m ore than five forms is
be, the most irregular of our irregular verbs. It is also the only verb with a
separate form for the infinitive, or base (be)-, it is the only one with three forms for present tense (am, is, are) and two for past tense (was, were)-, and o f course it has an -en form (been) and an -ing (being) form— eight forms in all. In addition to its status as a main verb, be also serves as an auxiliary in our verb-cxpansion rule and as the auxiliary that turns the active voice to passive, as you will learn in Chapter 5-
Fill the blanks with the four additional forms o f the verbs listed on the left. If
you have a problem figuring out che -edform, simply use it in a scncence with
yesterday. “Yesterday 1 ___________ .” If you have crouble figuring out the -en
form, use it in a sentence with have: “I h av e___________ ."
BASE -s FORM -ed FORM -ing FORM -en FORM
1. have _________ __ __________ __ __________ _____________ 2. do _________ __ __________ __ __________ _____________ 3. say _________ __ __________ __ __________ _____________ 4. m ake _________ __ __________ __ __________ _____________ 5- go _________ __ __________ __ __________ _____________ 6. take __________ _______________________ _____________ 7. com e _________ _________ _________ _________ 8. see _________ __________ _________ _________ 9- gee --- --- --- --- 10. move __________ __ __________ _____________ __ __________ 11. prove __________ __ __________ _____________ __ __________ 12. p u t __________ __ __________ _____________ __ __________ 13. th in k __________ __ __________ _____________ __ __________ 14. beat
Hie first nine verbs in this exercisc, along with be, make up a list of the ten most frequently used verbs in English.
Q. W hat do these ten have in common? A. Thev arc all irregular!* O
66 Part 11: 1he Grammar o f Bask Sentences
The System atic Verb Forms
Only two verbs have an irregular -s form: be (is) and have (has). In two oth ers, the vowel sound changes for the -s form: do (does), say (says). So with only these minor deviations, we can certainly say that from the standpoint of form, notably the -s and the -ing forms, English verbs are highly systematic. It would be hard to find a rule in all of our grammar with fewer exceptions.