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Grammatical categories are like suits and ranks in a card deck. |
In this guide, we'll take a look at all the different forms that a verb can take. More significantly, we'll be looking at those forms as a system, and at how the meaning of the verb changes depending on in which form it is used in a sentence.
Knowing boundaries1 of a system allows us to easier recognize word forms in immersion: it can only be one of those! Like cards in a deck that only contains cards of certain suits and ranks, word forms in a language can only be of certain grammatical categories (person, number, tense etc.). When you pick a card, you know it's not going to be something completely random and unexpected, but a combination of those predefined suits and ranks.
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Grammatical categories are like suits and ranks in a card deck. |
In the same way, when you come across a word form in your immersion, you know it's going to be a combination of those grammatical categories. That makes your immersion more predictable and comprehensible, which is great, because it will speed up your language learning progress.
Having a clue about what the structure of your input will be like ahead of time gives you a certain peace of mind, and improves your ability to understand your input, making it a great tool to have with you on this journey. The point here is not to learn how each form is used, but learn what forms are possible, what forms the system can produce, and learn to recognize them in immersion.
1 Think limits, possibilities, what output a system can possibly produce.
Even though this guide is about English verbs, a similar analysis can be done for many other languages. This might be a topic for a future tutorial. This tutorial will demonstrate the basic principles of such analysis using English as an example.
At its core, verb is the part of speech that allows us to make a statement.1 If nouns represent objects, verbs allow us to say something about those objects2.
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A statement can be thought of as something that can either be true (1) or false (2). Note the core role that the verb plays in making a statement, and how without it, making a statement would be impossible1. Also, note the characteristic meaning that the verb contrubutes to a sentence as a whole3. It has a particular ‘assertive’ quality to it. |
1 Verbless statements are possible, but they are uncommon in English (while they are very common in other languages). An example of this will be given in the next section.
Regardless, as a starting point, it is still a good idea to consider verbs to be the part of speech that allows us to make a statement. This point of view is supported by the fact that in many cases those verbless structures historically had a verb in them, but it got either dropped or merged with other parts of speech over time as the language developed.
2 By objects here we mean ‘objects of the linguistic realm’. That is, anything we can refer to by using a noun: physical objects, ideas etc.
3 This can be done by saying the sentence out loud, or silently, listening to it being said, reading it or writing it down while introspectively noticing what the meaning of different parts of the sentence feels like as it is going through your mind.
That phenomenon of making a statement that we just talked about can also be referred to as predication, and the part of the sentence that is, so to speak, responsible for predication is called a predicate.
Sometimes a predicate consists of more than just a single verb form. In that case the verb is called a copula or a linking verb, and the rest of the predicate is called a predicative expression.
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Examples of predicates consisting of a single finite1 verb form (1) and of a finite1 verb form with a predicative expression (2). |
It is also possible to have a verbless predicate. It is not very common in English, but is common in other languages.
Verbless predicates have the same structure as (2), minus the linking verb. In those cases, what otherwise would be a predicative expression following the linking verb, becomes the predicate itself.
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Example of a verbless predicate. In English, such structures occur in some varieties of the language, e.g. African-American Vernacular English. |
1 The difference between finite and non-finite verb forms is discussed in a dedicated section below. In short, finite verb forms are those that can be used as (main part of the) predicate, and non-finite are those that cannot.
When discussing grammar, it is useful to draw a distinction between nominal and verbal parts of speech, their nominal and verbal properties.
When we say nominal (‘noun-like’) and verbal (‘verb-like’) here, we are referring to a certain nature (set of characteristics) of a part of speech. In other words, we can classify certain parts of speech as nominal or verbal, having nominal or verbal properties, being noun-like or verb-like.
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Examples of nominal and verbal parts of speech. |
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Note how adjectives modify nouns (1), and adverbs modify verbs (2). Adjectives and adverbs can thus be referred to as nominal and verbal modifiers respectively. |
Adjectival properties, a subclass of nominal properties, can also be observed. That is, adjectival parts of speech are also nominal, but not all nominal parts of speech are adjectival.
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Nouns time (1) and bird (2) modified by an ordinal numeral first (1) and a participle I flying (2), revealing adjectival properties of the ordinal numeral and the participle I—cf. previous figure, example (1). |
In principle, one could take any part of speech as a prototype and look for its properties in other parts of speech. One could, for example, speak of pronominal, adverbial properties etc. For the purposes of this guide, however, discussing nominal, adjectival and verbal properties is sufficient.
