Verbs

Verbs are variable lexemes.

Inflections

That is, they have a number of different inflectional forms that are required or permitted in various grammatical contexts:

• Cases where an in inflectional contrast conveys a meaning distinction

Aliya flies home

Aliya flew home (permitted)

• Cases where the occurrence of a particular inflectional form is required by a grammatical rule

Aliya has flown home (required)

Aliya has flies home

Note

“Paradigm” is the set of inflectional forms of a variable lexeme

Paradigm	Form	Example sentence
Primary forms	Preterite walked	She walked home.
	3rd singular present walks	She walks home.
	Plain present walk	They walk home.
Secondary forms	Plain form walk	She should walk home.
	Gerund-participle walking	She is walking home.
	Past participle walked	She has walked home.

Note

Shape is the actual sound (in speech) or spelling (in writing)

Different inflection forms share the same shape:

• The preterite and the past-participle of walk is “walked”: same shape, different inflectional form.

• Also the plain present form (primary) and the plain form (secondary) have the same shape: “walk”.

• For most verbs, the primary form preterite and the second form part-participle look the same (“believed”)

Preterite: *walked*

Past participle: *walked*

Same shape, different inflection

With “fly” it’s obvious:

Preterite: *flew*

Past participle: *flown*

Inflectional forms of the lexeme TAKE:

        flowchart TD
    A[lexeme: TAKE]

    A --> B[Primary Forms]
    A --> C[Secondary Forms]

    B --> B1[Preterite<br/>I *took* her to school.]
    B --> B2[3rd sg Present Tense<br/>He *takes* her to school.]
    B --> B3[Plain Present Tense<br/>They *take* her to school.]
    
    
    C --> C1[Plain Form<br/>I need to *take* her to school.]
    C --> C2[Gerund-Participle<br/>We are *taking* her to school.]
    C --> C3[Past Participle<br/>They have *taken* her to school.]

    

Plain present and plain form

All verbs except “be” has the same shape for the plain present and the plain form inflections

They run every day (plain present)

I must run (plain form)

Verb “be” has different shapes for the plain present and the plain form, so it’s easy to spot the different between the plain present and plain form inflection

Important

The plain form cannot function as the main, present-tense verb on its own. It requires one of:

• Auxiliary verb

• Infinitive marker

• Imperative, a command structure

• A subjunctive clause.

I will be ready for the test. (modal aux)

I must be ready for the test. (modal aux)

I need to be ready for the test. (a to infinitive)

Be ready for the test! (imperative)

The teacher insists that I be ready for the test (subjunctive, be ok)

The teacher knows that I be ready for the test (indicative, can’t use plain from)

The teacher knows that I am ready for the test (indicative, plain present works)

With all other verb, the shape is the same, so both are ok:

I insist that they do homework (subjunctive, “do” is the plain form)

I know that they do homework (indicative, “do” is the present form, same shape)

Primary vs. secondary Forms

Primary forms: TENSED

Form name	Form of walk	Example
Preterite	walked	I walked to school.
3rd singular present tense	walks	She walks to school.
Plain present tense	walk	They walk to school.

In general, primary forms show inflectional distinctions of tense (preterite vs present), and can occur as the sole verb in a canonical clause (there is a minor exception)

Missing exception 3.7.4 CGEL

Secondary forms have no tense inflection and can’t occur as the head of a canonical clause.

Secondary forms: NON-TENSED.

Form name	Form of walk	Example
Plain form	walk	I need to walk to school.
Gerund-participle	walking	We are walking to school.
Past participle	walked	They have walked to school.

Preterite

Preterite: INFLECTIONAL past tense

The past tense is signalled by a specific inflectional form of the verb rather than a separate auxiliary verb.

Note

Inflectional form, not shape; there are a couple of dozen verbs like cut, hit, and put that happen to use the same shape for the preterite as for the plain present:

He put it me (preterite form of hit , not the present)

Past time CENTRAL, not always

Preterite tense does not always signal past time:

It would be better if I took them to school next week (future)

Present tense

Signal present time reference

This feels warm (right now, at the moment of speaking)

Present time CENTRAL, not always

The exhibition opens next week (future)

[In a movie script] She pushes the door; the door opens (point in time in the script)

Almost all verbs has two present tense forms: walk and walks. The third person singular form occurs with:

• 3rd person form: by person (NP subject)

• Singular: by the number (NP subject)

• A Clause subject counts as “singular third person”. It’s singular because it suggests one proposition, and “third person” because it is neither the speaker not the addressee*

Tip

Use V+s if the Subject is a third-person singular NP or a clause.

The students arrive late (3rd person, plural)

That the students arrive late is embarrassing (clause, single fact, single proposition)

The fact that the students arrive late is embarrassing (easily rephrase, “fact” is a single 3rd person noun)

This situation is embarrassing (same, easily rephrased with single 3rd person noun)

Note

The present-tense forms (write, are) are finite forms that belong to the tense system and inflect for agreement.

The plain forms “write”, “be”, used in imperatives, infinitivals, modal complements, and subjunctives do neither - even though the form “write” happens to be identical to the present-tense form (except in the 3rd person singular).

Plain form

Identical to the lexeme base

It is not present tense, so not plain present.

