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Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs.
The use of "an" before words beginning with an unstressed "h" is less common generally in AmE. [35] Such usage would now be seen as affected or incorrect in AmE, [36] which normally uses a in all these cases. According to The New Oxford Dictionary of English, such use is also increasingly rare the UK. [34]
For example, the interjection word indicating agreement is characteristic of African-American English. [27] Two examples of variation over time can be seen in the Corpus of Historical American English, which shows that nay was among the most common interjections in 1820 but by the 2010s had become significantly less common. [28]
9th edition: Includes 22,000 words, phrases and meanings; 50,000 corpus-based example sentences, 690 collocation notes show over 26,000 collocations (words that are used together), 80 Thesaurus notes, Grammar Points and Which Word? notes; 48-page Oxford Academic Writing Tutor; 47-page reference section includes information about academic ...
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...
See List of English words with disputed usage for words that are used in ways that are deprecated by some usage writers but are condoned by some dictionaries. There may be regional variations in grammar, orthography, and word-use, especially between different English-speaking countries.
Verbs are then said to agree with their subjects (resp. objects). Many English verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereas I go, you go, we go, they go are all grammatical in standard English, he go is not (except in the subjunctive, as "They requested that he go with them").
English irregular verbs are now a closed group, which means that newly formed verbs are always regular and do not adopt any of the irregular patterns. This list only contains verb forms which are listed in the major dictionaries as being standard usage in modern English. There are also many thousands of archaic, non-standard and dialect variants.