Strong verbs
on Jan27 2012Interesting how a single grammar-related question can turn up an answer that opens up an entire swath of understanding when it comes to the English language. And hey, I feel I understand the English language fairly well. Look, I even capitalized the letter ‘e’ in English. *And* I used the word ‘swath’ in a sentence. Not everyone can pull that one off . . . but I digest.
Errr . . . I mean ‘digress’. Sorry.
So, it started off as an exercise in the various uses of ‘drink’, ‘drank’ and ‘drunk’ . . . as I wished to mention in a sentence that someone ‘couldn’t remember having drank from a pitcher recently’. I stared at ‘drank’, wondering if it should actually be ‘drunk’ . . . like, ‘She couldn’t remember having drunk from that pitcher recently.’ I changed it to ‘drunk’. Then I changed it back to ‘drank’. Then I looked it up, and discovered a bunch of people having an argument about which one was better under which circumstance . . . claiming that ‘Drank’ is simple past-tense, and ‘Drunk’ is a past participle, for both present and past tenses.
And so, I did what any smart writer terrified of the word ‘participle’ would do – I changed the whole thing to “She couldn’t remember drinking from that pitcher recently.” and put the whole thing to bed. However, what I *did* notice was that someone mentioned that ‘drink’ was what was known as a ‘strong verb’, which piqued my interest.
For your information, strong verbs are an easy thing to figure out. A ‘weak’ verb is one that passively allows the addition of ‘d’ or ‘ed’ on the end when being converted to past tense. Graze becomes grazed, jump becomes jumped, etc. In fact, ‘love’ becomes ‘loved’, surprisingly, identifying love itself as a weak verb, though several poets might argue that sentiment, stating that love is the strongest verb of all. Well, after reading this, now you all know better . . . and together we will scoff at these poets and make fun of their penmanship. Ha! You call that a flourish?
However, a strong verb is one that doesn’t passively allow the addition of ‘d’ or ‘ed’ when referring to the past. No . . . there’s an entire internal change to the structure and sound of the word itself, a massive re-invention of how the word is spoken. ‘Drink’ becomes ‘drank’. ‘Think’ becomes ‘thought’. ‘Eat’ becomes ‘ate’. Not only are these three of my favorite things to do, but these are all examples of strong verbs.
It got me thinking about all those instances I’ve used these words without even knowing about the concept of ‘strong verbs’. Bring, brought. Sing, sang. Teach, taught. Just how many of these verbs are out there, exactly?
Anyways, just thought it was interesting, thought I’d bring it up. Next stop – I’m going to schedule something in my calendar to look up the word ‘participle’, and then have nightmares for the next several days.
Update: A touch of poison – Ch 10 finished, Ch 11 30%
Eleven is going much smoother than Ten was. Ten was all about introspection and description, with hardly any dialogue at all – internal or external. Eleven started off as dialogue and was off like a rocket.
Makes me wonder if I should be writing screenplays when I’m not novelling. I mean, if dialogue is my thing, what could be easier than writing *just* dialogue and actor queues, letting someone else worry about what the whole thing looks like? Hmmmm.
