II. Grammatical categories and forms of verbs

The verb has the grammatical categories of person, number, tense, voice, and mood.

Thus, English verbs change more readily and more often than words of any other part of speech. This change may be confusing for a foreign language learner as even small changes in the form of a verb reflect many differences in meaning.

The forms of the verb are broadly divided into two classes: the Finite and Nonfinite forms, or Verbals.

The Finite forms (личные формы) of the verb are those which limit the verb to a particular number, tense, person or mood: I go; she goes; she went, etc.).

The Nonfinite forms (неличные формы) do not limit the verb to any grammatical categories. A nonfinite form of the verb remains the same in a clause, regardless of any its grammatical variation. For example, when -ing form is used (asking), the verb can be referring to any number, tense or mood.

There are three Nonfinite forms of the verb for:

the Infinitive (or the base form): to ask, to teach;

the Present Participle and Gerund (the -ing form): asking, teaching;

the Past Participle (the -ed form) in regular verbs: asked, taught.

All in all, generally speaking, almost every English verb has four (if it is regular) or five (if it is irregular) major forms:

Major Verb Forms

	Regular	Irregular
the Infinitive (base) form	(to) walk	(to) go
the -s form (3-d person sing. Simple Present)	walks	goes
the -ing (Present Participle and Gerund) form	walking	going
the -ed (Simple Past) form	walked	went
the -ed (Past Participle) form	walked	gone

Modal verbs have a less number of forms and the verb to be has eight forms.

Taking into account the forms of all grammatical categories that finite verbs can express, the real number of the verb forms becomes much more various and will be discussed in detail in the following units.

E x e r c i s e s

2.1. Identify the verbs in the following sentences by underlining the auxiliary verb once and the main verb twice.

1. Helen is going to take her entrance exams to the University.

2. Will she pass her exams?

3. She should study hard.

4. Does she work hard on her exams?

5. She has been reading for 6 hours a day all this year round.

6. She became a finalist for a Morehead Scholarship.

7. The cafeteria food smelled terrible.

8. These pears taste delicious.

9. The professor is his office.

10. She was my roommate.

11. He is living in Germany.

12. He doesn’t have any money.

13. I saw an elephant at the zoo but I did not see a giraffe.

14. They could have seen a giraffe.

15. They must have been being advised by the government.

2.2. Determine if the following sentences contain a transitive (t) or intransitive (I) verb.

1. He told Mary of a party at the Student Union.

2. Dennis cried to his girlfriend about his low economics degree.

3. My mother always says, “Think before you speak”.

4. He showed me the new computer printer.

5. The bell rings to end school.

6. He is young, but he’s learning fast.

7. What did you learn at school today?

8. Could you stop the bus, please? I want to get off.

9. Do you think you could stop in front of the post office?

10. We are running a course of English.

11. I can’t run as fast as I used to.

12. She is studying for a law degree.

13. He studied law at university.

14. You are not allowed to drive a car until you are eighteen.

15. She learned to drive when she was eighteen.