The past
tenses in English:
English uses three
forms of the past, the Simple Past (or preterite), the
Present Perfect, and the past perfect, sometimes called the
pluperfect.
All of these forms can also be used in a progressive form .
The simple past.
This is used to relate past events in a historic context.
Often,
you will know that it must be used, because the sentence also contains
an adverb (or adverb
phrase) of time,
such as yesterday, or a date or time.
Examples:
1) Queen Victoria died in
1901.
2) The
Titanic sank when
it hit an iceberg.
3)
I told
you not to drink too much
4) Next,
they went
and cooked
dinner.
Here
is some
examples with a progressive form
too: both of the events in the sentence are "historic", but one took
place
while another longer-lasting situation was true:
5) John Lennon died
while he was
living
in New York.
6) The students shouted
as the President
was
speaking.
The
Present Perfect
In
British
English, this is used to situate past
events, or the consequences of past events, in relation to
the present
situation. (that's why we call it the "present" perfect).
Americans
do not always use the present perfect in this situation.
Examples:
1) I have ordered a new refrigerator,
darling!
(i.e., the speaker means "A new refrigerator is at this moment coming
and
will be here soon").
2) I've eaten too much!
(i.e. the speaker implies: "At this moment now, I do not feel very
well;
I have a funny feeling in my stomach!)
3) Liverpool have won the
Cup (i.e. Liverpool are now, at this moment , football champions).
You
do not usually find adverbs of time
used with verbs in the present perfect, but there are some exceptions:
already:
Come on, we've already
started eating!
adverbs
of frequency:
I've often
seen
people driving too fast down
that road.
adverbs
or adverb phrases of duration related to the present:
I've lived in London for
ten years.
(Contrast
with: I
lived in London for ten years
(but I don't live there now) - a historic statement)
I've lived in London since
1985.
I've been
living in London since
1985.
(Both of these forms are acceptable)
Up
to now, I've
always refused to
eat fish.
The
past perfect or pluperfect.
The
past perfect or pluperfect, as in He
had seen,
is normally only used
in English when one past event (either a specific action, or a contuous
condition) has to be situated in a more distant
past
than another past event.
Example:
I had
just put the phone down, when the doorbell rang.
The man had
been drinking
before the accident happened.
He had
worked
in the company for five years before he got promotion. There are
some other uses too, but they are less
common. Note, for example, the use of the past perfect (and inversion)
after hardly:
Hardly had
I put the phone down, than the phone rang.
