Verb

Verbs are one of the most important components of speech (word classes). [English verbs, like other types of words in the language, are not significantly inflected. The majority of Tense, aspect, mood, and voice combinations are conveyed periphrastically, with auxiliary verb forms. Although there are roughly 200 irregular verbs, most verbs inflect in a straightforward regular manner. The copula verb be is more irregular and has a larger variety of inflected forms.

Base form
An English verb's base form, or plain form, is devoid of any inflectional endings. Certain derivational suffixes, such as -en (eaten), -ate (deate), -fy (exemplify), and -ise/ize (realise/realize), are commonly employed to form verbs. Prefixes such as un- (unable), out- (outlast), over- (overreacting), and under- (undertake) are used in many verbs.

Principal Parts
A regular English verb has only one main component from which all of the verb's forms can be deduced. The verb write, for example, includes three main parts: begin (base form), began (past), and begun (past participle) As with send–sent–sent, several irregular verbs have identical Past tense and Past Participle forms (as do regular verbs). With the forms be, am, is, are, was, were, been, and being.

Past tense
The past tense, or preterite, can be formed in either a regular or irregular manner. The past tense is formed (in terms of spelling) by adding -ed to the base form of ordinary verbs (play, played) If the base forms terminate in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, the consonant is doubled before adding the ending, unless the last syllable is fully unstressed.

There are two past tense forms of the verb be: was (first and third person singular) and were (first and third person plural) (plural and second person) In the simple past, the past tense (preterite) is employed in sentences like "We started the fire" and "He liked to dance." Some of them are Germanic strong verbs, while others are weak verbs with the letter "i".

Regular verbs' past participle is the same as the preterite (past tense) form described in the previous section. See English irregular verbs for more information. Some have different past tense and past specific forms (for example, sing–sang–sung); others have the same form for both (for example, make–made–made). In some cases, such as show–showed–shown, the past tense is correct but the past participle is not, as in show–showed–shown.

Present Participle
By appending the suffix -ing to the base form, the present participle form is formed: go to going. A final silent e is dropped (believe), and the final ie is changed to y (lie), with consonant doubling. Forms such as singeing, dyeing, ageing, rueing, cacheing, and whingeing are examples of exceptions, where the e may be retained to avoid confusion with otherwise identical words.

In the present tense, the copular verb be has several irregular forms. Be is frequently used as an infinitive, imperative, and (present) subjunctive. English has a number of modal verbs that do not inflect and thus have only one form, which is used as a finite verb with subjects of all persons and numbers. Can and could, may and might, shall and should, will and would, as well as must, ought (to), need, and dare are examples of these verbs.

Auxiliary Verb
Auxiliary verbs are verbs that provide additional functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which they appear. It can convey tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, and so on. A chain of two or more auxiliary verbs can be found in some sentences. Helping verbs, helper verbs, and (verbal) auxiliaries are other names for auxiliary verbs. They are usually used in conjunction with an infinitive verb or a participle, and they provide the main semantic content of the clause.

Regular and Irregular Verbs
Any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs is referred to as a regular verb. An irregular verb is one whose inflection follows a different pattern. The distinction between regular and irregular verbs is, to some extent, subjective. If a language's conjugational paradigm is followed by a limited number of verbs, opinions may differ on whether the verbs in question are irregular.

Copular Verb
Be is a copular verb and is frequently used as an infinitive, imperative, and subjunctive in present. In the present tense, it has several irregular forms: am for first person singular, is for third person singular (often contracted to's), and are for plural and second person. The regular past participle is been, and the regular present participle and gerund is being.

Finite and Non-finite verbs
The simple past is commonly used to describe past actions or states: Columbus had left an hour before; he knew the shape of the world. Present forms, rather than will forms, are used in subordinate clauses expressing a condition or a time reference: If/when you get there (rather than when you will get there).

The use of tense and aspectual forms in condition and conditional clauses follows distinct patterns; for more information, see conditional mood. See the sequence of titudes for more information on how to use tenses in indirect speech. See English subjunctive forms for more information.

Non-finite verbs is a bare infinitive, which is identical to the base form of the verb, is used as a complement to most modal verbs and certain other verbs, It forms the to-infinitive, which can be used as a noun phrase.