Are you married? No I'm not married/marry!!!

Question

Please can you explain why when we are asked

'Are you married?' the reply in the negative is

'No, I'm not married.'

Why is it that the 'married' in the answer is in the past simple tense and not answered as

'No, I'm not marry.' where here the verb is base form.

When we usually use the negative, we usually use the base for verb.

Thank you.

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

I am not sure that I understand your logic completely. I'll venture an answer anyway. In Are you married? and No, I am not married both are and am are present tense forms of to be, as in these examples:

I am here.

You are here.

(He is here.)

Married is a past participle in both sentences, not a past tense form. Grammatically married is the same verb form that is used in the present and past perfect tenses:

He has never married anybody.

In the sentence Are you married? married resembles an adjective; that's why are is used. Cf. Are you happy? In English the same word (married) is used in these two ways because English verbs have so few forms. In a way that should make learning English easier compared with languages in which verbs have hundreds of forms for various grammatical contexts.

CB

EDIT: I suddenly realised what you mean by using the base form (= infinitive) in negative sentences. That is true if do, does or did is used: I wanted to do it. > I didn't want to do it.

Are you married? No I'm not married/marry!!!

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