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Simple Past
The simple past, past simple or past indefinite, sometimes called the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular English verbs form the simple past in ''-ed''; however, there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. The term " simple" is used to distinguish the syntactical construction whose basic form uses the plain past tense alone, from other past tense constructions which use auxiliaries in combination with participles, such as the past perfect and past progressive. Formation Regular verbs form the simple past end''-ed''; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. The spelling rules for forming the past simple of regular verbs are as follows: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y change to -ied (e.g. study – studied) and verbs ending in a group o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Preterite
The preterite or preterit (; list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense. In general, it combines the perfective aspect (event viewed as a single whole; it is not to be confused with the similarly named Perfect (grammar), perfect) with the past tense and may thus also be termed the ''perfective past''. In grammars of particular languages the preterite is sometimes called the ''past historic'', or (particularly in the Ancient Greek, Greek grammatical tradition) the ''aorist''. When the term "preterite" is used in relation to specific languages, it may not correspond precisely to this definition. In English it can be used to refer to the simple past verb form, which sometimes (but not always) expresses perfective aspect. The case of German verbs, German is similar: the ''Prä ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Do-support
''Do''-support (or ''do''-insertion), in English grammar, is the use of the auxiliary verb ''do'', including its inflected forms ''does'' and ''did'', to form negated clauses and questions as well as other constructions in which subject–auxiliary inversion is required. The verb "do" can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, and it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "I ''did'' shut the fridge." However, in the negated and inverted clauses referred to above, it is used because the conventions of Modern English syntax permit these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. It is not idiomatic in Modern English to add the negating word ''not'' to a lexical verb with finite form; ''not'' can be added only to an auxiliary or copular verb. For example, the sentence ''I am not'' with the copula ''be'' is fully idiomatic, but ''I know not'' with a finite lexical verb, while grammatical, is archaic. If there is no other auxiliary present when negatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Simple Present
The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition to present time. The simple present is the most commonly used verb form in English, accounting for more than half of verbs in spoken English. It is called "simple" because its basic form consists of a single word (like ''write'' or ''writes''), in contrast with other present tense forms such as the present progressive (''is writing'') and present perfect (''has written''). For nearly all English verbs the simple present is identical to the base form ( dictionary form) of the verb, except when the subject is third- person singular, in which case the ending ''-(e)s'' is added. There are a few verbs with irregular forms, the most notable being the copula ''be'', which has the simple present forms ''am'', ''is'', and ''are''.... Conjugat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Past Tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back the action took place. Some languages have a compound past tense which uses auxiliary verbs as well as an imperfect tense which expresses continuous or repetitive events or actions. Some languages inflect the verb, which changes the ending to indicate the past tense, while non-inflected languages may use other words, such as "yesterday" or "last week" etc to indicate that something took place in the past. Introduction In some languages, the grammatical expression of past tense is combined with the expression of other grammatical category, categories such as grammatical aspect (see tense–aspect). Thus a language may have several types of past tense form, their use depending on what as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Preterite
The preterite or preterit (; list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense. In general, it combines the perfective aspect (event viewed as a single whole; it is not to be confused with the similarly named Perfect (grammar), perfect) with the past tense and may thus also be termed the ''perfective past''. In grammars of particular languages the preterite is sometimes called the ''past historic'', or (particularly in the Ancient Greek, Greek grammatical tradition) the ''aorist''. When the term "preterite" is used in relation to specific languages, it may not correspond precisely to this definition. In English it can be used to refer to the simple past verb form, which sometimes (but not always) expresses perfective aspect. The case of German verbs, German is similar: the ''Prä ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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English Verbs
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. Generally, the only inflected forms of an English verb are a third person singular present tense form ending in ''-s'', a past tense (also called preterite), a past participle (which may be the same as the past tense), and a form ending in '' -ing'' that serves as a present participle and gerund. Most verbs inflect in a simple regular fashion, although there are about 200 irregular verbs; the irregularity in nearly all cases concerns the past tense and past participle forms. The copula verb ''be'' has a larger number of different inflected forms, and is highly irregular. For details of the uses of particular verb tenses and other forms, see the article Uses of English verb form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Uses Of English Verb Forms
