Verbs: Principal Parts (1960)

[Music] foreign [Music] here is a picture of a young man with a problem it concerns the principal parts of verbs let's see what's troubling him which is correct the balloon has rose or the balloon has risen has rose or has risen is it the rope has broke or the rope has broken has broke or has broken as we get deeper into this young man's problem the principal parts of verbs we will probably be reviewing information some of us already know about verbs joe and nancy will help us begin suppose joe says this to nancy because i enjoy classical music i enjoyed the opera on television last night [Music] we can see that joe used the verb enjoy twice first in the present tense and then in the past tense the past tense is simply the present tense with the letters e d at the end enjoy present tense enjoyed past tense the past tense of most verbs is formed by simply adding ed the scientists launch a rocket each day at noon launch present tense the scientists launched another rocket at noon today launched past tense by adding e.d besides adding ed to the present tense there is another common way of forming the past tense of verbs nancy and joe appreciate beethoven as a composer they appreciated him even when they were younger here only the letter d was added to turn the present tense appreciate into the past tense appreciated here's another example i raise tomatoes in my garden last year i raised corn verbs that form their past tense by adding ed and those that form their past tense by adding d are called regular verbs these verbs seldom give us trouble but this young man is having problems with verbs that don't form their past tenses in this simple regular way let's see some examples of this kind of verb now i set the table five minutes ago i set the table there is no difference between the present and past tense of set the whistles blow [Music] the whistles blew this time the spelling is changed to form the past tense but neither d nor ed is added elevators go up and down the elevators went down here the past tense is a different word verbs such as set blow and go whose past tenses are formed by no change by a change in spelling or by a change in word and not simply by adding d or e d to the present tense are called irregular verbs there is no rule to follow in forming the past tense of irregular verbs the only way to know what the past tense is of such verbs is to learn the principle parts of verbs principal parts of a verb are the present tense the past tense and the past participle in regular verbs the past participle has the same form as the past tense for example we give the principal parts of the regular verb bounce this way i bounce present tense i bounced past tense and the past participle has the same form as the past tense i have bounced notice that when we use the past participle we add a helping word but now let's give the principal parts of the irregular verb go i go i went and i have gone there is no rule to let us know what form the past participle of an irregular verb will take again the only way to know this is to memorize the principle parts of verbs but what is the benefit of knowing these parts let's conjugate the irregular verb right and you'll see the present tense the past tense and the future tense now let's put the principal parts of right across the top i write i wrote i have written now let's think about the first principle part right as you can see we find this form of the verb used in the present and future tenses the past tense of the verb write is based on its second principle part wrote now to see how the third principle part written is used let's look at the tenses that tell of completed action or state of being the perfect tenses present perfect past perfect and future perfect the third principle part is used in forming all the perfect tenses but remember with the aid of one or two helping words so by knowing the principle parts of a verb you can determine the correct forms for all its tenses but two rules must be remembered the past tense does not take a helping word the past participle does these are important enough rules to be written out in full now if we remember these rules about principle parts we can help the young man with his problems remember the simple sentences he was puzzling over the balloon has rose or the balloon has risen we are using the irregular verb rise whose principal parts are rise rose risen so the question is should we use the past tense or the past participle remember the rules therefore since we're using a helping word we must use the past participle the correct sentence is the balloon has risen and the second problem was the rope has broke or the rope has broken the verb we're concerned with this time is break whose principle parts are break broke broken the question again is should we use the past tense or the past participle since we're using a helping word here is the answer the rope has broken but if we should want to use the past tense of the verb then we would not need the helping word the rope broke using the principal parts of verbs is as simple as that this young man will learn to use the principal parts of irregular verbs by practicing saying them correctly again and again in this way i see i saw i have seen from knowing the principal parts of c you would know that you could never correctly use seen without a helping word i swim i swam i have swung and so on and so on the principal parts of irregular verbs can be found in the dictionary you already know many of them it's worth knowing as many as you can you will find that it is easier for you to use verbs correctly when you know their principle parts [Music]