Verbs which are called Regular Verbs have a regular form of this verbal. The Past Participle of Regular Verbs are formed by adding the suffix -ed, as shown in the table below.
Basic Form of Verb
Past Participle Form
play
played
jump
jumped
walk
walked
talk
talked
escape
escaped
chase
chased
stop
stopped
Please note that some slight adjustment can precede (come before) the adding of the suffix.
For the verbs escape and chase, the last e is dropped, and for the verb stop the last letter is doubled.
The Past Participle of Irregular Verbs
These are formed irregularly. What I mean is that we cannot in all cases make the same one type of change to the basic verb form and get the past participle form.
Look at this table:
Basic Form of Verb
Past Participle Form
sit
sat
sing
sung
eat
eaten
write
written
see
seen
sleep
slept
put
put
What do you see in this last table?
The Different Ways of Forming the Past Participle of Irregular Verbs
There is no single rule that can be applied to all. From the table above we can draw out the different ways the past participle is formed from the basic form of an irregular verb.
for the verbs sit and sing, an internal vowel change takes place.
For the verbs eat, write, and see, the suffix -en is added. (Note that some pre-adjustment is made before adding the suffix -en. For the verb see, one e is dropped before adding the suffix; for the verb write, an e is dropped and the t is doubled.)
for the verb sleep, the internal vowel is changed and then the suffix t is added.
for the verb put, no change is made.
Since, there is no one way of forming the past participle of irregular verbs, we memorize them along with the base form and the past tense form.
Like this:
"sing, sang, sung"
"eat, ate, eaten"
"drink, drank, drunk"
"put, put, put"
"bind, bound, bound"
Of course, we need to do this only for the irregular verbs.
For the regular verbs, as I have explained above, we need only add -ed to the basic form; so there is no need to memorize those.
