in English we have a number of principal
parts of the verb and depending on who
you talk to there are either three or
four principal parts so we have the
present the past the past participle and
then some people include the present
participle and some people don't but to
be comprehensive here we have included
it so what we'll do is we'll fill out
this chart and get a handle on how you
can form the principal parts and then
after that we'll talk briefly about why
you should actually care and why all of
this matters so let's start with the
present then and the way to form this is
to take I and add the base of the verb
and there's a simple way to get at the
base of the verb you take the infinitive
and the infinitive is always 2 plus
whatever the verb is so let's say to see
and then what you do is you get rid of
the 2 bit and what's left is the base
looks a bit like a mathematical equation
so again just take the infinitive get
rid of the 2 and what's left is the base
and you can see then that for a regular
verb this would be something like I kick
to kick becomes I kick the irregular
verb would be an example would be I swim
and you'll see in a moment why this one
is irregular it's going to change a
whole lot more then we have the past
part and this is essentially the past
tense if you add it to I so I plus the
past tense and for a regular verb all we
do is we add edie so I kicked very
simple okay so look out for that
edie ending and then the irregular verb
this is where you start to see the
change this one changes to I swam all
right then we have the past participle
and this is probably the hardest parts
to kind of figure out especially for
irregular verbs for regular verbs it's
not too difficult you simply add the
edie ending again it's often exactly the
same as the past tense so this would be
kicked
right but for the irregular verb it's
often very different and in this case
it's swim swam swum how many of us would
actually say swum so there's a little
trick for this to figure out which one
it is if you say I had or I have and
then dot dot dot and try to fill it in
so I had kicked the other one that works
is half so I have kicked or I have swamp
right and then you can figure out which
one you need all right so then the last
one is the present participle
unfortunately this one is very easy to
form you need the base of the verb plus
this at ing ending so the base plus the
ing ending and then you get kicking or
swimming and that's not too difficult
the last thing to talk about then is why
all of this actually matters and I'm
going to give you a couple of reasons
why you should care about the four
principal parts of the verb so the first
one has to do with verbals and there are
three types of verbals there are three
types and they are the infinitive which
we have just seen over here and then we
also have the present present participle
and then lastly we have the past
participle so the past participle these
are all verbals and the key thing with
verbals is that they cannot be the main
verb unless they have a helping verb
with them often in fact they're going to
do very different things than what verbs
do and we'll talk about verbals in a
separate video different page on the
website but it's just good to be aware
of the fact that verbals are formed
often from these principle parts right
we have two of them here the past
participle and then the present
participle and then also the infinitive
gives us the base
so these verbals are really crucial in
that they do a lot and often they're not
actually being the main verb unless
again they have a helping verb with them
so that's something to really watch
for the second thing that I want to draw
your attention to is how the tenses are
formed in English so we have 12 tenses
and if you know your principle parts
then you can form the 12 tenses and I'll
just give you a couple of examples here
let's say you say I am kicking right
what you can see there is that we've
used the present participle and we have
added a helping verb and this then
becomes the present continuous if you
want to know the technical name here's
another one I have swum same kind of
pattern we have a past participle and we
have a helping verb and that's why we
really need to know these four principle
parts because if we can if we have the
present the past the past participle and
the present participle we can form all
twelve different tenses in English as
long as we're willing to add a few
helping verbs here and there so those
are just a couple of reasons then why
the principal parts matter and hopefully
the patterns are fairly clear to you now
and you can make sense of the different
principal parts of the verb