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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.)
An example appears in the sentence He deserves to win the cup, where "deserve" is a catenative verb which can be followed directly by another verb, in this case a to-infinitive construction. [1] These verbs are called "catenative" because of their ability to form chains in catenative constructions. For example: We need to go to the tennis court ...
The infinitive, simple past and past participle are sometimes referred to as First (V1), Second (V2) and Third (V3) form of a verb, respectively. This naming convention has all but disappeared from American and British usage, but still can be found in textbooks and teaching materials used in other countries. [3] [4] [5] [6]
In some verbs, the past tense, past participle, or both are identical in form to the basic (infinitive) form of the verb. This is the case with certain strong verbs, where historical sound changes have led to a leveling of the vowel modifications: for example, let has both past tense and past participle identical to the infinitive, while come ...
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated aux) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. [1]
In addition, the COBUILD team identifies four groups of verbs followed by -ing forms that are hard to class as objects. In the verb + -ing object construction the action or state expressed by the verb can be separated from the action or state expressed by the -ing form. In the following groups, the senses are inseparable, jointly expressing a ...
Certain verb–modifier combinations, particularly when they have independent meaning (such as take on and get up), are known as "phrasal verbs". For details of possible patterns, see English clause syntax. See the Non-finite clauses section of that article for verb phrases headed by non-finite verb forms, such as infinitives and participles.
Certain auxiliary verbs are modal verbs (such as can, must, etc., which defective verbs lacking an infinitive form or any truly inflected non-finite form) are complemented by a bare infinitive verb. periphrastic items, such as (1) had better or ought to as substitutes for should, (2) used to as a substitute for did , and (3) (to) be able to for ...