There's two means by which word forms get created: synthesis and analysis. With synthetic forms, the change is made to the word itself, e.g. changing the ending or the root vowel. Analytic forms get created by combining the main word with some kind of helper word in a specific way.
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Examples of synthesis (1) and analysis (2). In case of verbs, analytic forms get created by combining the main verb with an auxiliary verb in a predefined way, e.g. verb to be followed by the present participle of the main verb to express continuous aspect1. |
1 Even though one often speaks of continuous tenses, e.g. the present continous tense, in a more detailed analysis, present tense and continous aspect can be viewed as separate grammatical categories. Our analysis will maintain that distinction.
When a word changes form, it is called inflection; furthermore, inflection of all parts of speech except verbs is called declension, and inflection of verbs is called conjugation.
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Examples of inflection: declension (1) (2) and conjugation (3). |
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While terms inflection and declension are usually only used with reference to synthetic forms, the term conjugation is often expanded to include analytic forms as well (4). |
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Forms like (5), cf. (2), are usually not considered inflection or declension, but are instead referred to as periphrastic constructions1a. |
1a Periphrasis is the mechanism by which analytic forms get created. It simply means using multiple words to express meaning that could otherwise, at least in principle, be expressed more succinctly, e.g. through inflection. However not all periphrastic constructions are referred to as analytic forms.
The term analytic form suggests a sufficient degree of grammaticalizaton of helper words within the construction—i.e. a common form of periphrasis becoming a grammatical structure—whereas the term periphrastic construction suggests that the construction has not (yet) become a grammatical structure, but is simply a common phrasing used to express the same meaning as a grammatical structure would—e.g. (5), cf. (2).
When it is time to consider something a grammatical structure rather than simply a common way of saying things, can be a matter of debate and/or convention within a certain grammatical tradition, but it is gauged based on how much of their original lexical meaning the helper words in a structure like that have lost, and thus have become pure grammatical markers, i.e. have come to express grammatical meaning only. The difference between lexical and grammatical meaning is discussed in the next section.
1b Furthermore, the term analytic form is most often used with reference to verb forms, even though the nature of the structures in (5) is no different from that of those in (4).
These disparities in terminology are most likely a result of grammatical traditions of the past being predominantly single language-focused, with little thought given to how those terms would apply cross-linguistically. The need for language-independent terminological framework seems to be apparent.
The complete set of inflected forms of a word is called a paradigm. One of the forms is chosen as the base form, also known as the dictionary form.
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Partial1 paradigm of the English verb to play (1) and the Latin verb amō (‘I love’) (2). Note how the English verb has significantly fewer inflectional endings in comparison to the Latin one. Also note that the base/dictionary form of the English verb is the infinitive—a very common choice for many languages, and that of the Latin verb is the first person singular (present indicative active)3. The choice of the base/dictionary form is a convention specific to any given language, and only has bearing on referring to the verb as such, nominatively (e.g. “the verb to play”, “the verb amō”) and on looking up verbs in dictionaries4. |
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1 The full paradigm would be very large and is covered in the final section of this guide. Furthermore, since English verbs conjugate for person and number to a very limited extent, in the later sections of this guide, conjugation for person and number will be represented in an abbreviated form, like this: play(s), am/are/is, have/has etc.
2 Latin didn't have third person pronouns per se, but rather used demonstrative pronouns such as hic/haec/hoc (‘this’) or is/ea/id (‘that one just mentioned’) to perform the same function.
3 That is, first person, singular number, present tense, indicative mood, active voice. The grammatical categories of tense, mood and voice are discussed in a dedicated section below.
4 The infinitive particle to is not included in the dictionary entry's headword. Infinitive without the particle to is called bare infinitive.
A subset of forms from which the rest of the forms in the paradigm can be derived is called principal parts.1b
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Principal parts of the verbs to play (1) and to write (2). To play is a weak verb, and to write is a strong verb.1a Significance of this distinction and peculiarities of each type will be discussed in the section on synthetic verb forms below. For English verbs, the principal parts are infinitive, past simple and participle II. These forms and derivation of other forms from them is discussed in a dedicated section below. |
Note that principal parts is primarily a lexicographic device. That is, a way to concisely represent a verb's paradigm in a dictionary entry.
