More on Subjects and Verbs

When describing the use of a subject, it is important for the learner to know that it is not found in the prepositional phrase or a phrase, which begins with a preposition. Verbs are classified as regular or irregular and their forms are used to create the various tenses that are used for specific actions. The regular forms are easier to remember because the base form can be seen in all the others. Thus answer in the base form is answered in the past tense and answered again as a past participle. The present participle used in the continuous form is the base plus “ing”, which does not exist in the French or other romantic languages.

The irregular verbs have different forms, which may be organized into different families to facilitate the learning process. So “catch” is “caught” in the past and that can be learnt with “buy” that is “bought” in the past.

The verb like is also used as a preposition to create metaphors in English. This is a way of comparing what something is comparable to. The verb like, love, and several others are used to display emotion and are used in sentences with an object at the end. In other words in a simple sentence regarding what a person likes, we answer “He likes it”, because we need an object to complete the thought.

I found a text referring to the non-standard for, or jargon form of like with an “s” used in all voices. It is quite similar to the standard form except for the s ending but I honestly would not have considered there to be a need to mention this as a variation of the regular form. The teacher should advise the student that there are thousands of speakers that would use the s just as they would say “he have” and that is because in many cases the person has not mastered the proper conjugation of the verb. Non-standard forms are also applied to the past forms of verbs such that some people will leave out the “ed” ending when saying a regular verb in the past.

Normally the subject precedes the verb in a sentence however there are also situations when the converse is true. This is especially so when asking a question or when using words of location like ” there” or “here.” When “there” precedes a verb like in “There are people in the class”, there is not the subject. What one does is ask the question who or what to find out what the subject is and the answer is “people”.