The Verb Story

Chapter 4: The 4 Principal Parts of Verbs

Sammy walked into school Monday morning, ready to teach his fellow peers during their study hall. He took his desk, and leaned across the aisle so he could speak to Maxwell. “Hey Maxwell, hey, hey, Maxwell, over here,” Sammy whispered. By now, rumor was going around that Sammy was on a tirade concerning different verbs, and Maxwell did his best to tune Sammy out.

Finally, when Maxwell couldn’t stand it anymore, he practically exploded yelling at whisper level, “What? What could you possibly want from me?”

“Well,” Sammy said calmly, “I was just wondering if you knew what the four principal parts of verbs are.”

“What do you think? I have a sixth grade level of education, how could I possibly know all these facts and rules about stinkin’ verbs?”

“Well, if you applied yourself like me, and bought a copy of Prentice Hall Writing Coach –”

“No, no, just lecture me now and get it over with,” Maxwell interrupted.

“Alright then, but because of that little outburst, I’d appreciate not to be interrupted,” Sammy replied curtly. “Verbs have four principal parts: past, present, present participle, and past participle. The present is just your regular word in the tense it would be listed in the dictionary. The present participle is the word combined with one of the ‘be’ helping verbs. The past is simply the past-tense form, in most cases ending with ‘-ed.’ The past participle is combining the verb with one of the ‘have, has, had, etc.’ helping verbs. I’ll give you an example: The bird tweets; the bird was tweeting; the bird tweeted; and the bird has tweeted. Now, can you tell me which is which?” After no response, he said with forced menace, “Present, then present participle, then past and finally, past participle.”

This continued until the class was over and by the time the bell had rung, Maxwell rocketed up from his seat, grabbed his things carelessly, and bolted from the room.