1. 19 October 2012
Verbs, tense, aspect, mood
• Tense as a grammar category, indicates when the situation takes place.
• In general there are 3 delimitations of time „before now” – the past, „now” – the
present, „after now” – the future.
• English has two morphological tenses: past and non-past.
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Inflection
English verbs are not strongly inflected/other languages.
Inflected forms:
• A third person singular simple present –s cooks, speaks
• A simple past form cooked, spoke
• A past participle cooked,spoken
• A present participle cooking, speaking / Gerund cooking,speaking
Most verbs inflect in a simple regular way.
200 of irregular verbs
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The base form
• serves as the bare infinitive (write), forms the to infinitive (to write)
• serves as the simple present, except in the 3rd person singular (I/you/we/they write
books).
• is used as an imperative (Write this word.)
• is used as a subjunctive I suggest that he write a book.)
Generally the base form is not marked by any ending but:
Suffixes:-ate (formulate, -fy electrify, ise/ize realise
Prefixes: overtake, undervalue, unmask, outweigh.
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Third-person singular present
• the suffix -/e/s
• pronunciation
• Verbs ending in sibilant sounds,
• Verbs ending in a consonant plus y, add –es, change y to an i: cry > cries
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Past participle
• Regular verbs - identical to the preterite form.
cook>cooked, cooked
• Irregular verbs:
1. Different past tense and past participle – sing> sang, sung
2. The same forms – make > made, made

2. 3. Past tense is regular, past participle is not - show, showed, shown
• The past participle occurs in 2 major constructions, perfect and passive.
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Present participle
• Also used as a gerund
• Add suffix –ingto the base form of the verb
• Spelling
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Copular verb – be, linking verb
multiple irregular forms:
Present tense forms: am, contracted to I’m, is, contracted to he’s, she’s, it’s;
arecontracted to we’re, you’re, they’re ;
Two past tense forms: was, were
Past participle: been
Present participle: being
The base form be is used regularly as infinitive, imperative, present, subjunctive.
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Modal verbs: can, may, shall, will, must, ought to
- the past tenses: could, might, should, would
- generally do not inflect: musts, musted, musting
- have only a single form
- do not have infinitive, imperative, participleforms.
- the negation of can is cannot, can’t
will not > won’t, shall not > shan’t
- contracted form ’ll &’d for will&would
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Verbs: do, have, need, dare function as auxiliaries and lexical verbs.
I do understand you. I do my best.
I have done it. (auxiliary) Do you have enough money? Lexical verb
I need you. She needn’t go. She doesn’t need to go.
Dare they accept her challenge? Do they dare accept her challenge?
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There are no inflected forms for particular tenses, moods and aspects. past & non-past
Multiword constructions with verb forms.
In language teaching they are called tenses.
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3. Aspect: Simple, progressive, perfect
Simple: the basic present and past tenses of the verb
Simple present (present simple): write, writes
Simple past ( past simple), preterite: wrote
Progressive (continuous)- be + present participle
Present progressive (present continuous, imperfect): am writing, is writing, are writing
Past progressive (past continuous): was writing, were writing
Progressive infinitive: (to) be writing
Progressive subjunctive: be writing
Perfect:auxiliary have + past participle
Present perfect: have written, has written
Past perfect: had written
The perfect aspect combines with the progressive aspect
Present perfect progressive: have/has been writing
Past perfect progressive: had been writing
Perfect infinitive: (to) have written
Perfect progressive infinitive: (to) have been writing
Present participle: having written
Gerund: having been writing
Perfect subjunctive: have written
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The future tense is formed using the auxiliary will.
Traditionally and now in formal English: I/we shall
• The simplefuturewillwrite
• The future progressive (continuous) will be writing
• The future perfect will have written
• The future perfect progressive will have been writing
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Modal auxiliaries can be epistemic, deontic, dynamic.
Epistemic (knowledge, belief):
He must have overslept. She may be ill. The storm should be over soon.
Deontic (obligation, permission, judgement)
He must apologise. She may take as many as she needs. You should call the police.
Many examples are ambiguous: You must be very tactful.
Dynamic (properties, dispositions)
She can speak five languages. I’ve asked him to help us but he won’t. I daren’t tell you anymore.
ability unwillingness not en ough courage
Dare has only dynamic use.

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Tasks
1. Write preterite and past participle of the following verb lexemes:
burn, buy, draw, drink, fall, hold, ride, run, sing
2. Determine whether the underlined verbs are preterites or past participles.
She wasn’t one of those arrested.Who said it was mine?
3. Determine whether the underlined verbs are auxiliaries or lexical verbs.
They keep telling her that. They were informed of the change.