English Grammar Drills

8
Basic Verb Forms
This chapter deals with the six basic verb forms that are used as the raw material to make up the
tense system of English. The six basic verb forms are the base, the present tense, the past tense,
the infinitive, the present participle, and the past participle. The next chapter covers the formation
and meaning of the tenses created from these six verb forms and from the modal auxiliary
verbs.
All verbs (with the important exceptions of be and the modal auxiliary verbs can, may, must,
shall, and will) have all six of the forms mentioned above. The six forms are illustrated below by
the regular verb walk and the irregular verb run:
VERB FORMS
Base Present Past Infinitive Present Past
form tense tense participle participle
walk walk/walks walked to walk walking walked
run run/runs ran to run running run
We will now look at each of these six forms in detail, seeing how each is formed.
Base form
The base form is the form of the verb that is entered into the dictionary. For example, if you were
to look up ran in the dictionary, it would refer you to the base form run. Since the base form is
identical in nearly all cases to the present tense, it is difficult at first to see how one could tell
the base form and present tense apart. Fortunately, there is one verb in which the base form and
present-tense forms are different, the verb be:
111