When it comes to learning the actual forms and their usage, it is best done through exposure in an immersion-based language learning practice.
Overuse of conjugation excercises in traditional language learning approaches leads to mechanistic regurgitation of patterns without learning to associate the parts of the language that one wishes to learn with real-world experiences. Such approaches are extremely ineffective in that they stunt language learners' progress and do not lead to language acquisition.
1a Weak and strong verbs are also often referred to as regular and irregular verbs in English grammar. The terms weak and strong, however, are used to refer to the same classes of verbs in all Germanic languages (e.g. English, Dutch, German, Swedish etc.). The terms weak and strong will be preferred in this guide.
1b For many verbs, it is possible to derive all of their forms from their principal parts. However, there are also verbs for which this is not the case.
Thus, in this guide, we will reserve the terms regular and irregular, to refer to those two classes of verbs, respectively.
That is, under our definition, a regular verb is a verb whose full paradigm can be derived from its principal parts, and an irregular verb is one whose full paradigm cannot be derived its principal parts.
There are two types of meaning expressed in word forms: lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning is the meaning of a word as it is described in a dictionary. Grammatical meaning is that which is expressed by means of grammatical categories, of which English verbs have six: person, number, tense, aspect, mood and voice.
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In the examples below, the verb forms are encased in a frame split horizontally into two parts. The top part represents lexical meaning; the bottom part, grammatical meaning. Imagine picking up and lifting the part of the verb form that holds lexical meaning, and putting it into the top part of the frame, leaving the part that holds grammatical meaning in the bottom part of the frame. The “lifted” part is grayed out in the examples below. Thus, to read the sentence normally, read the bottom part, including the grayed-out part. |
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Synthetic (1) and analytic (2) (3) verb forms expressing lexical and grammatical meaning. |
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Note how the main verb (precisely, its root) carries lexical meaning, and grammatical meaning is expressed either through inflection in case of synthetic forms (1), or, in case of analytic forms, by means of helper verbs which combine with the main verb and with each other in predefined ways (2) (3). Specifics of how various verb forms get created are discussed in a dedicated section below. Grammatical meaning conveys information such as whether an action is happening habitually (1), is taking place right now (2), has been taking place all the way up until the present moment (3) etc.1, while lexical meaning conveys the core meaning of the verb. Lexical meaning, the ‘dictionary’ meaning of a word, can also be thought of as the part of the meaning that remains unchanged as the word changes form. |
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1 Other kinds of information expressed through grammatical meaning are, for instance, whether a reference is being made to the past, present or future; or—albeit to a quite limited extent in case of English—information about person and number: the -s ending in (1), the am form of the helper verb to be in (2), and the form have (as opposed to has) in (3).
Since conjugation for person and number is quite limited in English, the conjugated verb form is almost always accompanied by a pronoun to convey that information unabmiguously: I am playing (2), I have been playing (3). This is not always the case in other languages (e.g. Spanish, Latin) that have distinct verb forms for each person–number combination. See this example above.
Verb forms come in two distinct types: finite forms and non-finite forms. Finite forms are those that can be used as (main part of the) predicate in a sentence. Non-finite forms are those that cannot.
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Finite verb forms are those that function as predicates (1), while non-finite verb forms have properties of other parts of speech (2). |
English verbs have four non-finite forms: infinitive, gerund, participle I and participle II. Non-finite forms can also be referred to as verbals—not to be confused with verbal properties of parts of speech.
Verbals/non-finite verb forms, however, do have verbal properties—as well as properties of other parts of speech: infinitive and gerund have nominal properties, and participle I and participle II have adjectival properties.
The term verbal thus refers to this mixed nature of those verb forms: they are sort of like verbs, they are verb-derived, and maintain some of those verbs' properties—but they also have properties of other parts of speech.
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Non-finite forms functioning the same way nouns (1) (2) and adjectives (3) (4) would—revealing their nominal and adjectival properties. |
Non-finite forms also play an important role in creation of analytic froms. The exact details of how analytic forms get created are discussed in a dedicated section below.
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Non-finite forms functioning as part of analytic forms. |
At the base of the English tense system are two binary oppositions: non-past vs past and non-future vs future.
