Past tense
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The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past of the current moment (in an absolute tense system), or prior to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future (in a relative tense system).
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[edit] English
In English, there are two distinct types of past tense:
- Present perfect (see perfect tense)
- Preterite (or simple past)
Each of these may also be found in the progressive (continuous) aspect.
Simple past is formed for regular verbs by adding –ed to the root of a word. Example: He walked to the store. A negation is produced by adding did not and the verb in its infinitive form. Example: He did not walk to the store. Question sentences are started with did as in Did he walk to the store?
Simple past is used for describing acts that have already been concluded and whose exact time of occurrence is known. Furthermore, simple past is used for retelling successive events. That is why it is commonly used in storytelling.
Past progressive is formed by using the adequate form of to be and the verb’s present participle: He was going to church. By inserting not before the main verb a negation is achieved. Example: He was not going to church. A question is formed by prefixing the adequate form of to be as in Was he going?.
Past progressive is used for describing events that were in the process of occurring when a new event happened. The already occurring event is presented in past progressive, the new one in simple past. Example: We were sitting in the garden when the thunderstorm started. Use is similar to other languages' imperfect tense.
Present perfect simple is formed by combining have/has with the main verb’s past participle form: I have arrived. A negation is produced by inserting not after have/has: I have not arrived. Questions in present perfect are formulated by starting a sentence with have/has: Has she arrived?
Present perfect simple is used for describing a past action’s effect on the present: He has arrived. Now he is here. This holds true for events that have just been secluded as well as for events that have not yet occurred.
Present perfect progressive is formed by prefixing have/has before the grammatical particle been and the verb’s present participle form: We have been waiting. A negation is expressed by including not between have/has and been: They have not been eating. As with present perfect simple, for forming a question, have/has is put at the beginning of a sentence: Have they been eating?
Present perfect progressive is used for describing an event that has been going on until the present and may be continued in the future. It also puts emphasis on how an event has occurred. Very often since and for mark the use of present perfect progressive: I have been waiting for five hours / I have been waiting since three o’clock.
Furthermore, there is another version of past tense possible: past perfect, similar to other languages' pluperfect tense.
Past perfect simple is formed by combining the simple past form of to have with the simple past form of the main verb: We had shouted. A negation is achieved by including not after had: You had not spoken. Questions in past perfect always start with had: Had he laughed?
Past perfect simple is used for describing secluded events that have occurred before something else followed. The event that is closer to the present is given in simple past tense: After we had visited our relatives in New York, we flew back to Toronto.
Past perfect progressive is formed by had, the grammatical particle been and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. For negation, not is included before been: I had not been waiting. A question sentence is formed by starting with had: Had she been waiting?
If emphasis is put on the duration of a concluded action of the past, since and for are signal words for past perfect progressive: We had been waiting at the airport since the 9 P.M. flight. / They had been waiting for three hours now.
[edit] Other Germanic languages
[edit] German
German uses two forms for the past tense.
- The preterite (Präteritum) (called the "imperfect" in older grammar books, but this, a borrowing from Latin terminology, ill describes it.)
- The perfect (Perfekt)
In South Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the preterite is mostly used solely in writing, for example in stories. Use in speech is regarded as snobbish and thus very uncommon. South German dialects, such as the Bavarian dialect, as well as Yiddish, and Swiss German have no preterite, but only perfect constructs.
In certain regions, a few specific verbs are used in the preterite, for instance the modal verbs and the verbs haben (have) and sein (be).
- Es gab einmal ein kleines Mädchen, das Rotkäppchen hieß. (There was once a small girl who was called Little Red Riding Hood.)
In speech and informal writing, the Perfekt is used (eg, Ich habe dies und das gesagt. (I said this and that)).
However, in the colloquial language of North Germany, there is still a very important difference between the preterite and the perfect, and both tenses are consequently very common. The preterite is used for past actions when the focus is on the action, whilst the present perfect is used for past actions when the focus is on the present state of the subject as a result of a previous action. This corresponds to the English usage of the preterite and the present perfect.
- Preterite: "Heute früh kam mein Freund." (my friend came early in the morning, and he is being talked about strictly in the past)
- Perfect: "Heute früh ist mein Freund gekommen." (my friend came early in the morning, but he is being talked about in the present)
[edit] Romance languages
[edit] French
French has numerous forms of the past tense including but not limited to:
- Past perfect (passé composé) e.g. J'ai mangé (I have eaten or I ate)
- Past imperfect (imparfait) e.g. Je mangeais (I have been eating)
- Past historic or Simple past (passé simple) e.g. Je mangeai (I ate or I have eaten)
- Pluperfect(Plus que parfait) e.g. J'avais mangé (I ate [before another event in the past])
- recent past (passé recent) e.g. Je viens de manger (I just ate)
The perfect resembles in the form the English simple past, for which reason the simple past is often called the "perfect" tense. Likewise the imperfect resembles the English form with have, which likewise is often named the imperfect. However, the usage is very different.
- Passé parfait describes completed actions in the past.
- Passé imparfait describes incomplete actions in the past.
- Passé simple is rare in current speech and mainly appears in newspapers and older texts.
