Discuss the properties of English verbs with examples.

The properties of English verbs is a complex subject that
we can only touch on in part here. English verbs are a
word class that are lexically and morphologically distinct
and indicate an action, a state of being or an event
(occurrence). English verbs have inflectional
properties that indicate tense, aspect and
mood. They also show active and passive
voice, which indicates the relationship between the Subject
and the Verb of a sentence. There are regularly conjugated
and irregularly conjugated verbs. English verbs conjugate
for person: first (I; we), second (you; you) and third
person (she, he; they) in both singular and plural. English verbs have
non-finite, or infinitive, forms (to have, to be, to do)
and participle forms (singing, sang; staying, stayed).
English has auxiliary verbs and modal
auxiliary verbs. English verbs can be followed by article particles to
form phrasal
verbs.

Tense
locates verbs in time and shows past time, present time or future time. Examples are:
Past: Yesterday I swam. Present: Today I swim. Future: Tomorrow I will swim.
Aspect of a verb shows whether or not an action or
occurrence (event) is completed or not. Aspect shows that which is
incomplete through progressive aspect,
also called continuous aspect, and
complete through perfect aspect.
English verbs indicate mood, or attitude, as ordinary
indicative, questioning interrogative, urgent
imperative, contingent conditionals, and
doubtful or wishing subjunctive. Examples are: Indicative: I swam.
Interrogative; Will you swim? Imperative: You must not swim. Conditional: I might not
swim if it could be unwise. Subjunctive: If it were I, I would
swim.

Regularly conjugated verbs, or regular
verbs, are those that follow the standard English conjugation model for
present, past simple and participle forms: Root word: bake: bake, baked, baking;
infinitive: to bake. Irregularly conjugated verbs, or irregular
verbs, are those that follow a different conjugation pattern in the past
simple and past participle forms: Root: rise: rise, rose, risen. Root: bring: bring,
brought, brought. It is posited that these high usage words maintained Middle English
conjugation whereas lower usage words did not.

Finally,
English auxiliary verbs are do, be and
have. Modal auxiliary verbs, or
modal verbs, commonly known are can, may, could,
should, would, shall, ought (ought to), will, while some uncommonly known
ones are need, and dare. There are three
Simple tenses; three Perfect
tenses: have + -ed participle; three
Progressive (aka Continuous) tenses: be + -ing
participle; and three Perfect Progressive (aka
Perfect Continuous) tenses: have + be + -ing participle. The three
categories for each are Past, Present and Future yielding twelve English
tenses.