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English tense system. |
Present, past, future, and future in the past can thus be regarded as labels for each of the four cases arising out of those two binary oppositions.
Similarly to the grammatical category of tense, with aspect we also have two binary oppositions: non-continuous vs continous and non-perfect vs perfect.
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English aspect system. |
Simple, perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous can thus, analogously to tense-related terms discussed above, be regarded as labels for each of the four cases arising out of those two binary oppositions.
Out of the aforementioned binary oppositions, the following tense–aspect system arises:
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English tense–aspect system. |
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English verbs have four moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative. Moods, in contrast with tenses and aspects, cannot be combined, and are in either-or relationship with each other. That is, a verb is always in one and only one of listed states.
English verbs have two voices: active and passive. Voices, same as moods, are in either-or relationship with each other.
We'll start the overview of English verb forms with synthetic forms. We'll be using two verbs as main examples: a weak verb to play and a strong verb to write.
We'll also take a look at forms of four more verbs: to be, to have, will and to do. We'll need those verbs to create analytic forms in the next section.
In a previous section we discussed how all forms of any given regular verb can be derived from a subset of forms called principal parts. It was also mentioned that this is not the case for irregular verbs.
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Principal parts of a weak verb to play, a strong verb to write, and four irregular verbs: to be, to have, will and to do. |
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Most of the verb forms in English are analytic. All synthetic forms of our example verbs, together with the three principal parts from the above table, are shown in the table below:
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All synthetic forms of a weak verb to play, a strong verb to write, and four irregular verbs: to be, to have, will and to do. |
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1 The verb will has what is called a defective paradigm. A defective paradigm is a paradigm that lacks some of the forms that a verb in a given language is expected to have. In this case, will even lacks the infinitive, the normal dictionary form of English verbs. For that reason, the present tense form will is used as the dictionary form instead.
All analytic forms of English verbs can be derived by using the following model:
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Building blocks for deriving analytic forms of English verbs. The left part of each block represents the auxiliary verb; the right part, the main verb. In the right part, the form that the main verb should be put into, is shown. Building blocks in (2) can also combine with each other, which is shown below. The do-support block (1) stands separately and cannot be combined with other blocks. |
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The complete2 set of analytic forms can be derived by using the following algorithm:
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The Future, Perfect, Continuous and Passive building blocks can all be combined to form more complex analytic forms. Here are the rules for how this works: 1) The auxiliary in the next block in the chain takes the form ‘requested’ by the previous block. 2) The blocks are always combined in this order. 3) Any of the four blocks can be skipped (as long as there is at least one left). If skipping blocks leaves a ‘gap’ in the chain, the rule remains the same: the auxiliary in the next block takes the form requested by the previous block. That is, proceed as thought there was no gap, while maintaining the order of blocks. |
Below, a few examples of combining the building blocks are given:
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Examples of combining building blocks in order to create more complex analytic forms. |
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1 Infinitive here is the bare infinitive, i.e an infinitive without the particle to.
2 Except for the do-support forms which stand separately and cannot be combined with other building blocks. That is, here we are deriving a complete set of forms resulting from working with building blocks that can be combined.
All synthetic and analytic forms that we described in the previous section, when put together, give rise to the full conjugation paradigm of a given verb.
All finite and non-finite forms of our example verbs—the weak verb to play and the strong verb to write—are shown in two tables below:
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The table below has the same structure as the table above, but contains an extra column denoting the verbal1.
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Note how in both of the above tables, in analytic forms, the first auxiliary in the chain takes a synthetic form dictated by the type of the analytic form.
For example, if the analytic form is present continuous indicative active, the first auxiliary to be takes the present indicative form: am/are/is playing. If the analytic form is perfect active gerund, the first auxiliary takes the gerund form: having played.
See the synthetic forms table above for all of the different synthetic forms of auxiliary verbs.
1 From this table, one can see that a verbal is almost like a “side part of speech”. It is closely related to the verb, but also has properties of other parts of speech.
And since we've been using the term finite forms to refer to individual verb forms—rather than sets of forms like we can see in this table for each verbal—I prefer to reserve the term non-finite forms to still refer to individual forms, like we did with the finite forms, and use the term verbal to refer to those sets of forms that we can see in this table: infinitive, gerund, participle I and participle II.