This article describes the uses of various verb forms in modern standard English language. This includes: * Finite verb forms such as ''go'', ''goes'' and ''went'' * Nonfinite forms such as ''(to) go'', ''going'' and ''gone'' * Combinations of such forms with auxiliary verbs, such as ''was going'' and ''would have gone'' The uses considered include expression of tense (time reference), aspect, mood and modality, in various configurations. For details of how inflected forms of verbs are produced in English, see English verbs. For the grammatical structure of clauses, including word order, see English clause syntax. For certain other particular topics, see the articles listed in the adjacent box. For non-standard dialect forms and antique forms, see individual dialect articles and the article, thou. Inflected forms of verbs A typical English verb may have five different inflected forms: *The base form or plain form (''go'', ''write'', ''climb''), which has several uses—a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Dependent Clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as the complement of the verb "know" rather than as a freestanding sentence. Subtypes of dependent clauses include content clauses, relative clauses, and adverbial clauses. Content clause A content clause, also known as a "noun clause", provides content implied or commented upon by its main clause. It can be a subject, predicate nominative, direct object, appositive, indirect object, or object of the preposition. Some of the English words that introduce content clauses are ''that, who'' (and formal ''whom''), ''whoever'' (and formal ''whomever''), ''whether, why, what, how, when'', and ''where''. Notice that some of these words also introduce relative and adverbial clauses. A clause is a content clause if a pronoun (''he, she, it,'' or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Condition Clause
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''conditional'' on the dependent clause. A full conditional thus contains two clauses: a dependent clause called the ''antecedent'' (or ''protasis'' or ''if-clause''), which expresses the condition, and a main clause called the ''consequent'' (or ''apodosis'' or ''then-clause'') expressing the result. Languages use a variety of grammatical forms and constructions in conditional sentences. The forms of verbs used in the antecedent and consequent are often subject to particular rules as regards their tense, aspect, and mood. Many languages have a specialized type of verb form called the conditional mood – broadly equivalent in meaning to the English "would (do something)" – for use in some types of conditional sentences. Types of conditio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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English Modal Verbs
The English modal verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality (properties such as possibility, obligation, etc.). They can be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participle or infinitive forms) and by their neutralizationQuirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Jan Svartvik, & Geoffrey Leech. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. (that they do not take the ending ''-(e)s'' in the third-person singular). The principal English modal verbs are ''can'', ''could'', ''may'', ''might'', ''shall'', ''should'', ''will'', ''would'', and ''must''. Certain other verbs are sometimes classed as modals; these include ''ought'', ''had better'', and (in certain uses) ''dare'' and ''need''. Verbs which share only some of the characteristics of the principal modals are sometimes called "quasi-modals", "semi-modals", or "pseudo-modals". Modal verbs and their features The verbs customarily classed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Used To
The habitual aspect is a form of expression connoting repetition or continuous existence of a state of affairs. In standard English, for the present time there is no special grammatical marker for the habitual; the simple present is used, as in ''I go there (every day).'' However, for past reference English uses the simple past form or either of two alternative markers: ''used to'' as in ''we used to go there (every Thursday)'', and ''would'' as in ''back then we would go there (every Thursday)''. African-American Vernacular English uses ''be'' ( habitual ''be'') to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. ''Would'' The form infinitive.html" ;"title="ould + infinitive">ould + infinitiveis employed to talk about a habit or frequent action in a former time. One usually applies [would + infinitive] for the past habitual when one is telling a story about the past. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Habitual Aspect
In linguistics, the aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in a given action, event, or state. As its name suggests, the habitual aspect ( abbreviated ), not to be confused with iterative aspect or frequentative aspect, specifies an action as occurring habitually: the subject performs the action usually, ordinarily, or customarily. As such, the habitual aspect provides structural information on the nature of the subject referent, "John smokes" being interpretable as "John is a smoker", "Enjoh habitually gets up early in the morning" as "Enjoh is an early bird". The habitual aspect is a type of imperfective aspect, which does not depict an event as a single entity viewed only as a whole but instead specifies something about its internal temporal structure. Östen Dahl found that the habitual past, the most common tense context for the habitual, occurred in only seven of 60 languages sampled, including English. Especially in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |