A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§ 1.1 The verb paradigm 31

time. For example, in the more complex construction It would be better if I took

them to school next week we have the same preterite form took, but here the time

is future. We'll look into this a bit more in §5.2 below. Right now we simply want

to point out that although making a reference to past time is the central use of the

preterite (which is why we call it a past tense), a preterite doesn't ALWAYS signal

past time.

Present tense

The central use of present tense forms is to indicate present time. For example, The

door opens inwards describes a state of affairs that obtains now, at the moment of

speaking. This explains why the present tense forms are so called, but here too it

must be emphasised that they are not invariably used for referring to present time.

In The exhibition opens next week, for example, we again have the same verb-form,

but here the exhibition is claimed to open at some time in the future.

3rd singular present vs plain present

Almost all verbs have two present tense forms, such as walks and walk in [2]. The

choice between them depends on the subject of the clause: the verb agrees with the

subject. The 3rd person singular form occurs with a 3rd person singular subject (e.g.

She walks home), and the plain present tense form occurs with any other kind of

subject (e.g. They walk home).

The agreement involves the categories of person and number, which apply in

the first instance to NPs and hence are discussed more fully in Ch. 5, §§2, 8.2.

Number, contrasting singular and plural, needs no further commentary at this point.

Person contrasts 1st person (I and we), 2nd person (you) and 3rd person (all other

NPs). Thus the 3rd person singular present form occurs with 3rd person singular

subjects and the plain form with any other subject - whether plural (My parents

walk home), 1st person (l walk home) or 2nd person (You walk home).

We call this walk the 'plain' present tense (in preference to the cumbersome 'non-

3rd person singular') because it is identical with the lexical base of the lexeme. The

lexical base is the starting-point for the rules of morphology which describe how the

various inflectional forms are derived. The 3rd person singular present tense walks

is formed from the lexical base by adding 's, the gerund-participle is formed by

adding 'ing, while the plain present tense involves no such operation on the lexical

base.

The plain form

The plain form is likewise identical with the lexical base of the verb. But it is not a
present tense form, so we call it simply 'plain form' in contrast to 'plain present'.
The distinction between these two inflectional forms is discussed in § 1.2 below.
The plain form is used in three syntactically distinct clause constructions:
imperative, SUbjunctive, and infinitival. Infinitival clauses have two subtypes, the
to-infinitival and the bare infinitival. These constructions are illustrated in [3] with
the plain form of keep: