Plain English. Marian Wharton
time—and action progressing and not yet completed in the present, in the past or in the future. Then it can also change to show whether its subject is acting or being acted upon. Isn't the verb a wonderfully accommodating member of the co-operative commonwealth of words?
And can you not see hidden under all this, a marvelous development in the intellectual needs of men from the day of the savage's signs and grunts to the day when we can express such shades of meaning? This tool of expression, language, has had a wonderful evolution side by side with the evolution of the other tools by which man expresses his creative genius; from the forked stick with which man scratched the soil to the great machine-driven plow of today; from the simple threshing flail to the monster threshing machine of modern times.
There is nothing so wonderful as man's ability to express himself. Add a little to your knowledge every day and the sum total will soon surprise you.
INFLECTION—CHANGES IN FORM
104. You remember that nouns have certain changes in form to indicate changes in use. Verbs also have several changes in form to correspond with changes in their use or meaning. Notice the following sentences:
I think.
I thought.
I work.
I worked.
What is the difference in the meaning of I think and I thought? of I work and I worked? When we say, I think, or I work, we mean that the action is now, to-day, in the present; but when we say, I thought, or I worked, we mean that now is not the time of the action, but that the action was performed sometime in the past. So we have a change in the verb form to denote time. The simple form of the verb, like think or work, is used to denote present time. When we wish to express past time we do it by changing the form of the verb. Now note the following:
Now let us write this in another way.
105. You notice in this table we use the expressions first person, second person, and third person. I and we indicate the person or persons speaking and are called the first person. You indicates the person or persons spoken to and is called the second person. He, she, it, they, and the person or persons or things spoken of, are called the third person.
We use the word you when speaking to one or more than one now-a-days. It used to be that when speaking to a single person, people said thou, and in speaking to two or more they said you. But we today have dropped the old form thou, and use you for both singular and plural.
106. Now note, in the above table, that there is only one form change in the verb, and this is in the third person singular. We say I call, You call, We call, They, or The men call, but we say He, or the man calls, in speaking of one person or thing. So we change the form of the verb with any subject which denotes the third person and the singular number. This form is made by adding s to the simple form of the verb, therefore we may call it the s-form because it always ends in s.
Remember that this s-form is used to express present time with a third person, singular subject. BE CAREFUL NOT TO USE THIS FORM WITH ANY PLURAL SUBJECT. There is no other change in the verb form in expressing the present time in any verb, except in the verb be.
107. This little verb be is one of the most troublesome verbs in our language, and since it is used in forming verb phrases, it will be well to commit the following table to memory. Watch closely your use of this bothersome little word. Note that it has a change in form for the first person singular, as well as for the third person singular. All other verbs have just the one change, the s-form for the third person singular. The verb be has a form also to use with the first person singular, the pronoun I.
108. The present time form is the form which expresses present time. It is expressed by the simple form of the verb with the exception of the third person singular, which is expressed by the s-form.
PAST TIME
109. To express past time we change the form of the verb. Notice the following:
Notice that these various forms of the verb which express past time are all made by changes from the simple form, which expresses present time. You will also notice that these five verbs used in the above table all form their past time form in different ways. For example, call adds ed; send changes the final letter from d to t; fall changes the vowel in the middle of the word from a to e; bring changes both the vowel and the final letter from bring to brought; hide drops the final letter e.
110. Verbs whose past time forms are made by adding d or ed to the simple form are called regular verbs.
Verbs whose past time forms are made in some other way than by adding d or ed are called irregular verbs.
111. There are about two hundred of these irregular verbs which form their past time in the following ways:
1. By change in the vowel letter, as fall, fell; write, wrote; see, saw; sing, sang; come, came.
2. By dropping the final vowel; as hide, hid; slide, slid; bite, bit.
3. By dropping a vowel from the middle of the word; as bleed, bled; feed, fed; lead, led.
4. By changing the final letter or letters; as send, sent; lose, lost; spend, spent.
5. By changing the vowel and final letters; as bring, brought; seek, sought; catch, caught.
6. By changing the vowel sound and adding t or d; as sleep, slept; feel, felt; flee, fled.
There are some irregular forms which we must learn and be exceedingly careful in their use. Study the list in this lesson.
Exercise 1
Write the present and past time forms of the following verbs as the verb think is written in the table given below.
think
ride
have
give
write
ask
make
try
speak
run
see
do
112. Be very careful not to use the s-form except for the third person singular. Be especially careful in the use of different forms of the verb be. It is in the use of this verb that we so frequently make mistakes. Watch your own language and the conversation of your friends and note these mistakes and correct them in your own mind. These common blunders in the use of English mark us as careless or uneducated by everyone who hears us speak. We have fallen into bad habits oftentimes and make these mistakes when we know better, and only constant watchfulness for a time can overcome the habit. After a time we learn to speak correctly without effort, and then these mistakes made by others offend the ear like a