Used in clause constructions:

• Imperative: used as directives

Keep us informed (most imperatives have no subject, predicate is understood to apply to the addressee)

• Subjunctive

It’s vital [that he keep us informed] (Subjunctives are most commonly found as subordinate clauses)

• Infinitival

He should [keep us informed] (bare infinitival)

It’s vital [(for him) to keep us informed] (to infinitival)

Note

Directives: Various ways of getting people to do things, such as requests, orders, instructions, and so on

Gerund participle

English verb forms like walking are used in both ways: sometimes their functions overlap with those of NPs, and sometimes they overlap more with AdjPs, but no verb in the language has different forms corresponding to the two uses.

Note

That’s why both use the word “participle” (in Latin participle is for AdjP, and gerund NP)

As noun:

I hate [watching films about talking animals] (gerund-participle, “watching” is a V head of a complement NP)

I hate [films about talking animals] (same without the gerund-participle, so it’s a NP)

As adjective

People [earning enough to buy a yacht] (gerund-participle, “earning” is a V head of a modifier clause)

People [affluent enough to buy a yacht] (same, without the gerund-participle, it’s a modifier )

Important

CGEL’s deliberate departures from traditional grammar. In CGEL, gerund-participle is a verb form, not a noun. So watching in:

I hate [watching films].

Is classified as:

• Lexical category: Verb (V)

• Inflectional form: Gerund-participle

• Function: Head of an NP

Past participle

Occurs in two major constructions:

• Perfect: Usually indicated by the auxiliary have with a following past-participle

She has flown there from Dallas. (auxiliary have)

She may have flown to Brussels

• Passive

When an action is completed, it leaves behind a result or a state. If someone finishes the action of baking a cake, the cake now exists in a “baked” state.

Because the passive voice focuses on the receiver of an action rather than the doer, it is incredibly natural for languages to take a word that means “in a completed state” (the past participle) and use it to build a passive sentence.

That route is now flown by only two airlines (of the canonical “Only two airlines fly that route”, with the verb “be”)

Routes [flown by only two airlines] tend to be expensive (subordinate passive clause with no subject and without the auxiliary verb be. “flown” is the head of a subordinate clause modifying the noun route)

Note

The term “past-participle” is used in both traditional grammar and most modern grammars, but it’s not an obviously appropriate term for all of the constructions:

Routes flown by …

“flown” is functionaly similar to an adjective, such as “unpopulart”

The‘past’ component of the name, on the other hand, derives from its use in the perfect construction. The perfect is a kind of past tense (one indicated by an auxiliary verb rather than by in ection, like the preterite)

Important

Past participles cannot head finite clauses

If only we flown here (if only is counterfactual and licenses a finite clause)

If only we flew here (preterite works)

If only we fly … (if only is remote, a counterfactual, since “we fly” is an open condition. Can’t use if only with it)

Shape sharing

Preterite vs. past-participle

For regular verbs (and many irregular as well) the preterite has the same shape of the past participle.

You can’t decide whether a form is preterite or not by asking whether it refers to past time: the matter has to be determined grammatically, not semantically.

If only we walked more (preterite)

She has worked a lot (past participle)

Easy to see with verb that does not share shape:

If only we flew here

We were flown to New York

Plain present and plain form

The only verb with a plain form distinct from present tense form is be.

They write to her (present tense)

They are kind to her

Write to her (imperative, plain form)

Be kind to her

It’s vital that he write to her (plain form, subjunctive)

It’s vital that he be kind to her

It’s better to write to her (plain form, to-infinitival)

It’s better to be kind to her

He must write to her (plain form, modal, bare infinitive)

He must be kind to her

Even with be, though, we have the same form in all of the plain form clauses:

• Imperative

• Subjunctive

• To-infinitival and the bare infinitival

The difference between these constructions is purely syntactic: they’re different kinds of clause, but they all require the same inflectional form of the verb.

Note

“be kind” is a VP structure (be + AdjP) that can appear in three different clause types: bare infinitival, to-infinitival, or mandative subjunctive finite clause.

Clause type	Example	Structure	Status
Bare infinitival clause*	You must be kind	[VP be + AdjP]	Non-finite clause (complement of modal)
To-infinitival clause**	It’s better to be kind	to + [VP be + AdjP]	Non-finite clause
Mandative subjunctive clause*	It’s vital that he be kind	finite clause: NP + V + AdjP	Finite content clause

Tensed shapes

They write to her (present tense)

They are kind to her

They wrote her (preterite)

They were kind to her

He writes to here (3rd singular person)

He is kind to her

Note

The non tensed form doesn’t allow it

It’s better to write to her (plain form, to infinitival)

It’s better to wrote her

It’s better to writes her

So it’s clear that it’s plain and not tensed form.

Minor Cases of Shape Sharing

There are two other cases of shape sharing, involving just a small number of verbs. With “come” and “run” (and verbs formed from them, such as become, overrun, etc.), not only the plain present tense but also the past participle has the same shape as the plain form.

With around twenty verbs like cut , hit , let, put, shut , etc., the plain form is shared with three other forms: the plain present, the preterite, and the past participle:

These days we never shut this gate. (plain present)

We forgot to shut this gate last night. (plain form)

We definitely shut this gate last night. (preterite)

We had shut this gate earlier. (past-participle)