Past tense

Key takeaways

Past tense belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Past tense to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Past tense from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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 meaning, for example, "yesterday" or "last week" 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 categories such as grammatical aspect (see tense–aspect). Thus a language may have several types of past tense form, their use depending on what aspectual or other additional information is to be encoded. French, for example, has a compound past (passé composé) for expressing completed events, and imperfect for continuous or repetitive events. Some languages that grammaticalise for past tense do so by inflecting the verb, while others do so periphrastically using auxiliary verbs, also known as "verbal operators" (and some do both, as in the example of French given above). Not all languages grammaticalise verbs for past tense – Mandarin Chinese, for example, mainly uses lexical means (words like "yesterday" or "last week") to indicate that something took place in the past, although use can also be made of the tense/aspect markers le and guo. The "past time" to which the past tense refers generally means the past relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is employed (as in some instances of indirect speech) it may mean the past relative to some other time being under discussion. A language's past tense may also have other uses besides referring to past time; for example, in English and certain other languages, the past tense is sometimes used in referring to hypothetical situations, such as in condition clauses like If you loved me ..., where the past tense loved is used even though there may be no connection with past time. Some languages grammatically distinguish the recent past from remote past with separate tenses. There may be more than two distinctions. In some languages, certain past tenses can carry an implication that the result of the action in question no longer holds. For example, in the Bantu language Chichewa, use of the remote past tense ánáamwalíra "he died" would be surprising since it would imply that the person was no longer dead. This kind of past tense is known as discontinuous past. Similarly certain imperfective past tenses (such as the English "used to") can carry an implication that the action referred to no longer takes place. A general past tense can be indicated with the glossing abbreviation pst.

Indo-European languages The European continent is heavily dominated by Indo-European languages, all of which have a past tense. In some cases the tense is formed inflectionally as in English see/saw or walks/walked and as in the French imperfect form, and sometimes it is formed periphrastically, as in the French passé composé form. Further, all of the non-Indo-European languages in Europe, such as Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish, also have a past tense.

Germanic languages

English In English, the past tense (or preterite) is one of the inflected forms of a verb. The past tense of regular verbs is made by adding -d or -ed to the base form of the verb, while those of irregular verbs are formed in various ways (such as see→saw, go→went, be→was/were). With regular and some irregular verbs, the past tense form also serves as a past participle. For full details of past tense formation, see English verbs. Past events are often referred to using the present perfect construction, as in I have finished (also known as present in past). However this is not regarded as an instance of the past tense; instead it is viewed as a combination of present tense with perfect aspect, specifying a present state that results from past action. (It can be made into a past tense form by replacing the auxiliary have with had; see below.) Various multi-word constructions exist for combining past tense with progressive (continuous) aspect, which denotes ongoing action; with perfect aspect; and with progressive and perfect aspects together. These and other common past tense constructions are listed below:

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Past tense

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Past tense claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Past tense before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Past tense ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Past tense

In research: Past tense appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Past tense in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Past tense is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Grammatical tenses, Past, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Past tense outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Past tense in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Past tense means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Past tense out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Past tense in simple terms?

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.

Why does Past tense matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Past tense?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Past tense.