Verbs

Roughly speaking, verbs are those lexical items that refer to various kinds of situations, such as activities, accomplishments, achievements, or states. In English, verbs can appear in the five forms in (1).


(1)     Name of form
(alternate name)
Description Examples

Bare Default form in present tense sentences. They play together.
I see.
Also appears in various nonfinite contexts, such as in to infinitive clauses, I want to play.
They would like to see you.
after modals, They may play.
We will see.
and in connection with do support. They don't play lacrosse.
Do you see?

-ing
(present participle)
Combines with auxiliary be to express various aspectual nuances. The cat is playing with the yarn.
I was seeing her until she left town.
Also occurs on its own as the so-called gerund. Playing with yarn is fun for cats.
We always enjoy seeing you.

-s Special form used in present tense to mark agreement with a third person singular subject. Lukas plays with sand for hours.
The cat sees a mouse.

-ed
(past tense)
Expresses past tense. The cat played with the yarn.
We saw a deer.

-en
(past participle)
Combines with auxiliary be to form passives. Baseball is played all over the world.
She was last seen off Mozambique.
Combines with auxiliary have to form so-called perfect forms. They have never played lacrosse.
I have seen it many times.

For all verbs, the -ing form is predictable from the bare form, being derived from it by the affixation of -ing (play-ing, see-ing, hav-ing, be-ing).

The -s form is similarly predictable for most verbs, with major (be, is) or minor (have, has) exceptions.

Finally, the past tense and past participle forms are predictable from the bare form in some cases, but not in others. With regular verbs, the past tense and past participle forms are homonyms and are formed by affixing -ed to the bare form. Why bother distinguishing between the two forms? The reason is that they are distinct with irregular verbs such as go, see, sing, or write (past tense went, saw, sang, wrote versus past participle gone, seen, sung, written).

A verb's bare form, past tense form, and past participle (in other words, exactly the forms that aren't predictable in general) are traditionally referred to as its principal parts.