Simple Past

The simple past, past simple, or past indefinite, in English equivalent to 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 present perfect, 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 of a consonant + a vowel + a consonant double the final consonant (e.g. stop – stopped). For details see .

Most verbs have a single form of the simple past, independent of the person or number of the subject (there is no addition of ''-s'' for the third person singular as in the simple present). However, the copula verb ''be'' has two past tense forms: ''was'' for the first and third persons singular, and ''were'' in other instances. The form ''were'' can also be used in place of ''was'' in conditional clauses and the like; for information on this, see English subjunctive. This is the only case in modern English where a distinction in form is made between inversion, negations with ''not'', and emphatic forms of the simple past use the auxiliary ''did''. For details of this mechanism, see ''do''-support. A full list of forms is given below, using the (regular) verb ''help'' as an example:
*Basic simple past:
**I/you/he/she/it/we/they helped
*Expanded (emphatic) simple past:
**I/you/he/she/it/we/they did help
*Question form:
**Did I/you/he/she/it/we/they help?
*Negative:
**I/you/he/she/it/we/they did not (didn't) help
*Negative question:
**Did I/you/he/she/it/we/they not help? / Didn't I/you/he/she/it/we/they help?

Base form

Affirmative (+)
S + verb(ed) + c

Negative (-)
S + did not ( didn't) + verb + C

Usage

The simple past is used for a single event (or sequence of such events) in the past, and also for past habitual actions:
::He took the money and ran.
::I visited them every day for a year.

It can also refer to a past state:
::I knew how to fight even as a child.
For actions that were ongoing at the time referred to, the past progressive is generally used instead (e.g. ''I was cooking''). The same can apply to states, if temporary (e.g. ''the ball was lying on the sidewalk''), but some stative verbs do not generally use the progressive aspect at all, typically verbs of mental states (know, believe, need), of emotional states (love, dislike, prefer), of possession (have, own), of senses (hear) and some others (consist, exist, promise) – see – and in these cases the simple past is used even for a temporary state:
::The dog was in its kennel.
::I felt cold.
However, with verbs of sensing, it is common in such circumstances to use ''could see'' in place of ''saw'', ''could hear'' in place of ''heard'', etc. For more on this, see '' can see''.

If one action interrupts another, then it is usual for the interrupted (ongoing) action to be expressed with the past progressive, and the action that interrupted it to be in the simple past:
::Your mother called while you ''were cooking''.

The simple past is often close in meaning to the present perfect. The simple past is used when the event happened at a particular time in the past, or during a period which ended in the past (i.e. a period that does not last up until the present time). This time frame may be explicitly stated, or implicit in the context (for example the past tense is often used when describing a sequence of past events).
::I was born in 1980.
::We turned the oven off two minutes ago.
::I came home at 6 o'clock.
::When did they get married?
::We wrote two letters this morning.
::She placed the letter on the table, sighed, and left the house.

These examples can be contrasted with those given at . Also, for past actions that occurred ''before'' the relevant past time frame, the past perfect is used.

Various compound constructions exist for denoting past habitual action. The sentence ''When I was young, I played football every Saturday'' might alternatively be phrased using '' used to'' (''... I used to play ...'') or using '' would'' (''... I would play...'').

The simple past form also has some uses in which it does not refer to a past time. These are generally in condition clauses and some other dependent clauses referring to hypothetical circumstances, as well as certain expressions of wish:
:: If he walked faster, he would get home earlier.
:: I wish I knew what his name was.
:: I would rather she wore a longer dress.
For more details see the sections on conditionals, dependent clauses and expressions of wish in the article on uses of English verb forms.

For use of the simple past (and other past tense forms) in indirect speech, see . An example:
::He said he wanted to go on the slide.

Pronunciation of -ed

The regular verbs ending with -ed are pronounced as follows:

* Regular verb endings with voiced consonants+/d/, e.g. ''hugged'' /hʌɡd/.

* Regular verb endings with unvoiced consonants+/t/, e.g. ''stopped'' /stɒpt/.

* Regular verb endings with /t/ or /d/ + /ɪd/, e.g. ''needed'' /niːdɪd/.

See also

*English verbs
* Uses of English verb forms
*Preterite
*Past tense
Other tenses:
* Simple present
* Present perfect

References

{{Reflist
*iStudyEnglishOnline (2015)
Past Simple Uses & Explanations
Archived fro
the original
on August 14, 2015.

Grammatical tenses