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Many languages, including English, have ditransitive verbs that denote two objects, and some verbs may be ambitransitive in a manner that is either transitive (e.g., "I read the book" or "We won the game") or intransitive (e.g., "I read until bedtime" or "We won") depending on the given context.
Historically, English used to have a similar verbal paradigm. Some historic verb forms are used by Shakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants (I do, thou dost, he doth) of the modern forms. Some languages with verbal agreement can leave certain subjects implicit when the subject is fully determined by the verb form.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
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/).
The verbs do, say and have additionally have irregular third person singular present tense forms (see below). The copular verb be is highly irregular, with the forms be, am, is, are, was, were, been and being. On the other hand, modal verbs (such as can and must) are defective verbs, being used only in a limited number of forms.
Newly coined verbs in English overwhelmingly use the 'weak' (regular) ending -ed for the past tense and past participle (for example, spammed, e-mailed). Similarly, the only clearly productive plural ending is -(e)s ; it is found on the vast majority of English count nouns and is used to form the plurals of neologisms , such as FAQs and Muggles .
The verb be has a larger number of different forms (am, is, are, was, were, etc.), while the modal verbs have a more limited number of forms. Some forms of be and of certain other auxiliary verbs also have contracted forms (' s, 're, 've, etc.). For full details of how these inflected forms of verbs are produced, see English verbs.
Generally, native (Anglo-Saxon) verbs allow the DOC form, whereas Latinate verbs do not. This is thought to be primarily due to the stress associated with native verbs, rather than etymological conditions, as native verbs often have a single metrical foot as opposed to multiple metrical feet common of Latinate verbs. [2]