Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A typical English verb may have five different inflected forms: The base form or plain form (go, write, climb), which has several uses—as an infinitive, imperative, present subjunctive, and present indicative except in the third-person singular. The -s form (goes, writes, climbs), used as the present indicative in the third-person singular.
t. e. Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs. Generally, the only inflected forms of an ...
Infinitive (abbreviated INF) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The name is derived from Late Latin [modus] infinitivus, a derivative of infinitus meaning "unlimited".
In English and other languages, catenative verbs are verbs which can be followed within the same clause by another verb. This second subordinated verb can be in either the infinitive (both full and bare) or gerund forms. An example appears in the sentence He deserves to win the cup, where "deserve" is a catenative verb which can be followed ...
Regular and irregular verbs. A regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs. A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called an irregular verb. This is one instance of the distinction between regular and irregular inflection, which can ...
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
A few verbs are regular in their spoken forms, but have irregular spelling. The irregular weak verbs (being in normal use) can consequently be grouped as follows: Verbs with vowel shortening: creep, flee, hear, keep, leap, shoe (when shod is used), sleep, sweep and weep. (Of these, creep, flee, leap, sleep and weep derive from verbs that were ...
Similarly, "to come" plus bare infinitive is acceptable to speakers of AmE, but speakers of BrE would instead use "to come and" plus bare infinitive. Thus, where a speaker of AmE may say "come see what I bought", BrE and some AmE speakers would say "come and see what I've bought" (notice the present perfect: a common British preference).