Academic Fun
English
E
15 December 2009
Tuesday
● Text : Peter Chiu
Parts of the verb
But was it really that? His corpse was still in the morgue
when stories of murder begun to circulate around
Hollywood Hills.
Mr Chiu: Do you detect any mistakes in the above
sentence?
Harry: Well. I've found one. I don't see any reason why
we should use "begun" in the second sentence.
The first part of the sentence, "His corpse was still
in the morgue," is written in the past tense. So the
second part should also be written in the past tense.
Therefore, I would change the verb from "begun" to
"began" and I would rewrite the sentence as follows:
But was it really that? His corpse was still in the morgue
when stories of murder began to circulate around Hollywood
Hills.
Mr Chiu: Correct. Instead of using the past participle
of the verb "begin", we should use the past
form "began". Are you familiar with the
four parts of the verbs?
Harry: Well, I learned
them in Primary Five
but have almost forgotten
most of them.
Mr Chiu: In general, every verb has four parts: The Present
Tense, The Present Participle, The Past Tense, and
the Past Participle. Some verbs have the past and
same past tense participle.
e.g. acted
acted
allowed
allowed
awoke
awoke
copied
copied
dived
dived
fought
fought
But some have three different forms:
Present Past
Past Participle Present Participle
be
was (were)
been
being
bear
bore
born
bearing
lie
lay
lain
lying
Now, could you give the three different forms of the following
verbs?
bite, blow, choose, fall
Harry: Here are my answers:
bite
bit
bitten
biting
blow
blew
blown
blowing
choose
chose
chosen
choosing
fall
fell
fallen
falling
Mr Chiu: All right. Well done!
Academic Fun
Vocabulary
corpse (n) 屍體
morgue (n) 陳屍所
circulate (v) 流傳
therefore (adv) 因此
familiar with (phr) 熟悉
in general (phr) 一般而言
P09