Basic Forms of the Verb

Basic Forms of the Verb	Regular Verbs	Irregular Verbs
Infinitive	to live; to stay; to study	to be; to buy; to lie
Past Indefinite	lived; stayed; studied	was/were; bought; lay
Past Participle	lived; stayed; studied	been; bought; lain
Present Participle	living; staying; studying	being; buying; lying

**TASK 5. Define the basic form of the underlined verbs in the joke below.

An Old Cow

A man was driving down a country road in the middle of dairy farm country when his car stalled inexplicably. He got out and raised the hood to see if he could find out what had happened.

A brown and white cow slowly lumbered from the field she had been grazing in over to the car and stuck her head under the hood beside the man. After a moment the cow looked at the man and said, "Looks like a bad carburetor to me." Then she walked back into the field and began grazing again.

Amazed, the man walked back to the farmhouse he had just passed, where he met a farmer. "Hey, mister, is that your cow in the field?" he asked. The farmer replied, "The brown and white one? Yep, that's old Bessie."

The man then said, "Well my car's broken down, and she just said, 'Looks like a bad carburetor to me.'

The farmer shook his head and said, "Don't mind old Bessie, son. She don't know a thing about cars."

Present indefinite (present simple)

Formation. Do you often visit your grandparents? – I visit them every week.

Does Derek watch television every day? – No, he doesn’t. His parents don’t allow him to waste time on it.

Present Indefinite is used in the following cases:

1. for permanent states, repeated actions and daily routines,

e.g. Mr. Freeman works in a bank. (permanent state)

He takes the train to work every morning. (daily routine/repeated actions)

We don’t usually watch television in the morning. (repeated action)

Do you always get up at one and the same time? (daily routine)

2. for general truths and laws of nature,

e.g. The sun sets in the west.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

3. for timetables (planes, trains, etc.) and programmes.

e.g. The plane from Brussels arrives 8:30.

When does this shop open?

4. for sports commentaries, reviews and narration, opera and theatre librettos, stage directions

e.g. Peterson overtakes Williams and wins the race. (sports commentary)

Mike Dalton plays the part of Macbeth. (review)

Then the prince gets on his horse and quickly rides away. (narration)

5. to give instructions or directions (instead of the imperative mood).

e.g. You sprinkle some cheese on the pizza and then you bake it, (instead of: “Sprinkle some cheese on the pizza...”)

6. in adverbial clauses of time and condition after the following conjunctions:

when if unless before till until

while after in case as long as as soon as

e.g. The children won’t go to the park unless they do all their homework.

As soon as Bertha arrives at the station, she will sent us a telegram.

Note: Don’t confuse adverbial clauses of time and condition and object clauses:

Adverbial clauses of time and condition (only present tenses)	Object clauses (any tense)
Ask Sonia to phone me (when?) when she comes home. - (time) Ask Sonia to phone me (on what condition?) if she comes before 9 p.m. (condition)	Do you know (what?) when Sonia will come home? I wonder (what?) if Sonia will come before 9 p.m.

7. with stative verbs instead of Present Continuous,

e.g. I hate when it drizzles like this.

The cake smells delicious.

8. The Present Simple is used with the following time expressions (adverbial modifiers of time: