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Conjugating Irregular Verbs

Our grades plummeted when we had to conjugate irregular verbs in Miss Hamrick’s class. There was no way to figure out a scheme or system that would explain the necessary forms of irregular verbs, that is, the past tense and the past participle. For...

Conjugating the Verb "To Be"

Now let’s take the verb to be through a complete conjugation. But first, consider its uniqueness.To Be, Unique Among All VerbsIn the entire English language, one verb stands out: the verb to be. It serves more roles than most verbs, for it can serv...

Conjugating in the Progressive Aspect

The progressive tenses show an ongoing action. Some grammarians call the progressive tense the progressive aspect. So let's learn the tricks of conjugating in the progressive aspect.Once Amber and Igor learned all about the verb to be and present par...

Contractions - Use in Formal Writing

Before we leave our general discussion of verbs, we should pause to contemplate contractions. You remember them, don’t you? There. I just used one: don’t. You form contractions by compressing two words into one. One of those words is ordinarily a...

A Summary of Verbs

We’re going to return to verbs in more detail below, but now let’s summarize what you’ve learned. For right now, you need to remember that all verbs break down into five groups.A Summary of Verbs Verbs break down into five groups:1. action tra...

Verbs - What They Do

Shake hands with the most powerful word in the English language: the verb. You learned the basics in our discussion above. Now let’s carefully explore the five functions of verbs, see what they do, and then understand why F. Scott Fitzgerald once s...

Verb Function 1 - Conjugated Verb

The conjugated verb performs the most crucial role in English: It forms the sentence. Without the conjugated verb, we would have no complete grammatical sentences.When conjugated, the verb forms two kinds of clauses. The independent clause can stand ...

Verb Function 2 - Infinitive Phrase - "To" Phrase

Remember the definition of the infinitive form of a verb: the word you would ordinarily look up in the dictionary. Its bare form is just the word by itself: write. Its periphrastic form consists of the infinitive preceded by the preposition to: to wr...

Infinitives Showing Tense and Voice

Elsewhere I’ve stated that the conjugated verb shows four things: tense, person, number, and mood. I’ve also stated that verbal phrases like the infinitive phrase do not show tense. Well, that’s true for what’s called the simple infinitive: t...

Split Infinitives

Perhaps no “rule” of grammar sparks more controversy than the “rule” against splitting infinitives. Leading experts on the English language, however, point out that the split infinitive appeared in the great works of English as early as the t...

Verb Function 3 - Present-Participial Phrase (-ing Phrase)

Every verb has a present participle. Just add ‑ing as an ending. If a silent ‑e ends the word, then drop it: write, writing. If a consonant ends the word, you’ll sometimes have to double it: beginning, occurring (check the dictionary).The prese...

Fused Participle - Noun or Pronoun and -ing Phrase

Get ready for a can of worms, for we are about to discuss what Henry Fowler called fused participles.Compare these two sentences:1. She cannot tolerate a baby going without food. 2. She cannot tolerate a baby’s going without food.Now what is it she...

Fused Participle - Solutions

Whenever you use a noun or pronoun followed by an ‑ing verb, you must figure out whether the issue of the fused participle even arises. Figure out what noun function you need in your sentence. Is it a direct object? An object of a preposition? A su...

Verb Function 4 - Past-Participial Phrase (-ed Phrase)

Every verb has a past participle, which we form by adding ‑ed for regular verbs and some other ending for irregular verbs. For the ‑ed verbs, we sometimes have to double up an ending consonant (occurred) (check the dictionary).Past participles sh...

Verb Function 5 - Participial Adjectives

We come to the end of the list of the functions of verbs. One-word participles, either present or past, serve as wonderful participial adjectives. Think about the images these verbal adjectives can paint in your writing: -ing verbs the smoking gun th...

A Final Summary of Verbs

Summary of VerbsVerbs fulfill five functions in our language. In their conjugated form, they enable us to form clauses, either as complete sentences or as dependent clauses. They also appear as infinitives (to verbs), as present participles (‑ing v...

Present Participle - The -ing Verb

Every verb in the English language has a present participle, and you form it the same way for every verb: Just add ‑ing. Sometimes you’ll have to drop an ending silent ‑e, as in write and writing. Sometimes you’ll have to double up an ending ...

Intransitive Verbs

Verbs Without ObjectsOur forbears noticed something else about their growing list of action verbs. Some lacked the ability to pick up a noun all by themselves. They could not earn that coveted label, noun-picker-upper. Thus, when they saw Amber movin...

Main Verbs - Four Kinds

We can first divide all main verbs into two broad categories: action verbs and no-action verbs. Thousands reside in the action-verb group, only a handful in the no-action group. Each of these groups further subdivides into two additional groups:Actio...

Adjectives - Definition, Overview, and Lists of Examples

WelcomeBelow you’ll find links to our discussion on adjectives. We recommend that you start with the first topic,Adjectives - Words That Describe. At the bottom of each topic, you’ll find links to “Next” and to “Previous.” So start with t...

Adjectives - Words That Describe

We’ve learned about nouns. Now we’ll look at words that describe or modify nouns. We call these words or groups of words adjectives. In this section, we’ll also learn about articles—a, an, and the.Adjectives describe or modify nouns or pronou...

Positive, Comparative, Superlative

Postive, Comparative, Superlative - Good, Better, BestRecall how we defined nouns as words capable of having plurals and possessive endings. Adjectives (and their first cousin, the adverb) also have a feature that distinguishes them. They come in thr...

States of Adjective: -er or more, -est or most

How to Form the States of AdjectivesYou ask, therefore, how to tell when to use the ‑er and ‑est endings and when to use the helping words more and most? There’s no hard and fast rule, but some rules of thumb will help:Syllable Rule for States ...

Only One State, e.g., Unique

Please notice that some adjectives have only one state, the positive state. Put another way, some adjectives cannot display the degrees shown by the comparative and the superlative states or through further modification by adverbs like very, largely,...

"A," "An," "The" - The Articles

At this point in our study of the eight parts of speech, it’s a good idea to discuss three little words we have a hard time classifying in the English language—the articles, a, an, and the.They don’t constitute a separate part of speech. But be...