Past

The English Tense System contains three regular past forms of verbs, the present perfect, the past perfect and the past, which is usually known as “simple past”. Among these three and their progressive forms the simple past is – as the name may indicate – the most simple and frequently used tense. It has a narrative element and forms the common tense in which narrating texts are written in.

Morphology of the simple past
The term “simple past” refers to the fact that it is a simple tense, not a compound tense. This means that there is no need of auxiliary verbs to conjugate verbs in the simple past. Instead, either certain endings are added to the verbal stem, or the vowels of the verb may change (irregular verbs).
The endings in the simple past are quite simple, for there is only one (-ed) for all three persons in singular and plural.
For example:
I watch TV (present). -> I watched TV (simple past).

Other than this there are certain irregular verbs which may not be suffixed with –ed but alter their vowels.
For example:
I strike (present). -> I struck (simple past).

For native speakers these verbs are usually no problem to deal with. But for people whose mother tongue is not English it takes time to carefully learn this verbal group.

Use of the simple past tense
The simple past is usually used actions which took place in the past and are now completed. If they happened once:
Yesterday, I ate chocolate.
Last year, I went to the Zoo.

And also if they happened regularly:
Last year, I went to the Zoo every week.

For a chain of completed actions in the past or a narrative construction the simple past is used as well:
First I entered the room, then I put down my bag pack and afterwards I opened the window.

Another special use of the simple past is to describe an action which interrupted another ongoing action in the past. In this case it is usually used together with the past progressive: When we were eating dinner (past progressive), the doorbell rang (simple past). We were playing soccer, when suddenly it started to rain.

As already indicated through the use of terms such as “last year” and “yesterday” In the first sentences, the simple past is used after signal terms which point out a clear point of time in the past:
Yesterday, we played basketball.

Negative of the simple past
Since the simple past is formed without any auxiliary verbs, the negative of this past tense now needs such verbs. For it is impossible to directly put a full verb into the negative in English we depend on auxiliary verbs such as “to have” and “to be”.
As for the simple present the present form of “to do” is used for the negative, the simple past uses the past form “did”. When a form of did is used, the main verb is set back into its infinite form.
For example:
I played tennis last week. -> I did not/didn’t play tennis last week.
I did not say this.


The same goes for questions in the (simple) past:
Did you play tennis yesterday?
Did you do your homework?


Difference between past forms
In some languages, in German for example, there is no difference between simple past and present perfect forms. In English though, the simple past distinguishes in its aspect from the present perfect.
For example:
I played soccer (simple past): The action took place in the past and is now complete.
I have played soccer (present perfect): Besides the difference in the way of forming the tenses, this tense implies that the action started in the past, but is either still going on or has at least still influence on the present.
Different from the simple past, the present perfect is mainly used to describe the general happening of something which began in the past but has its emphasis on the meaning for the present.

Past Perfect
To describe actions which took place in the past even before the action described in simple past, there is a tense called past perfect. It is formed with the past form of an auxiliary verb and the past form of the main verb. Yet it is not very common in current English.
For example:
Before I talked to her, I had talked to her brother.

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