Re: # of possible verb declensions (was gotten, boughten)

taliesin the storyteller sikyal:

> As a non-native speaker, let me assure you: English verbs are just about
> the worst bit.
I'm a native speaker and so I can hardly tell you what "should" be hard
about my language, but . . . .

It seems to me that any way of looking at the verbs that makes you aware
of the number of differrent constructions is very backwards.  When I think
of the forms of "go" I think of five wordforms: go, goes, went, going,
gone. Everything else is combining one of these five forms with another
verb, the patterns for which are very simple.  There are really only
five patterns:

modal + root
verb + infinitive
have + past participle
be + present participle
be + past participle

Combine in the above order any way you like, and you'll have a grammatical
sentence: "It would have to have been being broken" uses all five.
Remembering what the various verbal paraphrases *mean* is a different
thing, but that's a lexical problem, not a syntactic one. Any language
will have an equivalent problem. So how hard can it be to remember five
forms and five rules?

I back myself up: learning Romanian and Spanish, it never occurred to me
to consider periphrastic form "voy a decir" part of the cojugation of
"decir." I barely even consider "he dicho" part of the conjugation.
(Likewise for the Romanian "o sa zic" and "am zis.") Why should learning
English be any different?


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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