Module 10: Irregular Verbs

References:   English For Maritime Students; www.google.com; owl.english.purdue.edu; www.wikipedia.com

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I.             OBJECTIVES

1.    make the students identify irregular verbs;

2.    make the students know and understand the simple past and past participial forms of the irregular verbs;

3.    make the students construct sentences using the irregular verbs   

II.            DISCUSSION

A verb is often defined as a word which shows action or state of being. The verb is the heart of a sentence - every sentence must have a verb. Recognizing the verb is often the most important step in understanding the meaning of a sentence. The word be is different from other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb.

In English, regular verbs consist of three main parts: the root form (present), the (simple) past, and the past participle. Regular verbs have an -ed ending added to the root verb for both the simple past and past participle. Irregular verbs do not follow this pattern, and instead take on an alternative pattern.

Unlike most of the other parts of speech, verbs change their form.  Sometimes endings are added (learn - learned) and sometimes the word itself becomes different (teach-taught).  Verbs that form the past tense by adding -d or -ed are called regular verbs.  Some of the most common verbs do not form their past tense by ending in –d or –ed. They are called irregular verbs. 

Principal Parts of Some Irregular Verbs

PRESENT	PAST	PAST PARTICIPLE
is	was	been
become	became	become
begin	began	begun
bid (to tell)	bade	bidden
bid (to offer)	bid	bid
bite	bit	bitten
blow	blew	blown
break	broke	broken
bring	brought	brought
buy	bought	bought
catch	caught	caught
choose	chose	chosen
come	came	come
do	did	done
drag	dragged	dragged
draw	drew	drawn
drink	drank	drunk
drive	drove	driven
eat	ate	eaten
fall	fell	fallen
fight	fought	fought
flee	fled	fled
fly	flew	flown
forget	forgot	forgotten
freeze	froze	frozen
get	got	got or gotten
give	gave	given
go	went	gone
grow	grew	grown
hang (to put to death)	hanged	hanged
hang	hung	hung
hide	hid	hidden
know	knew	known
lay	laid	laid
leave	left	left
lend	lent	lent
lie	lay	lain
pay	paid	paid
ride	rode	ridden
ring	rang	rung
rise	rose	risen
run	ran	run
see	saw	seen
set	set	set
shake	shook	shaken

 In contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur. The idea of an irregular verb is important in second language acquisition, where the verb paradigms of a foreign language are learned systematically, and exceptions listed and carefully noted.

In linguistic analysis, the concept of an irregular verb is most likely to be used in psycholinguistics, and in first-language acquisition studies, where the aim is to establish how the human brain processes its native language. Historical linguists rarely use the category irregular verb. Since most irregularities can be explained historically, these verbs are only irregular when viewed synchronically, not when seen in their historical context.

When languages are being compared informally, one of the few quantitative statistics which are sometimes cited is the number of irregular verbs. 

The word be - the most irregular and also most common verb in English - has different forms for each person and even for the simple past tense.  The forms of the word be are given in the chart below: 

Number	Person	Present	Past	Future
Singular	1st (I)	am	was	Will be
	2nd (you)	are	were	Will be
	3rd (he, she, it)	is	was	Will be
Plural	1st (we)	are	were	Will be
	2nd (you)	are	were	Will be
	3rd (they)	are	were	Will be

III.          EXERCISES

A.  Conjugate the following verbs:

                                                                                                                                                           

INFINITIVE	SIMPLE PAST	PAST PARTICIPLE
alight
arise
alert
be
beech
beat
can
cast
catch
deal
dig
do
embark
fall
feed
geld
give
gnaw
hang
heave
hew
keep
kneel
knit
lay
lean
lose
make
mean
mow
pay
plead
prove
quit
read
run
saw
shake
shear
teach
telecast
thrust
understand
weave
wring

B. Write 10 sentences using irregular verbs in the infinitive, simple past and past participial forms.