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It is formed with the present tense of have (have or has), the past participle of be (been), and the present participle of the main verb and the ending -ing. This construction is used for ongoing action in the past that continues right up to the present or has recently finished:
4. Participles are used to form periphrastic verb tenses: The present participle forms the progressive aspect with the auxiliary verb be: Jim was sleeping. The past participle forms the perfect aspect with the auxiliary verb have: The chicken has eaten. 5. The past participle is used to form passive voice: The chicken was eaten.
The past participle is been, and the present participle and gerund is the regular being. The base form be is used regularly as an infinitive, imperative and (present) subjunctive. For archaic forms, see the next section. English has a number of modal auxiliary verbs which are defective.
Regular verbs have identical past tense and past participle forms in -ed, but there are 100 or so irregular English verbs with different forms (see list). The verbs have , do and say also have irregular third-person present tense forms ( has , does /dʌz/ , says /sɛz/ ).
With the exception of the highly irregular verb be, an English verb can have up to five forms: its plain form (or bare infinitive), a third person singular present tense, a past tense (or preterite), a past participle, and the -ing form that serves as both a present participle and gerund.
Some weak verbs with long vowels in their present tense stems (such as keep) took a short vowel in the past tense and past participle (kept). [4] In some weak verbs ending in a final -t or -d, this final consonant coalesced with the weak past ending to leave a single -t or -d in the past forms.
This is followed by the simple past tense , and then the past participle. If there are irregular present tense forms (see below), these are given in parentheses after the infinitive. (The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.)
The past participle of saw is normally sawn in BrE and sawed in AmE (as in sawn-off/sawed-off shotgun). [1]: 487 The past participle gotten is rarely used in modern BrE, which generally uses got except when fixed in old expressions such as ill-gotten gains and in the minority of dialects that retain the older form. The American dictionary ...