A Typology of Word Categories(52) sink+ed (= sank)
think+ed (= thought)
hit+ed (= hit)
Virtually all verbs have a past tense form, with only a handful of very exceptional
cases, such as lightening used as a verb, which can only appear in this ing form:
(53) a it is lightening
b it lightens
c it lightened
The present tense inflection is slightly different to the past tense one. Compare the
examples in the following:
(54) a Charlie chopped the cheese
b I chopped the cheese
c you chopped the cheese
d they chopped the cheese
e etc.
(55) a Charlie chops the cheese
b I chop∆∆∆∆ the cheese
c you chop∆∆∆∆ the cheese
d they chop∆∆∆∆ the cheese
e etc.
In (54) the verb has the same past tense inflection in all permutations of the sentence,
but in (55) there is a difference between the first example and all the others. This
corresponds to the fact that the argument which precedes the verb in the first case is
third person and singular and in all other cases this argument is either plural or first or
second person (I or you). This argument is called the subject and we will discuss its
nature and properties in the next chapter. For now we will simply use the term to refer
to the argument in front of the verb without further discussion. The morphological
phenomenon shown in (55) is known as agreement. We say that the verb agrees with
certain features (number and person) of the subject (later on, we will see that it is the
inflection that agrees with the subject and that this is independent of the verb). English
does not demonstrate much in the way of agreement inflection. For the vast majority of
verbs it is only in the present tense and with a third person singular argument that the
verb has an agreement form. The exception is the verb to be, for which there are three
present tense forms (first person singular, third person singular and the rest) and two
past tense forms (first and third person singular and the rest):
(56) a I am ready
b he is ready
c you/we/they are ready