Modern standard English has various verb forms, including:
Finite verb forms such as go, goes and went Nonfinite forms such as (to) go, going and gone Combinations of such forms with auxiliary verbs, such as was going and would have gone They can be used to express tense (time reference), aspect, mood, modality and voice, in various configurations. For details of how inflected forms of verbs are produced in English, see English verbs. For the grammatical structure of clauses, including word order, see English clause syntax. For non-standard or archaic forms, see individual dialect articles and thou.
Inflected forms of verbs A typical English verb may have five different inflected forms:
The base form or plain form (go, write, climb), which has several uses—as an infinitive, imperative, present subjunctive, and present indicative except in the third-person singular The -s form (goes, writes, climbs), used as the present indicative in the third-person singular The past tense or preterite (went, wrote, climbed) The past participle (gone, written, climbed) – identical to the past tense in the case of regular verbs and some irregular ones (here the first two verbs are irregular and the third regular), it may also used as a (de)verbal adjective The -ing form (going, writing, climbing), used as a present participle, gerund, (de)verbal noun, and sometimes (de)verbal adjective The verb be has a larger number of different forms (am, is, are, was, were, etc.), while the modal verbs have a more limited number of forms. Some forms of be and of certain other auxiliary verbs also have contracted forms ('s, 're, 've, etc.). For full details of how these inflected forms of verbs are produced, see English verbs.
Verbs in combination In English, verbs frequently appear in combinations containing one or more auxiliary verbs and a nonfinite form (infinitive or participle) of a main (lexical) verb. For example:
The dog was barking very loudly. My hat has been cleaned. Jane does not really like us. The first verb in such a combination is the finite verb, the remainder are nonfinite (although constructions in which even the leading verb is nonfinite are also possible – see § Perfect and progressive nonfinite constructions below). Such combinations are sometimes called verb catenae. As the last example shows, the words making up these combinations do not always remain consecutive. For details of the formation of such constructions, see English clause syntax. The uses of the various types of combination are described in the detailed sections of the present article. (For another type of combination involving verbs – items such as go on, slip away and break off – see Phrasal verb.)
Tenses, aspects and moods As in many other languages, the means English uses for expressing the three categories of tense (time reference), aspect and mood are somewhat conflated (see tense–aspect–mood). In contrast to languages such as Latin, though, English has only limited means for expressing these categories through verb conjugation, and tends mostly to express them periphrastically, using the verb combinations mentioned in the previous section. The tenses, aspects and moods that may be identified in English are described below (although the terminology used differs significantly between authors). In common usage, particularly in English language teaching, particular tense–aspect–mood combinations such as "present progressive" and "conditional perfect" are often referred to simply as "tenses".
Tenses Verb tenses are inflectional forms which can be used to express that something occurs in the past, present, or future. In English, the only tenses are past and non-past, though the term "future" is sometimes applied to periphrastic constructions involving modals such as will and go. Some verb tenses are compound and can combine different verb tenses to form another one.
Present
Present tense is used, in principle, to refer to circumstances that exist at the present time (or over a period that includes the present time) and general truths (see gnomic aspect). However, the same forms are quite often also used to refer to future circumstances, as in "He's coming tomorrow" (hence this tense is sometimes referred to as present-future or non-past). For certain grammatical contexts where the present tense is the standard way to refer to the future, see conditional sentences and dependent clauses below. It is also possible for the present tense to be used when referring to no particular real time (as when telling a story), or when recounting past events (the historical present, particularly common in headline language). The present perfect intrinsically refers to past events, although it can be considered to denote primarily the resulting present situation rather than the events themselves. The present tense has two moods, indicative and subjunctive; when no mood is specified, it is often the indicative that is meant. In a present indicative construction, the finite verb appears in its base form, or in its -s form if its subject is third-person singular. (The verb be has the forms am, is, are, while the modal verbs do not add -s for third-person singular.) For the present subjunctive, see English subjunctive. (The present subjunctive has no particular relationship with present time, and is sometimes simply called the subjunctive, without specifying the tense.)
Past
Past tense forms express circumstances existing at some time in the past, although they also have certain uses in referring to hypothetical situations (as in some conditional sentences, dependent clauses and expressions of wish). They are formed using the finite verb in its preterite (simple past) form. Certain uses of the past tense may be referred to as subjunctives; however, the only distinction in verb conjugation between the past indicative and past subjunctive is the possible use of were in the subjunctive in place of was. For details see English subjunctive.
Future
English lacks a morphological future tense, since there is no verb inflection which expresses that an event will occur at a future time. However, the term "future tense" is sometimes applied to periphrastic constructions involving modals such as will, shall, and to be going to.
Don't go near that bomb! It will explode! (periphrastic future) Don't go near that bomb! It's going to explode! The morphological present tense can be used to refer to future times, particularly in conditional sentences and dependent clauses.
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