LESSON XLII.
Point out how the past tense and perfect participle of the following verbs are formed:—
| Present. | Past. | Perfect Participle. | ||
| wish, | wished, | wished. | ||
| love, | loved, | loved. | ||
| take, | took, | taken. | ||
| write, | wrote, | written. |
A verb that forms its past tense and perfect participle by adding ed or d to the present tense form, is a verb of the weak or new conjugation; as, look, looked, looked.
A verb that forms its past tense by changing the vowel of the present, and its perfect participle by adding n or en to the present, is a verb of the strong or old conjugation; as, fall, fell, fallen.
Note.—Verbs of the old conjugation are called strong because they form their past tense within themselves. Verbs of the new conjugation are called weak because they form their past tense by the aid of an additional syllable.
Weak verbs are called verbs of the new conjugation because the method of forming the past tense by the addition of ed or d is of more recent origin than the method of the strong conjugation.
If we know the present tense form, the past, and the perfect participle of any verb, we can tell to which conjugation it belongs, and can give all its inflections of person, number, tense, and mode, therefore the present tense form, the past and the perfect participle, are called the principal parts of the verb. When we give all the inflections of a verb, or indicate them by the principal parts, we conjugate it.