By Auxiliaries, Past tenses

1. Well, "had" is the past tense of the verb "have", but I think you're asking specifically about its use as an auxiliary to form the past perfect tense of other verbs: I played -- simple past tense I have played -- present perfect tense I had played -- past perfect (or...

The auxiliary verb carries the tense. did shows the past. (Otherwise it would be do or does.) You can't indicate tense twice in the same clause. (*What did I said?) The main verb shows the past tense ONLY when no auxiliary verb is present to do the job! (I said so.) CJ

I think the best way to explain this is telling your friend that in English you use only one verbal element to indicate the tense. In this sentence the auxiliary "did" is indicating the past tense so you should keep the verb in the infinitive. Otherwise it will be redundant. I hope...

Hi, I would appreciate any help to explain in grammatical terms why the following sentence doesn't work: * I didn't talked to Simon on Sunday. Is it because a past simple verb cannot follow another past tense? It is obviously incorrect, but I'm not sure how to explain this to my...

Anonymous wrote:Thank you all for your replying to my stupid question. I really appreciate it. Hi Anon, In contrary, I don’t think your question is stupid. It brings up an issue that has stirred many good discussions in this forum and elsewhere. Here is an extracted text that...

It was thought (by many) to have been written by Michael.In the above sentence: ''It'' is used as a subject.''was'' is an auxiliary verb showing simple past tense and ''thought'' is a past participle serving the function of the main verb with reference to some past action. ''to have been'', as CB...

Cool Breeze wrote:Hi Belly1) You could use to get as well. Both the full infinitive (to get) and the plain/bare infintive (get) are correct after do in sentences like yours. There is an old song All I Have To Do Is Dream. It could just as well be All I Have To Do Is To Dream. 2) Not one is...

Hi Belly1) You could use to get as well. Both the full infinitive (to get) and the plain/bare infintive (get) are correct after do in sentences like yours. There is an old song All I Have To Do Is Dream. It could just as well be All I Have To Do Is To Dream. 2) Not one is idiomatic and...

Thanks CJ for the reply. The tense is carried out by auxiliary verb in past tense, why do we need to change the past verb to bare infinity in question and negative form. such as "did you go " in other tense you dont alter verb such as "i am going" "are you going" why do we need to change the...

English is ambiguous enough for it to refer to the past or the future depending on the context. Succeeded can be an indicative past tense or a subjunctive and would can be a past tense meaning "used to" or an auxiliary of the present conditional.CB