Your English Class

Regular Verbs

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Traditionally VERBS have been defined as action words. This definition, however, is rather vague. A more precise way of defining words belonging to this category is by inflection. Verbs are form class words with distinctions for base/stem, third person singular, and present participle. Their past tense and past participle forms may not be distinctive.

NOTE: Form class words are distinct form structure class words in that they admit new members by adding prefixes or suffixes to already existing base/stems in order to change word category. Form class words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

REGULAR VERBS have four inflections in addition to the base form, for which we use the null ∅ symbol, as shown below.

The following examples illustrate verb inflections:

a. [verb base/present tense]
“I hook my readers with good plots.”

b. [3rd person singular/present tense]
“The drug hooks its users slowly.”

c. [present participle]
“The fisherman was hooking one fish after another.”

d. [past tense]
“Her smile hooked me every time.”

e. [past participle]
“I’ve been hooked on that TV show for three years.”

Some spelling conventions of regular verbs require special attention.

DOUBLING OF FINAL CONSONANT
Double the final consonant when it is preceded by a single stressed vowel.

Exceptions to the above requirement are as follows:

British English doubles the final consonant with respect to certain consonants:

DELETION OF FINAL -e
Final -e is regularly dropped before the -ing and -ed inflections.

Verbs with bases in -ee, -ye, -oe, and often -ge do not drop the -e before -ing, but they do drop it before -ed.

Copyright © 2012 Thomas Fasano. Your English Class™ trademark is the property of Thomas Fasano.