ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 



Present Tense. 

 Have. 



To HAVE. 



Past Tense. 

 Had. 



PRESENT TENSE. 



SINGULAR. 



I. I have 

 3. Thou hast 

 3. He has. 



PLURAL. 



i. We have 

 a. Ye have 

 3. They have. 



Perfect Participle. 

 Had. 



PAST TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



1. I had i. We had 



2. Thou hadst 2. Ye had 



3. He had. 3. They had. 



Imperatire, Have. Infinitive, To have. 



PARTICIPLES. 



Imperfect, Having. Perfect, Had. 



Followed by the perfect participle of another 

 verb, have forms two past tenses I have loved 

 (perfect tense), I had loved (pluperfect). Now, as 

 the participle loved merely expresses completed 

 action, without reference to time, and as I have 

 means ' I possess ' (at this moment), how comes 

 the union of the two to express past time? It is 

 by a sort of inference. ' I have written a letter,' 

 means, ' I have now the finished action or work ;' 

 and therefore the doing of it must have been in 

 the past. 



SHALL. 



PRESENT TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



I. I will i. We will 



a. Thou wilt 2. Ye will 

 3. He will. 3. They will. 



PAST TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



1. I would i. We would 



2. Thou wouldst 2. Ye would 



3. He would. 3. They would. 



' I will come,' means, ' I have the present wish 

 or intention to come,' and therefore my coming is 

 a thing that may be expected is in the future. 

 The radical meaning of shall is obligation, debt. 

 ' He shall suffer,' means literally, ' He owes to 

 suffer;' which is equivalent to, 'He is about to 

 suffer.' Thus, shall and will are used to express 

 the future tense. 



Should and would are used as auxiliaries of the 

 Conditional Mood. Ex., If that should happen, 

 all would be lost. 



MAY. 



PRESENT TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



r. 1 may i. We may 



a. Thou mayst 2. Ye may 

 3. He may. 3. They may. 



PAST TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



1. I might i. We might 



2. Thou mightst 2. Ye might 



3. He might. 3. They might. 



CAN. 



PRESENT TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



i. I can i. We can 



a. Thou canst a. Ye can 

 3. He can. 3. They can. 



PAST TENSE. 



SINGULAR. PLURAL. 



i. I could i. We could 



a. Thou couldst a. Ye could 



3. He could. 3. They could. 



May expresses permission ; can, power. Com- 

 bined with other verbs, they make the Potential 

 Mood. Ex., ' I can write; he might have written.' 



Must implies necessity. It is invariable for 

 person or tense. Ex., 'Thou must learn ; he must 

 (now) learn ; he was told that he must (then) 

 learn.' 



Irregularities in Conjugation. 



Weak Conjugation. The essential parts to know 

 of an English verb are, its past tense and its perfect 



participle. Verbs of the weak conjugation are 

 pretty uniform in taking d or ed; as, love, loved; 

 look, looked. Many, however, take // as, dip, 

 dipt. In fact, with such final letters as k, p, s, 

 it is necessarily the sound of / that is added, what- 

 ever the spelling may be ; so that many writers 

 are coming to use / where others use d lookt, 

 pluckt, stept. In this conjugation, the participle 

 is always the same as the past tense. 



In several verbs the vowel is shortened or other- 

 wise changed, and sometimes also the consonant 

 modified, before the d or / is added ; as, feel, felt; 

 lose, lost; jlee, fled; tell, told; seek, sought; teach, 

 taught. 



Along with these might be classed verbs like 

 meet, met ; lead, led; bend, bent; send, sent; cut, 

 cut; set, set; let, let. To account for their present 

 form, we must go back to the oldest form of Eng- 

 lish, the Anglo-Saxon. In that language the past 

 tense was formed by adding, not ed, but de (or te, 

 if the preceding consonant was a sharp letter, as 

 /). Thus : lade (I lead), ledde (I led) ; mete (I 

 meet), mette (I met). As the Anglo-Saxon passed 

 into modern English, the final e ceased to be 

 pronounced, and with it the additional d or / 

 disappeared as useless. Made is a contraction of 

 the Anglo-Saxon macode, and had of hcefde. Could 

 ought to have been coud; the / was inserted from 

 a mistaken resemblance of the word to should 

 and would. 



Strong Conjugation. With regard to verbs of 

 the strong conjugation, no rule can be given as to 

 the change of vowel by which the past tense is 

 formed. It was made at first, no doubt, according 

 to felt laws of euphony ; and even yet a certain 

 method may be discerned in their madness. Thus : 



1. Rise, rose ; smite, smote ; ride, rode ; drive, 

 drove, &c. 



2. Cleave, clove ; steal, stole ; speak, spoke > 

 tear, tore, &c. 



3. Swim, swam or swum ; sing, sang or sung ; 

 ring, rang or rung, &c. 



As to the perfect participles of strong verbs, it 

 ended originally always in en. In modern English, 

 this syllable is often dropt not always. Ex., See, 

 saw, seen ; rise, rose, risen ; sing, sang, sung (for 

 sungen) ; drink, drank, drunken or drunk. 



Some have the past weak, and the participle 

 strong mow, mowed, mown. 



In weak verbs, the participle is always the same 

 as the past ; and from being habituated to this, 

 many do not distinguish these two parts in strong 

 verbs, when they actually differ. We often see 

 such blunders as, 'The letter was wrote 1 (for 

 written), ' The wine was drank ' (for drunk). 



With regard to these two conjugations, it may 

 be remarked, that strong verbs are all of Teutonic 

 origin ; no verb derived from French or Latin is 

 inflected in that form. They are, moreover, all 

 primitive verbs ; the derivative verbs formed from 

 them are always weak. Ex., Fall,, fell, fallen 

 fell, felled, felled. Lie, lay, lain lay, laid (layed), 

 laid. There is also a tendency in strong verbs to- 

 become weak. About fifty verbs that were strong 

 in Anglo-Saxon are now weak. The provincial 

 dialects often retain the old forms after they have 

 disappeared from standard English. Ex., Leap 

 has still in Scotch lap (past), luppen (part). Some 

 verbs have at present both the old and the new 

 forms, usage being divided between them. There 

 is little doubt, however, which will in the end 



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