Tenses

Tenses can be overwhelming if you will to look at its complexity on a whole. At the end of the day, you won’t be much wiser as to how to effectively use what your have learned. Here I will endeavour to impart to you just the 12 basic tenses in 4 sets of 3 categories; SIMPLE, PERFECT, CONTINUOUS and CONTINUOUS PERFECT in past, present and future tenses.

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Verb Tense and Structure

To master spoken and written English, you will have to be able to recognize that the verb is the power behind the sentence, by being able to recognize what the verb is and how it is being used.

Determining whether the verb indicates an action or a state of being is easier with a clear understanding of verb tense and structure.
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Regular and Irregular Verbs

This is easy as I think universally all of us have learned irregular verbs by heart. We chant them like our daily prayers and we memorized them. They are imprinted in our brain.

The difference between regular and irregular verbs is in their endings for the past tense and past participle forms.

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Dynamic & Static Verbs

Dynamic verbs describe action and can be used with continuous tense while Static verbs refer to a state or condition (non-action) and will remain in the simple tense and cannot normally change to continuous tense unless there is a change in the meaning.

Dynamic Verbs

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Linking verbs

Linking verbs does not have much meaning on its own and must be followed by a complement in a complete sentence. The function of a linking verb is to link a subject to a complement, in other words, it links the subject to what is said about the subject.

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Transitive, Intransitive and Ditransitive Verbs

The difference between a transitive verb and an intransitive verb is that transitive verb has an object in the sentence while an intransitive verb does not. A transitive verb is an action verb and it requires a direct object to ensure the sentence makes more sense. The action of the verb is therefore transferred directly to the object.

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Now that we have learned about helping/auxiliary verbs, next lets us look at Main Verbs.

What is Main Verb?

The main verb, also known as lexical verb, is a verb that has meaning on its own. You can understand what is said when someone just mention any main verb on its own. The main verb can be the only verb in a sentence. And main verb can also be used with one or more helping verbs.

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Helping verbs, also known as auxiliary verbs, do not have meaning on their own. They are needed in order for a sentence to be grammatically correct. They do not tell us very much on their own and they are used with main verbs to make the sentence meaningful. Helping verbs determine the tense of verb forms and how the verb, as a whole, reveals the time or relative time of the action.

There are a total of 27 helping verbs in the English Language and we can further break them down into 3 categories ie Primary, Modal and Semi-Modal:-

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Sometimes we use TWO WORDS to complete the verb, e.g.

• The brother will return.
• The dog was injured.
• The room is crowded.
• The glasses were broken.

In some sentences THREE WORDS are used to complete the verb, e.g.

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A Verb may be said to be the “doing word,” because it is used to make a statement about a person, animal, place or thing. It is perhaps the most important part of a sentence. The verb or compound verb asserts the meaning of the subject of the sentence and express action.

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