The Major Parts of SpeechV Vs Ved Ving Ven
Base Ing-form En-form
Infinitive Present Past Progressive Past Participle
start starts started starting started
clean cleans cleaned cleaning cleaned
try tries tried trying tried
run runs ran running run
bring brings brought bringing brought
see sees saw seeing seen
throw throws threw throwing thrown
shrink shrinks shrank shrinking shrunk
hit hits hit hitting hit
table 4: principal parts of selected verbs
Table 4 also shows some important properties of verb inflections. First,
certain inflections sometimes require changes in the spelling of the root (e.g.,
tries, hitting). Phonologically, these words follow the regular patterns noted
above. Second, for regular verbs—e.g., start, clean, try—the past tense and
Ven-forms are identical in sound and spelling. Irregular verbs—those which,
for historical reasons, differ from the general pattern—display a variety of in-
flectional differences, but almost exclusively in the Ved and Ven-forms. With
very few exceptions (e.g., is, has, does), Vs and Ving forms fit the general pat-
tern. Moreover, some irregular verbs, such as bring and hit, follow the same
pattern as regular ones by having identical Ved and Ven forms, though these
are not formed by adding {-ed}. Besides varying among themselves in the for-
mation of Ved and Ven forms, irregular verbs sometimes have dialect variants.
For instance, shrink has the alternate past shrunk. Although shrank resembles
the historically older form of the verb, shrunk reflects a pressure in modern
English to make irregulars more regular, especially by making the Ved and
Ven forms identical. Indeed, the archaic shrunken is used now only as an ad-
jective, e.g., shrunken head. Only a few modern English verbs, such as broken
and frozen, actually still use {-en} for the past participle form, though dialects
vary—British English uses mown as past participle, whereas American Eng-
lish uses mowed. Finally, irregular verbs often have regional and social variants
that may be stigmatized, particularly in academic settings. Students are often,
unfortunately and inaccurately, considered slow or ignorant if they use dove,
drunk, and seen as the past tense forms of dive, drink, and see. We discuss these
issues in our chapters on Usage and Language Variation in Book II.