6.6. Regular vs irregular verbs

The majority of verbs in English are regular in the sense that their past and past participle forms are inva­riably made up by means of the suffix -ed. For example: talk — talked — talked, cry — cried — cried.

In accordance with the general rule the -ed suffix is pronounced [d] after final vowels or voiced consonants of the present tense form: cry — cried, swallow — swallowed, love — loved, beg — begged; [t] after voiceless consonants: ask — asked, miss — missed, smash — smashed, grudge — grudged; [id] after [d, t] sounds: end — ended, present — presented, doubt — doubted.

Irregular verbs do not follow the usual pattern as far as the formation of past and past participle forms are concerned. Some irregular verbs change their root vowel: run — ran — run, sing — sang — sung, meet — met — met, speak — spoke — spoken.

Some other verbs have one word for the present, past and past participle forms: put — put — put, set — set — set, shut — shut — shut.

Irregular verbs may come from different (suppletive) stems: go — went — gone; am, is, are — was, were — been.

Irregular verbs may have only one or two forms: can — could, may — might, will — would, shall — should, must, ought. Such verbs are often called defective or modals. (See 6.11. — 6.15.)

6.7. Classes of verbs: functions

With regard to the type of meaning verbs represent and their function in a sentence they are usually classified into: 1) meaningful (notional) verbs; 2) link-verbs (semi-auxiliary), 3) auxiliary verbs; 4) modal verbs.

Note that some of English verbs such as be and have. may fulfil all the above function. Some other verbs like shall, will, should, would combine auxiliary and modal functions.

Meaningful (notional) verbs such as know, read, jump, feel, cry and so on have independent lexical meaning and function in a sentence. They are used as verbal predicates and express an action or state of a per­son or thing denoted by the subject: Do you know the answer to the question? He read the book in a day. The children jumped up and down.

Meaningful verbs in the present tense form are cha­racterized by the -(e)s suffix of the third person singular: He knows four languages. She never cries.

The exceptions are the verbs be, and have which in the third person singular have is, and has correspondingly. The third person singular of the verb do is also irregular in terms of its pronunciation: does .

Link-verbs such as be, become, get, grow, etc. are syntactically dependent: they are used as part of a compound verbal or nominal predicate. It is evening. He is a teacher. He has become a teacher. We soon became acclimatized to hot weather. It is getting dark. The noise grew louder. She is growing fat. They preserve their lexical meaning and fulfil the grammatical function: they are supposed to indicate mood, tense and other verbal characteristics. (See 6.8.}

Auxiliaries, that is verbs like be, have, do, shall, will, etc. have no lexical meaning. They are used to form grammatical tenses as parts of the simple verbal predicate. For example: They are watching TV. He has already written the letter. I don't like theatre. We shall never meet again. (See 6.8., 6.9., 6.10., 6.11., 6.12.)

Modals such as can, must, may and so on have a special meaning: they express the speaker's attitude towards the action rendered by means of the infinitive they are always syntactically associated with. Compare: 7 can work. I must work. I will work.

Since such verbs as be, have and do are polyfunc-tional in English each of them deserves special attention.