Chapter 1 - Grammatical Foundations: Words(57) a I was ready
c he was ready
d you were ready
e they were ready
Some languages show a good deal more agreement phenomena than English. Consider
the Hungarian paradigm:
(58) a én vágom a sajtot
I cut the cheese
b te vágod a sajtot
you ...
c vágja a sajtot
he/she ...
d mi vágjuk a sajtot
we ...
e ti vágjátok a sajtot
you (pl.) ...
f k vágják a sajtot
they ...
(59) a én vágtam a sajtot
b te vágtad a sajtot
c vágta a sajtot
d mi vágtuk a sajtot
e ti vágtátok a sajtot
f k vágták a sajtot
The English verb has other inflectional forms expressing things other than tense.
For example there are perfect and progressive aspectual forms:
(60) past perfect progressive
went has gone is going
drove has driven is driving
hoped has hoped is hoping
put has put is putting
While tense typically places an event in time, aspect refers to the process of the event
itself: whether it has stopped or is still going on, for example. Perfect aspect often
denotes that an event has finished while progressive denotes that it is still continuing:
(61) a I have read the book (but I’m not doing it now)
b I am reading the book (it’s still going on)
As we can see from the ‘perfect’ column in (51), there is also a good deal of
irregularity with this inflectional form. As before, we will envisage this as an abstract
process in which a verbal stem and a morpheme are combined: