Well, to come back to that lazy verb…

As we have seen Transitive Verbs have twenty eight forms.

The Full Infinitive

1. 1. to eat ( full infinitive)
2. 2. to be eating (full infinitive continuous)
3. 3. to be eaten (full infinitive passive)
4. 4. to have eaten (full perfect infinitive)
5. 5. to have been eating (full perfect infinitive continuous)
6. 6. to have been eaten (full perfect infinitive passive)

The full infinitive is used in subordinate clauses as a complement of a verb. So, examples:

1. 1. I want to eat it
2. 2. The survivors are rumoured to be eating each other
3. 3. Potatoes are reported to be eaten by billions of people
4. 4. Neanderthal Man is thought to have eaten only fruit
5. 5. A person on a diet is not supposed to have been eating cakes
6. 6. The last dodo is thought to have been eaten by sailors in 1866

Apart from the simple full infinitive, these forms are not very common but are used as a rhetorical tool in exceptional linguistic situations; the grammar is important. The negative and interrogative are made in the subordinate clause, of course.

The Bare Infinitive

1. 7. eat
2. 8. be eating
3. 9. be eaten

10. have eaten

11. have been eating

12. have been eaten

The bare infinitives are always used as complements of auxiliaries, modals (verbs “let”, “make” and sometimes “help”):

1. 7. You can eat it cold
2. 8. We’ll be eating at six
3. 9. It should be eaten with chop-sticks

10. Someone might have eaten it

11. She would have been eating with us if she’d arrived earlier

12. Two hundred cakes can’t have been eaten by only two people

The negative and interrogative is made with the auxiliary.

The Present Tense (Indicative)

The Present Simple tense in English is simplicity itself. We use the infinitive without the particle “to”. The third person (I think for reasons of monotony due to ubiquity) takes an “s” tool or “es” tool (eat/eats; watch/watches).

An important thing to note is the pronunciation of the “s” and “es” tools. Along with the plural, the “s” and “es” tools are probably the most ubiquitous in the English language. So it is important to understand them well. It is quite easy: we have to pronounce correctly the final consonant to know whether to use /s/, /z/ or /iz/ (y-ies=z).

The endings of words in English are important because in English all syllables, except the first in a sentence, always begin with a consonant. Therefore the third person singular of Present Simple verbs or plural nouns ( the s/z/iz endings) often begin the following word if the word starts with a vowel. Thus elision takes place.

He wants us and Ann in it ( He want su zan da ni nit)

He always seizes every opportunity (He yal way si zi zev ri yo port u ni ti )

All verbs in the Present Tense have the following forms:

infinitive

- There are variables: verbs ending in  ch/sh/s/x

- Another variable is with some “y” endings- single “y” endings:

Unlike many other languages, the lazy verb in English only “works” in the positive role and as you can see above, it works very little. In the negative and interrogative, it leaves all the “work” for the poor auxiliary “do”.

As always in English, the ubiquitous forms are the shortest: “do” and “does” for the third person. The student should forget, as a child does, why we use it. Just use it.

The tool is used for negatives:

Present

do not / don’t /dount/

does not / doesn’t /d^znt/

Past

did not / didn’t /dident/

to know:

The present verb is the same as the infinitive in the present positive with “s” added in the third person. The auxiliary “do” is the same as the infinitive in the present negative with “s” added in the third person and the contracted “not” added on. The verb is the bare infinitive (without “to”).

The auxiliary “do” takes “did” in the past negative for all persons with contracted “not” added and the bare infinitive added on.