Talk:English conjugation tables
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article contains doubtful and i.m.o. misleading information. "Let's have been being played" - come on, is that sentence ever used? It just sounds ridiculous. Iblardi 09:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
1st person plural = We It is listed in this article as 1st person singular. The same error occurs in the next two items.
- This whole page is quite problematic. First, it's basically a POV fork of English verbs (which is better, but also needs some work); second, it's based on an obsolete understanding of the grammatical system of English and uses lots of outdated terminology. Nobody, for instance, calls participles and infinitives "moods" in modern grammars. Periphrastic constructions such as "may + V" are also not usually analysed as "moods" ("potential mood" etc.) - we could just as well posit extra "moods" for "might + V" ('semi-potential mood'?), "should + V" ('obligative mood'?), "be supposed to + V" ('expectative mood'?), "fail to + V" (can't think of a good label for this one...), etc. Just because some other languages have a "potential mood" doesn't make any construction in English that happens to express potentiality a "mood". Even the listing of "whill/shall + V" as a "future tense" is quite controversial. If "will V" is the future tense, what is "shall V"? And what is "be going to V"?
- Modern grammars stress much more the combinatorial nature of the English system, which only has a very narrow system of "conjugational" (inflectional) forms in the narrow sense, plus several subsystems of periphrastic categories (mainly aspect periphrases and the modal verbs), which each needs to be analysed in its own terms. The full range of combinatorial possibilities (up to "might have been being done" or "should be going to be done" and other such monstrosities) is really trivial and needs not be presented in tables. Neither does every possible combination (i.e. table row) need a grammatical category label of its own. "Future perfect progressive" isn't a separate category in English grammar, it's just something that happens to result when you combine the more basic categories in a certain way. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
-
- Anyone for an AFD?
[edit] Id est perplexing
"Id est" was previously written out in the mood section. I changed it to "i.e." Why write out "id est" in full? Michaeljancsy 04:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Strong verbs (to go)
A fairly minor point Count down to boxed line 30 The first column reads "simple present progressive" I suggest this ought to read "simple past progressive" line 28 correctly contains the "simple present progessive"
J Howard Riccalton, of Shepton Mallet, England
[edit] To go?
Is to go a strong verb? Because I was under the impression that strong verbs were simply verbs which have a more complicated inflection pattern, but to go is not such a verb. Its simple past is not an inflection derived from its stem - it has been suppleted from wend. So is to go not just irregular? By any means, would it not be a better idea to use a verb which the stem does change irregularly, but still bares resemblance to the original? (e.g. sit or something similar) - EstoyAquí(t • c • e) 18:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
