Regular and Irregular Verbs: Types and Categories

Regular and Irregular Verbs are yet another Types of Verbs that need to be closely examined in relation to how we make use of them in our day-to-day linguistic activities.

Regular Verbs

The regular verbs are the verbs whose past tense end with the ‘ed’. E.g. jump/jumped, talk/talked, look/looked, expect/expected, shout/shouted, etc.

The regular form of the verbs is usually expressed in four (4) forms. These include:

1. The Infinitive or Base form: jump, talk, expect, shout, etc.
2. The Third Person Singular form: jumps, talks, expects, shouts, etc.
3. The Progressive (-ing) form: jumping, talking, expecting, shouting, etc.
4. The Past tense or Past Participle form: jumped, talked, expected, shouted, etc.

Irregular Verbs

Irregular verbs are those verbs that do not conform to the usual patterns of verbs in that some of their forms deviate from the expected pattern of regular verbs. They usually do not admit the ‘ed’ pattern for their past tense forms. They are in various categories…

Five (5) Categories of Irregular Verbs

Category 1

These have to do with those verbs that have the same form in their past tense and past participle forms as the infinitive and do not end in ‘ed’ like regular verbs. Examples include:

Category 2

These have to do with those verbs that have two forms both in their past tense and past participle forms. Examples include:

Category 3

These have to do with those verbs that have past tenses that do not end in ‘ed’ and have the same form as the past participle forms. Examples include:

Category 4

These have to do with those verbs that have regular past tense forms but two possible past participles, one of which is regular. Examples include:

Category 5

These have to do with those verbs that have their present, past tenses and past participles different from one another. Examples include:

Read more on Nine (9) Other Types of Verbs