Verbs and Verb Phrases

Principal Parts and Aspect

So far we have looked more closely at the auxiliary verbs and how they relate to factors that affect verb form.  Auxiliary verbs relate to subject-verb agreement and to sentence type.  Let us now look briefly at the main verb forms.  The main verb forms relate to the ways the action of the verb relate to other events, in particular to the utterance of the sentence itself.  Also involved in the issue of how events relate to each other is the consideration of which part of an action is of greatest interest: the whole action altogether, just the beginning of the action, the middle of the action, or the completion of the action.  The term given to refer to these factors is aspect.

In English when we focus on the whole action altogether, we use the simple aspect.  When we refer to the middle of an action, we use the progressive aspect.  When we refer to the completion of an action, we use the perfect aspect.  The main verb forms relate to these aspects.  When the simple aspect is used, the main verb takes the base verb form itself, except for simple past affirmative statements. When the progressive aspect is used, the main verb takes the –ing affix added to the base form, called the present participle form of the verb.  When the perfect aspect is used, the past participle form is used for the main verb.  This is a simplistic introduction, but it will suffice at this point.

Also essential to understand at this point is that English has both regular and irregular verbs.  All verbs have a base form, and all verbs attach –ing to the base form to create the present participle for the progressive aspect.  However, not all verbs attach –ed to the base form to create the affirmative simple past statement.  This is one way that irregular verbs differ from regular verbs, which do use a suffix attached to the base form.  Finally, regular verbs also use the –ed suffix attached to the base form to create the past participle, which is used with the perfect aspect.  Irregular verbs use a variety of different forms, but one distinctive form is the –en suffix added to the base form.  The –en suffix is often used as a shorthand symbol for all past participle forms, including those that take the regular –ed form.

English grammar reference books identify three principal parts for main verbs, 1) the base form (infinitive), 2) the simple past form (included because of its high frequency and the distinctive irregular verb forms), and 3) the past participle.  Fig. 11 shows the various principal parts of some example verbs and the terminology and shorthand references.

Fig. 11: Principal Parts of Verbs

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