EfS Grammar II: Two Past Tenses – Simple and Continuous

1. EfS Grammar II:Two Past Tenses – Simple and Continuous Telling stories about the past; relationships between past events.

2. Simple - Affirmative to be I was you were he/she/it was we were they were Regular verbs e.g. to publish I published you published he/she/it published we published they published Irregular verbs e.g. to go I went you went he/she/it went we went they went To have got: behaves like an ordinary irregular verb had.

3. Simple - Negative to be I was not you were not he/she/it was not we were not they were not Regular and irregular verbs e.g. to go I did not go you did not go he/she/it did not go we did not go they did not go To have got: behaves like an ordinary verb did not have.

4. Simple – Interrogative to be was I? were you? was he/she/it? were we? were they? Regular and irregular verbs e.g. to classify did I classify? did you classify? did he/she/it classify? did we classify? did they classify? To have got: behaves like an ordinary verb did... have?

5. Simple – Spelling and Pronunciation • Normally: Just add –ed. • Doubling: Short words ending in consonant-vowel-consonant double the final consonant. • Final –e: Words ending in –e just add –d. • Final –y: Consonant –y changes to –ied.Vowel –y goes to –yed. • Pronunciation: Words ending in –d and –t receive an additional syllable (ıd).

6. Continuous – All Forms Affirmative (Negative) I was (not) doing you were (not) doing he/she/it was (not) doing we was (not) doing they was (not) doing Interrogative was I doing? were you doing? was he/she/it doing? were we doing? were they doing? Form:past tense of "to be" + present participle (-ing form).

7. Present participle - Spelling Present participles are formed by adding -ing • The final consonant may be doubled:Mainly in one-syllable verbs ending with consonant-vowel-consonant, e.g.stop – stopping. • Words ending in –ie:-ie changes to –y, e.g. lie – lying. • Words ending in –e:final –e is dropped, e.g. make – making.

8. Simple – Use Past simple is used: • to carry the sequence of verbs of action in a manner resembling points in time past; use may also imply cause and effect; • with verbs of state.

9. Simple - Example I did the same with the case closed by a plate of aluminum in which I put a photographic plate and then on the outside a crust of the uranium salt. The whole was enclosed in an opaque box, and then in a drawer. After five hours, I developed the plates, and the silhouettes of the crystalline crusts appeared in black [...]. Becquerel (1896)

10. Continuous - Use • Past continuous is used: • to express incompleteness with verbs of action (hence “progressive” meaning actions in progress or “imperfect” meaning actions not completed at a point of time in the past). Incomplete action Point of time

11. Relationship Between Simple and Continuous Pastcontinuous (background event) Past simple(sequence of events) Past simple(interrupting an action) In 1903 Naturesent Johns Hopkins University physicist Robert W. Wood, who was attending a scientific conference in Britain […] Hines (1996)

12. What is wrong with … ? I went to the window and it rained. Get that person on the plane to Sydney! I opened the door. A man was standing there. He was sayinghe was the postman. The whole time: “I am the postman. I am the postman. I am the postman…” We saw that it was a little boy who drowned. Bad luck, end of story.

13. References Becquerel, A.H. (1896): On the rays emitted by phosphorescence. Comptes Rendus 122, 420, translated by Carmen Giunta and available at his site: http://webserver.lemoyne.edu/ faculty/giunta/becquerel.html, accessed October 26, 2007.Alternative citation style: lemoyne.edu Hines, T. (1996): What Ever Happened to n-Rays? Skeptic 4.4, 85.